Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Dear Drs. Berlinski and Nelson,
As Dr. Berlinski noted the other day, when a number of us here at Ricochet asked questions of the two of you awhile ago we displayed “considerable intellectual anxiety, both…restless and unsettled in nature.”
Which is an elegant way of describing my attitude toward intelligent design. Drs. Berlinski and Nelson, will you indulge me if I explain why?
First a word about what I think I know. I think I know that intelligent design represents a useful critique of evolution.
We all understand the difference between randomness—sheer chance—and intentional patterns or designs. “If you see a turtle on a fencepost,” to quote the esteemed scientific philosopher Bill Clinton, “you know it didn’t get there by accident.” As with the turtle on the fencepost, so with the fossil record. If you see a Cambrian explosion, you know that evolutionary theory—which implies more or less steady developments, from lower, or simpler, to higher, or more complicated forms—faces a problem. Likewise, too, our emerging knowledge of cellular biology. Even in the simplest forms of life, we can observe mechanisms that are, to use Michael Behe’s phrase, “irreducibly complex.”
Since nothing in evolutionary theory predicts that complicated mechanisms would evolve, so to speak, all at once, in "irreducible complexity" evolutionary theory faces yet another problem.
In both the Cambrian explosion and in mechanisms that display "irreducible complexity," evidence of elaborated, non-random patterns--that is, of intelligent design--keeps evolutionary theory both humble and honest, demonstrating its limits. Intelligent design reminds everyone that evolutionary theory is just that, a theory. I think I get that.
Now for the question.
The two of you—but, if Google serves, particularly Paul—claim much more for intelligent design. You claim—or at least suggest—that intelligent design possesses explanatory power in itself. That it can be turned into a proper scientific theory, someday, of its own.
Have I got that right?
If so, I'm anxious. Here's why:
Science, as best I can tell, makes progress by observing a couple strictures:
a) It limits itself to what is available to us by way of sense perceptions, and
b) Whenever possible, it places its propositions in the form of testable hypotheses.
Intelligent design, again as best I can tell, would violate both. By its very nature, it deals with the supernatural. I use the term in the strict sense, to refer to realities that lie above or outside nature, and are thus unavailable to us—and this is the point—by way of sense perception. By its nature, then, intelligent design would seem to violate stricture a)
As for stricture b), testability--well. Isn’t it of the very essence of intelligence that it is intelligent? That it has, so to speak, a mind of its own?
What sort of experiment could you construct that genuine intelligence might not simply choose to disregard? We talk to supernatural intelligence—at least those of us who believe in a certain kind of supernatural intelligence do so. We call that prayer. But test it? How?
In spirit, I'm with you. I’m all for reminding people, including scientists themselves, of the limits of science. “Darwin,” claims Richard Dawkins, “made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” No Darwin didn’t. Even in its most elaborated, sophisticated forms, evolution presumes evolution from something. Where did that first something come from? Darwin cannot say. Noting this--pointing out that there seems to have been a moment when life appeared ex nihilo, which in turns suggests intelligence and design—noting this and other limits of evolutionary theory represents a useful act of what one might term cultural hygiene. Clear out the junk—that sort of thing.
But to claim more, suggesting that intelligent design itself possesses explanatory power—well, that seems to require, at some basic level, a blurring of faith and science, a confusion of sense perception with spiritual and philosophical intuition.
Could you clear this up?
And thanks. It's a pleasure--actually, an honor--to be able to question minds as brilliant, informed, and wonderfully fearless as yours.
Sincerely,
Anxious in Palo Alto
- Comment (162)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (9)
Comments :
Apr '11
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Not all scientific knowledge is empirical, some is inferential. There is a famous equation for calculating a wing's capacity to generate Lift that employs a "Coefficient of Lift." I once had the chance to ask one of the Aeronautical Engineers who developed the equation how they derived the Coefficient. His answer: "It was what was left over after we accounted for everything else." Particle physics employs this approach too. The existence and characteristics of a particle - the Higgs Boson for example - are inferred because they are what is needed to make a theory work. Only later is the methodology developed or equipment invented to actually test and prove the rightness or show the falsity of the theory. To a certain extent Newton's 17th Century theories about celestial bodies was not actually proved correct until NASA landed on the Moon in the 20th. Despite what we may think sometimes , we don't actually possess the sum total of all knowledge...yet. Just because we don't have an answer today doesn't mean we'll never find an answer.
