Introduction: The Illusion of Design [Richard Dawkins]

Natural History Magazine ^ | November 2005 | Richard Dawkins

[snarks_when_bored]

Introduction: The Illusion of Design

By Richard Dawkins

The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings and wagon-wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes, and solar systems).

Mount Rushmore belonged firmly in the second category until the sculptor Gutzon Borglum carved it into the first. Charles Darwin moved in the other direction. He discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics—the laws according to which things “just happen”—could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly refuse to believe it is an illusion. To such people, if a heart (or an eye or a bacterial flagellum) looks designed, that’s proof enough that it is designed.

No wonder Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” was moved to chide himself on reading the Origin of Species: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that.” And Huxley was the least stupid of men.

Charles Darwin discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to mimic deliberate design.

The breathtaking power and reach of Darwin’s idea—extensively documented in the field, as Jonathan Weiner reports in “Evolution in Action”—is matched by its audacious simplicity. You can write it out in a phrase: nonrandom survival of randomly varying hereditary instructions for building embryos. Yet, given the opportunities afforded by deep time, this simple little algorithm generates prodigies of complexity, elegance, and diversity of apparent design. True design, the kind we see in a knapped flint, a jet plane, or a personal computer, turns out to be a manifestation of an entity—the human brain—that itself was never designed, but is an evolved product of Darwin’s mill.

Paradoxically, the extreme simplicity of what the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett called Darwin’s dangerous idea may be its greatest barrier to acceptance. People have a hard time believing that so simple a mechanism could deliver such powerful results.

The arguments of creationists, including those creationists who cloak their pretensions under the politically devious phrase “intelligent-design theory,” repeatedly return to the same big fallacy. Such-and-such looks designed. Therefore it was designed.

Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth.

To pursue my paradox, there is a sense in which the skepticism that often greets Darwin’s idea is a measure of its greatness. Paraphrasing the twentieth-century population geneticist Ronald A. Fisher, natural selection is a mechanism for generating improbability on an enormous scale. Improbable is pretty much a synonym for unbelievable. Any theory that explains the highly improbable is asking to be disbelieved by those who don’t understand it.

Yet the highly improbable does exist in the real world, and it must be explained. Adaptive improbability—complexity—is precisely the problem that any theory of life must solve and that natural selection, uniquely as far as science knows, does solve. In truth, it is intelligent design that is the biggest victim of the argument from improbability. Any entity capable of deliberately designing a living creature, to say nothing of a universe, would have to be hugely complex in its own right.

If, as the maverick astronomer Fred Hoyle mistakenly thought, the spontaneous origin of life is as improbable as a hurricane blowing through a junkyard and having the luck to assemble a Boeing 747, then a divine designer is the ultimate Boeing 747. The designer’s spontaneous origin ex nihilo would have to be even more improbable than the most complex of his alleged creations. Unless, of course, he relied on natural selection to do his work for him! And in that case, one might pardonably wonder (though this is not the place to pursue the question), does he need to exist at all?

The achievement of nonrandom natural selection is to tame chance. By smearing out the luck, breaking down the improbability into a large number of small steps—each one somewhat improbable but not ridiculously so—natural selection ratchets up the improbability.

Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

As the generations unfold, ratcheting takes the cumulative improbability up to levels that—in the absence of the ratcheting—would exceed all sensible credence.

Many people don’t understand such nonrandom cumulative ratcheting. They think natural selection is a theory of chance, so no wonder they don’t believe it! The battle that we biologists face, in our struggle to convince the public and their elected representatives that evolution is a fact, amounts to the battle to convey to them the power of Darwin’s ratchet—the blind watchmaker—to propel lineages up the gentle slopes of Mount Improbable.

The misapplied argument from improbability is not the only one deployed by creationists. They are quite fond of gaps, both literal gaps in the fossil record and gaps in their understanding of what Darwinism is all about. In both cases the (lack of) logic in the argument is the same. They allege a gap or deficiency in the Darwinian account. Then, without even inquiring whether intelligent design suffers from the same deficiency, they award victory to the rival “theory” by default. Such reasoning is no way to do science. But science is precisely not what creation “scientists,” despite the ambitions of their intelligent-design bullyboys, are doing.

In the case of fossils, as Donald R. Prothero documents in “The Fossils Say Yes” [see the print issue], today’s biologists are more fortunate than Darwin was in having access to beautiful series of transitional stages: almost cinematic records of evolutionary changes in action. Not all transitions are so attested, of course—hence the vaunted gaps. Some small animals just don’t fossilize; their phyla are known only from modern specimens: their history is one big gap. The equivalent gaps for any creationist or intelligent-design theory would be the absence of a cinematic record of God’s every move on the morning that he created, for example, the bacterial flagellar motor. Not only is there no such divine videotape: there is a complete absence of evidence of any kind for intelligent design.

Absence of evidence for is not positive evidence against, of course. Positive evidence against evolution could easily be found—if it exists. Fisher’s contemporary and rival J.B.S. Haldane was asked by a Popperian zealot what would falsify evolution. Haldane quipped, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian.” No such fossil has ever been found, of course, despite numerous searches for anachronistic species.

