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.

[Dimensio]

Uh huh. You're doing the DU now.

I went back and looked at my own statement. I said "many". I specifically chose the word "many" because I am aware that my statement does not apply to "all" creationists. Had I intended for my statement to refer to all creationists I would have worded it such. But, because you are amongst the "many" you have decided to deliberately lie about my statement because facts and reality are anathema to you. Honestly, I'm not surprised; this isn't the first time where a creationist has dishonestly claimed that I intended a statement that I specifically worded as non-universal is in fact a "blanket" claim.

Perhaps you should debate like a man, rather than a coward.

I wasn't aware that it was an act of cowardice to point out that you are lying about my statement. Then again, "many" creationists seem to have different definitions for "lying" and "coward" than everyone else.

[r9etb]

So people who deliberately lie repeatedly, even when caught out in their lies, are not wicked? People who, when the false premises of their arguments are exposed, engage in personal attacks against those who exposed the false premises are not wicked?

Oh, I see.... Because they refuse to agree with you, they're "wicked." Perhaps, however, the problem is that your logic is not as flawless as you perceive it to be. Or perhaps your debate opponents are merely too stupid to understand the brilliance of your posts, and too stuck on the supposed brilliance of their own. In neither case does their failure to agree with you count as "lying."

Your accusations of "wickedness" speak more about your own arrogance, than anything else.

[Dimensio]

Honestly, I'm not surprised; this isn't the first time where a creationist has dishonestly claimed that I intended a statement that I specifically worded as non-universal is in fact a "blanket" claim.

Now that's just poorly phrased. "...this isn't the first time where a creationist has dishonestly claimed that I intended a statement specifically worded as non-universal as a "blanket" claim."

That's a more grammatically coherent way of putting it.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your replies!

Perhaps I'm being dim, but it seems to me that an inverse needs nothing more than a concept of "directionality" -- a way to go from here to there, and a way to get back to the starting point. If your universe is a line, wouldn't "ahead" and "behind" satisfy the requirements for a 1-D inverse?

That is the point, r9etb! "Ahead" and "behind" are constructs usually "in" time - timeline, worldline, arrow of time, line, etc.

In this single dimension universe there is no direction, no time passing, no traveler, no North, no South. The entire universe is a single dimension with no time dimension and no other spatial dimension.

All that you have in a single dimension universe is the line itself: static, stationary. Nothing can happen to the line without time passing. And there is no time. Thus the line itself cannot be inverted and a point on the line cannot be swapped with another point.

And even if you had a time dimension so that the line or a point on the line could invert - it would still lack a direction absent a second spatial dimension, e.g. map/template/zero/anchor point somewhere on the line. IOW, the observer is the line.

Of course, the "creator" of this single spatial dimension universe (in this case, RWP) - could invert points on the line because he would be both the observer and the context of it and would not be spatially or temporally limited by the universe he created. But the universe could not do it.

Anyway, that's my "two cents"...

[hosepipe]

[ It's a real struggle working through ideas like this, hosepipe. I am deeply interested in your thoughts regarding the matter. You mention a "spiritual dimension" -- which I imagine is effectively timeless -- being out of time in the sense of sequence, and well beyond the concept of time in the sense of context or field.... Your thoughts??? ]

Well... in my youth I consided things somewhat like you are doin here.. Deep considerations too.. then burn out, was enlivened, burn out again.. on like that.. I'm not saying I have finally arrived to anything like that..

The thought crossed my mind that to an eternal being time was not really that important, but timing is always important.. Time is very important to creatures that can DIE though.. and; WILL I live forever, "somewhere". Am I eternal like the bible says I am.. i.e. heaven, lake of fire.. Well if I am, I should start acting like that.. like I am eternal.. And if I am eternal what happens to "me" when my body dies.. What then, will be the physics and reality I live in then.. The bible dont say much about heaven or hell.. well some, but not much.. Thats a bit of the history that got me embracing this idea(s)..