Mar '11
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Peter, what you are asking for seens to me to be related to the Turing Test.
Here's another one to contemplate. Will we be able to tell when we have the sum total of all knowledge? Don't we need a test of falsifiability to be able to assert that, when/if we get there? What would that test look like?
Oct '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
It is a mistake to treat scientific as a sheet of dry wall, where you can simply spackle in ideas to fill gaps however you choose. Even as Copernicus and Einstein came up with models for the Universe which could not be proven in their lifetime, they had actual evidence to point to, or at least experiments could be devised to calculate their worthiness.
Evolution, like the Grand Unified Theory are used as structural members in our current understanding of the Universe, but they are still only theory until proven. While they can be refined and possibly be proven incorrect, ID is a different animal entirely because it cannot ever be disproved.
Further, assuming there was an Intelligent Designer, how does this assumption advance any understanding? Could we then assume that the Designer was itself Designed by another agency? Admitting we don't know how evolution works is more helpful than assuming evolution doesn't.
Apr '11
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Peter Robinson:
Intelligent design reminds everyone that evolutionary theory is just that, a theory.
I take issue with this sentence. I've heard many ID proponents (mostly non-scientists) say evolution "Is just a theory." Saying that is highly miss-representative of the reality of how the word "theory" is used in this particular context by scientists. Evolution is a theory, in the same way gravity is a theory. Every time a defender of ID says Evolution is just a theory it sounds as if they are trying to dismiss evolution as some wild speculation, neither better or worse than other wild speculations. Its sloppy and a bit ironic considering that many ID proponents are trying to get their "theory" looked at in a respectful manner.
I agree with your points about the problems with ID. By pointing to an intelligence they imply that in order to understand biology, in this case, and possibly other sciences one will eventually need to study this intelligence. Unless we find a brain in outer-space the study of this intelligence will fall back on non-scientific methodology, much of which is viewed as guesswork by many scientists.
Apr '11
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
oddhan
ID is a different animal entirely because it cannot ever be disproved.
Further, assuming there was an Intelligent Designer, how does this assumption advance any understanding? Could we then assume that the Designer was itself Designed by another agency?
If there are natural mechanisms by which matter organizes itself into complex structures and Life comes into existence spontaneously, then finding these would strike a blow against ID would they not? And if such mechanisms exist, surely they can be found and understood. Just maybe not today.
If, on the other hand, a designer exists wouldn't finding that out advance understanding in the same way that knowing you have parents advances your understanding? Does not the knowledge that you're not self-generating allow you induce things worth knowing about other entities?
Is the Designer designed? I don't know. Why not try and find out? My point is all knowledge is useful, so why preemptively place any line of inquiry out of bounds?
Oct '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Valiuth
Peter Robinson:
Intelligent design reminds everyone that evolutionary theory is just that, a theory.
I take issue with this sentence. I've heard many ID proponents (mostly non-scientists) say evolution "Is just a theory." Saying that is highly miss-representative of the reality of how the word "theory" is used in this particular context by scientists. Evolution is a theory, in the same way gravity is a theory.
One could argue (though I would not) that the evolution of people from apes is merely a theory, but evolution itself is a well-documented process which we see around us all the time. Evolution describes biological changes in response to changes in environments, which is exactly what happens when viruses become resistant to drugs. Granted there is a difference in scale, but there is no serious dispute in scientific circles concerning the validity of evolution as a whole (in contrast to the active disputes amongst scientists concerning Climate Change).
Mar '11
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Intelligent design is an observation, just like similarities across different species is an observation. Theory is built upon such observations. My understanding of origins is completely determined by my knowledge that In the beginning God made out of nothing the heavens and the earth, that he is so "big" that heaven is his throne and the earth is his footstool, and that through Jesus he came to live on the inside of me, giving me testable proof for me, and he will do the same for you. Based on these fundamentals the details are fascinating discussions, but ID will never rival evolutionary theory, it will just be one more observation which will alter it in the minds of some.
Nov '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Observation is an interesting thing. Evolutionists make the same observations that creationists do. They simply have a different worldview i.e. naturalistic and reductionist whereas the creationist worldview makes the same observations and add the supernatural and integration. As Isaac Newton famously said: "I merely think God's thoughts after Him." and "Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit."
