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.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Material Causes need not be deterministic; Effective Causes have generally been held to be. Complete knowledge of a state may not tell one which subsequent event will take place (nor when, nor if.)

[b_sharp]

"I gather that b_sharp has illusions about human intellectual progress "progessively" displacing God -- on whose truth human intellectual progress has ever depended -- to the purpose of finally eradicating God in the end. [As if a person, or all of humanity collectively working together towards that purpose, could ever do that.]

If you would reread my post you will see I was referring to the idea of God and the idea of God's influence in the natural world. You will also see I never claimed science is intentionally shrinking that idea. Science explores those areas where our knowledge is incomplete and current tools allow us to gather information. The side effect of that investigation is that the idea of God is shrinking, not just in the minds of atheists but in the minds of theists. That is why theists move the ideal location of God further and further from where humans tread. If God exists, unless you conflate the idea of God in the minds of humans with the separate independent existence of God, the shrinking 'idea' will have no affect on the being.

"It has been observed (P. J. Raju, 1972) that we live in a "mysterious" universe; yet Raju insists the mystery is a rational one, not a "superstitious" one.

Who really cares?

"And Plato and Aristotle essentially had the same observation, in common.

Big deal. I'm sure a philosopher of some import could be found to back pretty much any idea you could come up with.

"I think if people could just get used to that idea, the enterprise of science would really prosper.

Science is prospering quite well using the methodology that has been developed over the last few centuries. Only those that fear what science may find want its methodology changed.

"Just between you and me, where does b_sharp think logic (among other things) came from to begin with?

Just between you and me, do you really think everything you do not know the origin of, has to have been created by a God? Logic is a construct derived from our use of language and observation of the world around us. Even logic isn't universal. Take for example the idea that A != !A. The idea that something can not be 'A' and 'not A' at the same time does not apply to quantum physics where photons, for instance, can be a 'particle' and at the same time be 'not a particle' but a wave.

[Alamo-Girl]

IMHO, the only solution is to take a cue from Ayn Rand, taking "Existence Exists" as an axiom and having done with it.

That is precisely what an atheist must do to self-justify his own spiritual temper tantrum and, frankly, I can think of nothing more tragic.

Going back to your original post at 683, I might as well make one more objection. You said:

Occam's Razor leads us to conclude that all subatomic decays have a random, causeless element, somewhere.

I assert that we cannot say something is random in the system without knowing what the system "is". In this case, we do not yet know what the space/time system "is".

[js1138]

You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything. Randomness can be discerned in a phenomenon without knowing everything.

[Liberal Classic]

Clinton couldn't have said it better.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Self-consistency is certainly desirable, but science lives continuously with the unexplained and with apparent contradictions.

Deeper still, science attempts to be consistent with the observed universe. If the universe is self-contradictory, so will science be. We tend to assume that the universe is internally consistent, but I highly doubt that such a thing is provable.

[js1138]

The universe will appear self-contradictory if we impose assumptions and axiomatic reasoning of our perception of it. I suspect that science is a prolonged session of attitude adjustment.

[Alamo-Girl]

You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything.

Actually, I would say that it will never happen because my understanding of "reality" is "God's will and unknowable in its fullness."

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Thanks for the chuckle!

[hosepipe]

[ You are going to have to wait a long time in order to know the full state of everything. Randomness can be discerned in a phenomenon without knowing everything. ]

So then, not knowing the full exent of a system, in all its aspects, labeling random to some aspect of it is science then?.. and not philosophy.?. like labeling an unknown in math as X?.. and assuming X to be random occurrance, or at least highly variable.?.

[Alamo-Girl]

So then, not knowing the full exent of a system, in all its aspects, labeling random to some aspect of it is science then?.. and not philosophy.?. like labeling an unknown in math as X?.. and assuming X to be random occurrance, or at least highly variable.?.

Indeed. This goes back to betty boop's original objection to Dawkins' approach (at least one of them) - namely, that he never starts at the beginning, he proceeds from step n.

It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom.

I wonder how few who take existence as an axiom are willing to take "life" as an axiom - or "soul, spirit, mind or consciousness" as an axiom.