Modern science progresses as if there is no such thing as a spirit.. When if there is such a thing.. God; your spirit, mine.. then thats what is all important.. More important than energy vs matter, gravity, space, time and any other continuum..

SO; I says, to myself.. Why not have it all.. all thats present in this dimension(continuum) and as much of the Spiritual Continuum (if there is one) as I can muster.. Greedy?, probably.. but the Spiritual Dimensional does make some sense.. Many things I have experienced that tell me there is a Spiritual Dimension as the wind shows me about Air.. As life shows me about dead things, as comedy teaches me about logic, as darkness instructs about light..

What IF; human life is a test.. a test to qualify for a far greater dominion, than dominion over the earth.. A test to qualify for certain humans to take dominion of the this Universe.. basically a spiritual test.. a test of spirits..

Anyway back to the subject.. In my life there are two intelligent lifeforms.. humans and spirits.. I am lobbying for a dimension for spirits as their natural and normal abode.. and that the 3rd dimension is not that.. but merely a test ground to limit the error they can commit.. So you see I am serious in these questions, very serious.. for there may be something I have overlooked.. You can also see that there are scant places where this could be even discussed..

[hosepipe]

[ All change is motion. I can think of no change that is not motion, but I am doubtless unaware of all possibilities. Perhaps you can present an example of change that does not involve motion. ]

Is thinking motion.?.

[RightWhale]

Yeah, that is the first example the cartesians give.

[Dimensio]

Because they refuse to agree with you, they're "wicked."

No. Because they claim that Wayne Carley said "to teach evolution is teaching religion" when he really said "teaching intelligent design is teaching religion". Because they claim that Antony Flew "rejected" evolution in response to an article that specifically states that he accepts it, and then later denying making any statement about Antony Flew in the first place, even when their original comment on the matter can be directly linked. Because they state that "frauds" amongst the evidence for evolution were exposed by "non-evo" scientists, then refusing to provide references and later denying ever making the claim in the first place. Because they claim that I am incompetent when I am unable to download a video file that they referenced because they provided a broken link. And earlier, when I accidentally provided a bronken link, the same hypocrite creationist claimed that I had "fabricated" my claim, with no apology after I provided a corrected link. When a creationist incorrectly states the Second Law of Thermodynamics and, when the error is pointed out, starts ranting and raving about secularism. When a creationist tells me that "Sorry to break it to you but you and Hiter have the same ideas." not because of any political or social views that I expressed but simply because I happen to accept the theory of evolution.

That is the basis of my claim of "wickedness". Your assertion that it is nothing but "disagreement" that leads to my charge is laughable. Do you see me calling Alamo Girl or betty boop "wicked"?

[PatrickHenry]

All that you have in a single dimension universe is the line itself: static, stationary. Nothing can happen to the line without time passing. And there is no time. Thus the line itself cannot be inverted and a point on the line cannot be swapped with another point.

Your one-dimensional universe could consist of a point which is moving in a line. Then you'd have motion (and I suppose you'd have time as well, unless you rule that out as another dimension). If the point reversed direction and went backwards, along the same line, you'd have a reversal. Still all in one dimension.

[Right Wing Professor]

All that you have in a single dimension universe is the line itself: static, stationary. Nothing can happen to the line without time passing. And there is no time. Thus the line itself cannot be inverted and a point on the line cannot be swapped with another point.

Who said anything about time passing? Where is time in the inversion operation I x -> - x? Could you answer the question, please, and leave out the irrelevancy?

[betty boop]

I can think of no change that is not motion, but I am doubtless unaware of all possibilities. Perhaps you can present an example of change that does not involve motion.

How about: a change of heart??? a new insight??? experiences in self-reflective consciousness??? Do "movements of the soul" actually involve movement? In what sort of temporal frame do such movements occur?

Thanks for writing, RW!

[RightWhale]

In what sort of temporal frame do such movements occur?