Aldus Huxley said: "Not only do I not believe in God, I hope that He does not exist." Notice that hope plays a big part here. Worldview is everything.
Edited on Jun 28, 2011 at 8:34amMay '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Peter Robinson: .....If you see a Cambrian explosion, you know that evolutionary theory—which implies more or less steady developments, from lower, or simpler, to higher, or more complicated forms—faces a problem. Likewise, too, our emerging knowledge of cellular biology. Even in the simplest forms of life, we can observe mechanisms that are, to use Michael Behe’s phrase, “irreducibly complex.”
Since nothing in evolutionary theory predicts that complicated mechanisms would evolve, so to speak, all at once, in "irreducible complexity" evolutionary theory faces yet another problem.
In both the Cambrian explosion and in ...
Not all theories of evolution involve a gradual smooth set of adaptations over a period of time. The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium in Evolution attempts to address the problems you have raised Peter, where in a shorter period of time larger changes occur rapidly in evolution. Stephen Jay Gould and other scientists have put this forward over the last 40 years as a way of dealing with the critics of evolutionary gradualism attributed to Darwin's theory. PE does not violate principles of classical evolution but aims to build on them to better map a theory against the sets of data.
Nov '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Observation -- the fossil record shows species that no longer exist. We have seen extinction in the recent past i.e the dodo bird and carrier pigeon. We have seen apparent extinctions that actually were not so i.e the celocant. However we have not seen anything new in speciation of which I am aware. I'm totally willing to be corrected.
The question is this: Evolution predicts speciation to occur rather uniformly as time passes. It would also predict rather uniform extinction. We actually have seen in the 6-7 thousand years of recorded history many extinctions. But, we have not observation any new species developed. The operative word here is developed. Why not?
Edited on Jun 28, 2011 at 8:33amOct '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
I find it intensely frustrating that arguments about intelligent design always seem to end up spiraling around the attractors of the Cambrian explosion, development of complex structures in metazoans, and the emergence of the human species. The real conundrum, and one about which mainstream biology and evolutionary theory has almost nothing to say, is the origin of life or, more precisely, the origin of the first self-replicating molecular system.
Given that, the mechanism of evolution (well-demonstrated in the laboratory) seems entirely adequate to do the rest, but the big question is whether we were, in fact given that first replicator by an intelligent designer or did it somehow emerge through natural processes on the ancient Earth. If it did emerge naturally, nobody has a clue how. Stephen Meyer discusses how formidable a problem the origin of life is for purely naturalistic theories in Signature in the Cell (the link is to my review, which discusses these issues in more detail and describes how evidence for at least some forms of intelligent design might be accessible to science).
Jun '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Robert Promm: Observation -- the fossil record shows species that no longer exist. We have seen extinction in the recent past i.e the dodo bird and carrier pigeon. We have seen apparent extinctions that actually were not so i.e the celocant. However we have not seen anything new in speciation of which I am aware. I'm totally willing to be corrected.
The question is this: Evolution predicts speciation to occur rather uniformly as time passes. It would also predict rather uniform extinction. We actually have seen in the 6-7 thousand years of recorded history many extinctions. But, we have not observation any new species developed. The operative word here is developed. Why not? · Jun 28 at 8:32am
Edited on Jun 28 at 08:33 am
You are thus corrected here and here.
"1,000 new species found in New Guinea."
Jun '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Well, I must say that I'm just befuddled. For a few thousand years the Intelligent Designer, or maybe some “conscious being” posing as the Intelligent Designer (hmmm…), had active conversations with priests and prophets on our little planet in the vastness of a hostile universe. The line was open as it were and the iDesigner had every opportunity to reveal to us the intricate workings of his so-called intelligent design. Instead what he (since most think he was a “he” and not a “she” or an “it”) provided was a creation myth that waxes poetic but is a pretty flimsy explanation of how man and woman, the moon, the stars, other animals, plants, et. al., came to be. There was no mention of protons, neutrons, electrons or subatomic particles or the DNA molecule or viruses or bacteria or the billions upon billions of other solar systems and galaxies throughout the universe. I suppose the Intelligent Designer thought quite little of us that we could comprehend these things and instead felt it a better use of his time and ours to pit one tribe of human beings against another...for his, uh, pleasure. Much jollier fun, what?