There are other barriers to accepting the truth of Darwinism. Many people cannot bear to think that they are cousins not just of chimpanzees and monkeys, but of tapeworms, spiders, and bacteria. The unpalatability of a proposition, however, has no bearing on its truth. I personally find the idea of cousinship to all living species positively agreeable, but neither my warmth toward it, nor the cringing of a creationist, has the slightest bearing on its truth.

Even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter.

The same could be said of political or moral objections to Darwinism. “Tell children they are nothing more than animals and they will behave like animals.” I do not for a moment accept that the conclusion follows from the premise. But even if it did, once again, a disagreeable consequence cannot undermine the truth of a premise. Some have said that Hitler founded his political philosophy on Darwinism. This is nonsense: doctrines of racial superiority in no way follow from natural selection, properly understood. Nevertheless, a good case can be made that a society run on Darwinian lines would be a very disagreeable society in which to live. But, yet again, the unpleasantness of a proposition has no bearing on its truth.

Huxley, George C. Williams, and other evolutionists have opposed Darwinism as a political and moral doctrine just as passionately as they have advocated its scientific truth. I count myself in that company. Science needs to understand natural selection as a force in nature, the better to oppose it as a normative force in politics. Darwin himself expressed dismay at the callousness of natural selection: “What a book a Devil’s Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!”

In spite of the success and admiration that he earned, and despite his large and loving family, Darwin’s life was not an especially happy one. Troubled about genetic deterioration in general and the possible effects of inbreeding closer to home, as James Moore documents in “Good Breeding,” [see print issue], and tormented by illness and bereavement, as Richard Milner’s interview with the psychiatrist Ralph Colp Jr. shows in “Darwin’s Shrink,” Darwin’s achievements seem all the more. He even found the time to excel as an experimenter, particularly with plants. David Kohn’s and Sheila Ann Dean’s essays (“The Miraculous Season” and “Bee Lines and Worm Burrows” [see print issue]) lead me to think that, even without his major theoretical achievements, Darwin would have won lasting recognition as an experimenter, albeit an experimenter with the style of a gentlemanly amateur, which might not find favor with modern journal referees.

As for his major theoretical achievements, of course, the details of our understanding have moved on since Darwin’s time. That was particularly the case during the synthesis of Darwinism with Mendelian digital genetics. And beyond the synthesis, as Douglas J. Futuyma explains in “On Darwin’s Shoulders,” [see print issue] and Sean B. Carroll details further for the exciting new field of “evo-devo” in “The Origins of Form,” Darwinism proves to be a flourishing population of theories, itself undergoing rapid evolutionary change.

In any developing science there are disagreements. But scientists—and here is what separates real scientists from the pseudoscientists of the school of intelligent design—always know what evidence it would take to change their minds. One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact.

Richard Dawkins, a world-renowned explicator of Darwinian evolution, is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, where he was educated. Dawkins’s popular books about evolution and science include The Selfish Gene (Oxford University Press, 1976), The Blind Watchmaker (W.W. Norton, 1986), Climbing Mount Improbable (W.W. Norton, 1996), and most recently, The Ancestor’s Tale (Houghton Mifflin, 2004), which retells the saga of evolution in a Chaucerian mode.

[cornelis]

the only two options are an infinite regression of causes, or an infinite "causer".

Exactly.

Whether one is more logical, more sensible, more possible, or more likeable and all makes absolutely no never mind as to the fact that in either case, it would be sheer wonder.

Yet the beauty of the infinite causer is that it alone can open a beautiful door: it does not make it impossible to belong to the order of causality that does not lead to death.

[betty boop]

What law is group theory based on?

The point would be: group theory may be doxa, an "opinion."

[betty boop]

...the concept of an unmoved mover is not illogical. Nor is it a matter of faith, unless the unmoved mover has a will you can trust.

Wonderful distinction you note here, cornelis, brilliantly put.

[don asmussen]

Consider that neither you [nor anyone here] can answer the resulting rational question; -- Who designed the Designer's "spontaneous origin"? --
Consider that it is unanswerable..

You claimed that it is rational to assume that where there is a law there is a law-giver, and where there is design there is a designer. -- Where we see mans design, who caused the designer? -- You claim a 'Designer' did it, -- admit it.

cornelis wrote:
Looking for the cause of the uncaused is absurd.

I agree, you are looking for a Designer. --- I am not.
You claim you've found a Designer, not me.

[Alamo-Girl]

We can define an inversion in an entirely hypothetical one dimensional universe.

A one dimensional universe would consist of a point in either space or in time but not both. It takes at least two spatial dimensions to invert.

At a minimum, you would need three dimensions - two of space, one of time - to derive (event) inversion geometry and to have a set of coordinates to invert. Without the time dimension, nothing can emerge or change - all that exists is spatial, static. Without the space dimensions, no thing exists to be inverted.

[hosepipe]

[ Dawkin's got this technique from Marx, though he never gives Marx the credit. The fact is Marx prohibited all questions regarding his system. ]

Quite intuitive.. Wonder if Patrick Henry and (some of) those on his ping list are students of Marx as well... the debate on Scientific Materialism seems to be AVOIDED at all costs by them.. at least the SMART ones.. You and Alamo-Girl have pretty much beaten them like a rented donkey so many times.. they must be "scart"..