[hosepipe]

[ It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom. ]

True.. makes me think that a smart honest atheist would/should at least say;
"If there is no God, well, there ought to be one"..
and inventing one would/should be mandatory to proper human progessive education..
Starting with a God concept and educating yourself out of it.. and thats the way it SHOULD BE..

Yeah.. a spiritual temper tantrum seems to be the diagnosis.. Maybe an atheist is just a spoiled intellectual brat.. i.e. They want what they want and thats all it is too it.. They want there to be no God.. And by GOD thats all there is to it.. LoL..

[Liberal Classic]

:)

[PatrickHenry]

It is interesting to know what people take as axioms. An atheist must take "existence" as an axiom. I wonder how few who take existence as an axiom are willing to take "life" as an axiom - or "soul, spirit, mind or consciousness" as an axiom.

Gotta pin definitions down very carefully, or the discussion will go nowhere. Life isn't an axiom, because existence without life is certainly possible. Roughly speaking, a philosophical axiom (I'm not speaking of math, which has its own way of looking at things) is a proposition that is so fundamental that it can't be developed from simpler propositions, and without which no thinking can be accomplished. This website has some useful discussion: Axiom.

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOLOL! What a delightful way to envision it!

[Physicist]

I assert that we cannot say something is random in the system without knowing what the system "is".

Fair enough. But experiments reveal something about what the system is NOT. It is NOT deterministically causal; any such system is constrained to respect Bell's Inequality, which the universe sometimes does not. There are also valid interpretations that involve information propagating backwards in time, and the like.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your insights and that engaging link!

Indeed, we do need to define what we mean by axiom if we wish to discuss it further. Here's a comparison from Wikipedia:

In epistemology, an axiom is a self-evident truth upon which other knowledge must rest, from which other knowledge is built up. Not all epistemologists agree that any axioms, understood in that sense, exist.

In mathematics, an axiom is not necessarily a self-evident truth but rather, a formal logical expression used in a deduction to yield further results. Mathematics distinguishes two types of axioms: logical axioms and non-logical axioms.

WRT our discussion of existence, life, soul, etc. - I am intending the epistemological definition.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply and acceptance! I of course agree with you that we can speak to what the system (in this case, space/time) is not - but, not yet, what it fully "is".

[Physicist]

That is precisely what an atheist must do to self-justify his own spiritual temper tantrum and, frankly, I can think of nothing more tragic.

It's what a theist must do to justify his own spiritual syrupy goodness. "God exists!" they say. I'm sorry...God what? Yeah, I thought as much. God can't exist unless existence exists. "Why is there God and not just nothing" is no deeper a question than "why is there something and not just nothing".

[aNYCguy]

Well, that's exactly right, aNYCguy. But you still haven't told me what, on your view, is specifically "wrong" with this understanding/formulation.

You create out of whole cloth an axiomatic assumption -- some form of "everything which exists must be priorly caused to exist by something else," itself a very shaky assumption -- then promptly violate it when you've reached the place in the causal chain which suits your aesthetic preference. I do not see this as a good argument.

Playing with semantics by defining "The Universe" as something other than "The set of things which exist" does not shore up the argument, in my mind, nor does declaring a particular domain of existence (the domain which contains your preferred first cause) to be somehow immune to logic in a logical argument.

So here's a list of what I see as flawed:

1. The causal axiom is far from self-evident. This is not strictly "wrong," it being an assumption, but you seem unduly confident that it corresponds to reality.

2. Either the causal axiom applies to everything which exists, or it does not. If it does, you have a recursive chain. Again, this conclusion would not be wrong, but you seem to have illicitly eliminated it from the possibilities unless you've clarified in later posts.

3. If the causal axiom does not apply to everything which exists, the argument is a non-starter. The energy in the universe does not need something separate to have created it.

4. If you divide the set of things which exist into two domains, to one of which the axiom applies and one not, You can call the things in the inapplicable domain "God," as long as you acknowledge that "God" may very well be a long-destroyed singularity, and that there's really no particular reason why "God" would have any attributes you'd like it to, not to mention that the entire argument is seriously ad hoc by this point.