Jun '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Are there things we don’t quite grasp on how evolution seems to work? Yes. Are they overwhelming? No. Do they discredit the entire theory? Not in the least. ToE is quite robust and as applied is quite adept at explaining so much more than any theory, notion or creation myth that came before it about how species are similar and different where they came from. The ID community is a reaction primarily by fundamentalist Christians, and now a growing number of Islamists, who are offended that a Biblical explanation of how human beings in particular came to be has been discredited by a 19th century naturalist who starting connecting the dots. From their perspective it is nothing short of blasphemy and it leads to such ludicrous interpretations of fossil evidence to conclude that since God said the Earth is only 6,000 years old that dinosaurs must have played and frolicked with humans and even that Noah put a male and female Tyrannosaurus Rex on the ark. I’m not making this up. Visit your nearest Creationist Museum.
Jun '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
The Intelligent Design community provides us no additional insight about how species have emerged and how they may continue to evolve. ID provides us no insight about how the universe works. Its only claim is that some sort of conscious being started it all. Really? So what? Where does this get us? Does it explain any of the processes that an Intelligent Designer may have used? No. Anything that science cannot explain ID proponents attribute to some sort of unexplained supernatural event that apparently they are too lazy to look into and try to make sense of. It’s not really a question of looking at the world differently at all. It’s really a question of not paying attention or applying any intellectual energy to figure out how things work or may have come to be. ID proponents invoke terms like “conscious being” but are too lazy to even define what they mean by that. This isn’t science. It is sloth.
Nov '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Brian Watt
You are thus corrected here and here.
"1,000 new species found in New Guinea." · Jun 28 at 9:01am
One quibble: Is 1,000 species found the same as 1,000 species developed? I think not. that's why I used the word developed.
Jun '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Robert Promm
Brian Watt
You are thus corrected here and here.
"1,000 new species found in New Guinea." · Jun 28 at 9:01am
One quibble: Is 1,000 species found the same as 1,000 species developed? I think not. that's why I used the word developed. · Jun 28 at 9:18am
Suggest you pick up "On The Origin of Species" or any other basic text on evolutionary theory and read it because your response clearly shows you don't understand that "developed", "emerged" and "evolved" all mean the same thing. The species recently discovered in New Guinea have "developed" from other species. They did not appear instantaneously or by magic.
Aug '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
I heard Darwin made extensive use of the dictum natura non facit saltus in his original theory, so many assumed that meant that evolution must have a certain steadiness.
But what I learned is that, while a form of continuity is necessary for evolutionary theory, "steady" continuity is not (eg punctuated equilibrium). That doesn't make nature leap, exactly (except at a tiny level, since DNA structure is discrete). But evolution apparently doesn't rule out nature getting much zippier at some times than at others.
And though it's easy to picture evolution "going" from less complex to more complex, since we started out with "nothing" and now have humans, tigers, and sequoias, should we say that's the only direction it goes? Organisms lose "complexity", too -- like cave species losing functional eyes and burrowing lizards losing limbs.
I vividly remember a lecture on humble retroviruses where the professor said, "Never assume these viruses are 'less evolved' than you. Just think of how successful they are!"
Edited on Jun 28, 2011 at 9:47amDec '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
I'll stick with Parmenides...whatever is, is. Once the concept of being itself is adequately explained (as John Walker mentioned) then we can quibble about what's happened since.
Dec '10
Re: Anxious in Palo Alto, or a Note to Drs. Berlinski and Nelson on Intelligent Design
Brian Watt
Robert Promm
Brian Watt
You are thus corrected here and here.
"1,000 new species found in New Guinea." · Jun 28 at 9:01am
One quibble: Is 1,000 species found the same as 1,000 species developed? I think not. that's why I used the word developed. · Jun 28 at 9:18am
Suggest you pick up "On The Origin of Species" or any other basic text on evolutionary theory and read it because your response clearly shows you don't understand that "developed", "emerged" and "evolved" all mean the same thing. The species recently discovered in New Guinea have "developed" from other species. They did not appear instantaneously or by magic. · Jun 28 at 9:35am
I found a pen in my desk drawer. I had never seen one before. After some deep thought on the matter, I concluded that it must have evolved from the pencils I used every day.