[b_sharp]

Not so BB. The first step would be to explain the creation of God (It could be any other designer but we both understand where you are coming from). The claim that he has always been is no better an explanation than the claim universes have always been. The claim he is outside of our universe is simply a 'just so story' that attempts to place him where science can no longer reduce his realm to nothing as it has been slowly doing over the centuries.

If you for some reason require Dawkins to consider where the current laws originate in his naturalistic universe before claiming they are 'unaided' then you are required to explain the origin of your 'higher power', that as implied by your post, you believe to have 'aided' or created the laws of physics.

My step one as an atheist is the same as your step one. BTW your not so subtle attack on atheists was uncalled for.

[cornelis]

In sum, one can reason about cosmology and determine that there was a beginning from void (or null) - and therefore what the first cause existence must be, e.g. transcendent (non-autonomous).

This is correct. one can reason . . . meaning that logic is a possible mode of analysis and understanding. But it does not creat reality. Our decision whether it is one way or another won't change the fact that both can't coexist. In other words, we can't jump from epistemology to reality or make God go away and come back just through reasoning.

This brings us back to a fine sentence that Alamo-Girl just wrote: science has become so large that the investigators pull things out of context just so they can cope but problems arise when they overstate the meaning of their findings..

The world (material and immaterial) is obviously more than what we see or think. I am reminded what Etienne Gilson said about recognizing that the rules change: "I call specifically philosophical," he said, "those problems that arise in science from science, but have no scientific conclusion"

And to shrink to world to one thing or another reminds of Procrustes who used to cut his guest's legs to size so that they fit the bed.

[chronic_loser]

A quick word about rational proofs and then I have to go away.

One of the really good things to come from the collapse of rationalism is the mortal blow to the belief that there is such a thing as "objective data" available to us critters. Not only do we "change" the data when we process it simply by classifying it and storing it, we also selectively process data, sometimes deliberately, sometimes innocently.

The bible goea a bit further than this and makes a very audacious statement that our cosmic rebellion affects the very processing of data by our (pick one or more:) minds/souls/psyche/brains/etc. It claims that the truth of the Creator is "plain" from creation and that men "hold"(the gk word really means "to push back, or suppress") that truth in unrighteousness. The "noetic effects of sin" (theoological term --> noos is gk for "mind") does not mean that a person who is in rebellion against God can't derive pi past 3 digits. It DOES mean that as we filter and process the data, we have a deep desire and predilection to construct the data in a way that allows us to escape God. You see a certain amount of this in any debate, as people's egos cause them to make logical errors. It just needs to be on the table that the claim is that our psyches are hard wired to reject "evidence" that is "plain." That is wny believers keep coming back to "evidence for a creator." It is obvious to us, and sometimes we look at the mark of our Creator and we are moved to worship......, and when we are free of the stupid shit like wanting just to win an argument for our own ego, we want you to worship, too.

I am not trying to be offensive in saying all the above. Just trying to help you understand why we sometimes say what we do.

[Alamo-Girl]

Er, the point we have raised which I suspect you are missing (or refuse to accept) - is that there must be a cause of physical causation.

There is no physical causation in the void.

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Thank you for your encouragements!

[hosepipe]

[ A one dimensional universe would consist of a point in either space or in time but not both. It takes at least two spatial dimensions to invert. ]

How can any other than 3 dimensions be proven as any other than a mental construct.?.. I see no way.. There is no evidence that there can be a 1st or 2nd dimension except in our heads.. they don't exist in reality, the one I SEE, that is.. Seems to me there is only ONE dimension, composed of several parts.. maybe even including time.. because we do have time in the 3rd dimension if it can be called that.. Looks to me like there is only one dimension.. I could be into my own 2nd reality but I don't think so.. I wouldnt even ask this/these questions to any other than you two.. Be gentle and dumb the "answer" down some.. for I am a poor fisherman.. d;-)...

[cornelis]

Take care here. A designer may have a prior cause. I am a designer. The uncaused has no cause. I am not uncaused.

[Right Wing Professor]

A one dimensional universe would consist of a point in either space or in time but not both. It takes at least two spatial dimensions to invert.

A one dimensional universe would be a line.

1D -> line

2D -> plane

3D -> volume

[Doctor Stochastic]

That's good evidence for keeping churches and government separate.

[Right Wing Professor]

The point would be: group theory may be doxa, an "opinion."

That would imply there's an alternative opinion, then?

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you oh so very much for your excellent post and encouragements!

In other words, we can't jump from epistemology to reality or make God go away and come back just through reasoning.

Indeed. I certainly wouldn't want to do so!

The world (material and immaterial) is obviously more than what we see or think...

So very true. Sigh... If only people would remember that.

[Doctor Stochastic]

What law is group theory based on?

If no one answers, I will do so next year.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It takes at least two spatial dimensions to invert.

No. One is sufficient.

[RightWhale]

There are four dimensions: time, space, substance, and individuality. These are all illusory.