Time is an illusion. There is a temporal frame only in our formulas in physics. In thermo it is hard to find time at all.

Speaking as a cartesian: as to the relation between the thought and the physical structure, there are countless CAT scan images and other images that show modification of neural structure with thought, and especially in the shape of the electrical field as the state varies. Even the heart has such variation. Change in shape is motion. The chemicals that flow between neurons are moving, no question about that, is there? When motion stops, thought stops, although motion never stops completely except at absolute zero, which is just as unreachable as is the discontinuity of the Big Bang.

[hosepipe]

[ Yeah, that is the first example the cartesians give. ]

Got directions from a Mexican Cartesian once on how to get to Laredo..

[betty boop]

Of course, the "creator" of this single spatial dimension universe (in this case, RWP) - could invert points on the line because he would be both the observer and the context of it and would not be spatially or temporally limited by the universe he created. But the universe could not do it.

Brilliant analysis, Alamo-Girl! What RWP has done is to offer himself as an example or "type" of the creator god (who is both observer and context) who can do that if he so wills it, and really make a universe that neither spatially nor temporally constrains or limits him. (Whatta mensch! RWP, I mean -- not God.)

Thank you ever so much for your marvelous essay/post!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you both for your replies! I can answer both of you with the same post, so in the interest of economy:

A point moving on a line is an event. Every event occurs "in" time. Time passes as a point moves from here to there.

Were it not for time, events would not occur. That is an unequivocal statement.

Inversion is an event. If there is no time in RWP's single dimension universe, an inversion will not occur.

Time is geometric, a dimension.

[Alamo-Girl]

And thank you oh so very much for putting the observation in its proper context!!!

[RightWhale]

Time is geometric

Time is usually so interpreted. We have to make a spatial model out of it in order to picture it, but that is not necessarily the nature of time. In physics there is a dimension in the equations that we call time, but it is nothing more than another spatial dimension used to facilitate calculation. Another dimension in physics is mass, another is energy, although these can be related as two aspects of the same thing neither mass nor energy. Same thing going on, we are trying to force everything into our equations whether they fit properly or not.

[ml1954]

Were it not for time, events would not occur. That is an unequivocal statement.

Or if it weren't for events, time would not occur.

[PatrickHenry]

A point moving on a line is an event. Every event occurs "in" time. Time passes as a point moves from here to there.

Actually, if the only thing in the universe were a point, there's no way to know if it's moving, even if we try to define its motion as occurring in a one-dimensional direction. So we can rule out time. I guess we can rule out all dimensions for such a limited universe.

[betty boop]

Modern science progresses as if there is no such thing as a spirit.. When if there is such a thing.. God; your spirit, mine.. then thats what is all important.. More important than energy vs matter, gravity, space, time and any other continuum..

I totally agree, hosepipe. But then, it seems to me the best thing science can do re: Spirit is just hold its silence; for it sure can't do anything more, given its method. Still we both know that there are some scientists -- the metaphysical naturalists or scientific materialists -- around these days who deny Spirit outright. But I think they're just whistling past the graveyard, in the dark, myself.

I think even as mortals we are already spirit, plus a body -- "psyche in soma." Bodies are subject to spacetime; spirit has a transcendent extension into a beyond that transcends the physical universe; that is, transcends the spatiotemporal order in which we apparently exist.

There is life, and there is existence. There is being and there is becoming. There is eternity and there is finitude; there is mortality and immortality. Man's experience unfolds in between both "sides" of the seeming duality....

You wrote: "The thought crossed my mind that to an eternal being time was not really that important, but timing is always important." What a lovely thought! Hopefully, our extension in timelessness, in eternity, is what will help us with our mortal "timing problems." We only have the "time of our existence" to get such matters right. And then we get to reap what we have sown....

Yours is a most fascinating speculation. I can't say it's wrong, dear hosepipe. And I'll be thinking it over some more!