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.

[chronic_loser]

Is this an attempt to prove evolution is anti-christian?

It is a piss poor job if it is, wouldn't you say?

[Right Wing Professor]

I guess that's a question an atheist simply refuses to ask.

We ask. You don't. You think you know the answer.

Take the law of conservation of charge: we've been asking since Emmy Noether where it comes from. And it appears it's not a 'law given by a law-giver', it's a consequence of symmetry.

[b_sharp]

"It's a logical argument.

If so, put it into syllogistic form for me.

A person who, unprompted, publicly boasts about serial fornication is most likely someone who regards fornication lightly. Most men who sleep around do so for pleasure, and regard their partners as conquests. I have no reason to suspect otherwise with Mr. Ruse.

Did he boast about serial fornication or that he's had a number (greater than one) of relationships? What exactly is serial fornication? How do you know he wasn't taken advantage of by the females in these relationships? How do you know it wasn't just mutual?

Again, how does this bear on the truth value of his philosophy?

"Therefore, his ability to dispassionatley judge between the theories of materialistic evolution and intelligent design as explanations for human origins is unlikely, since affirmation of ID entails acknowledgement of a Designer of both physical and moral laws, the latter of which would be repugnant to a whore"

Except that ID supposedly can be viewed without a supernatural designer - such as a group of aliens. I'm sure that if Ruse felt ID was scientific he could easily embrace it in that form.

[furball4paws]

Damn! I'm going to have to start charging.

[b_sharp]

Certainty in science does not mean without question; it is a probability measure of accuracy.

Show some science behind these claims of miracles.

[microgood]

And the problem is?

Not sure in his case. Could be inherited or learned behavior.

(I'd consider 'wicked', but only since I've been on Free Republic)

And only lately?

[chronic_loser]

In fact, true natural science is done within a mechanistic, materialistic framework. That's the working hypothesis of the scientific method.

Actually, that is a myth. All you have done is repeat the philosophical presuppositions of most scientists today. The scientific method has NOTHING to do with a mechanistic universe, or a a model of the universe steeped in the belief that it is imbued with a spiritual dimension. The fact is, that rationalism and empiricism have so captured the field of philosophical thought that the idea of doing science within the worldview of Keppler, Faraday, Newton, Kelvin and others just stumps modern men of science. They naively assume that materialistic determinism is the result of a studious application of Occam's razor and that the assumption of empiricism as a starting point is "the definition of science." That is an arbitrary starting point, cannot justify itself, and doesn't square with science proper nor the history of science.

[Stultis]

Darwin's defection from Xty had nothing to do with HMS Beagle or Origin. He fled orthodox Xty long before he first said "hmmmmmm" over finch beaks.

Your first sentence is (IMHO and that of most scholars) correct; but your second sentence, regarding the timing, is way wrong.

Although probably a gradual process, most scholars (and in accordance with my own personal opinion) attach Darwin's final abandonment of Christianity to the death of his daughter Annie in 1851. This was long, at least a decade, after his views on evolution were fully formed.

If you have evidence for an earlier date I'm happy to hear it. But I know enough to be aware that there is no evidence whatsoever for a date as early as you suggest, i.e. "long before" (or even round about) 1836-38 when Darwin's most intense early speculation about species occured.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

Darwin declined to become a minister because he didn't to agree with all of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion.
http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html

He was still devout though at this time.

[chronic_loser]

Although probably a gradual process,

I am not a "Darwin Historian" but I do remember him referencing leaving divinity school because he could not brook some of the doctrines of orthodox Christianity. Since I don't want to misquote, I won't say for certain, but I think it had to do with the doctrine of eternal punishment. I do remember the defection, though. As far as the "gradual" defection goes, I would expect that, as well. I see no divergence in what we are saying.

[Rudder]

An interesting aside on this topic of double negatives:

The cerebral cortex is largely inhibitory in that it sends inhibitory signals to areas, cortical and subcortical, that are not to operate at any given time. But for those areas that are to operate it sends a disinhibitory, or double inhibitory (negative) signal. So no means no and no no means yes.

[rootkidslim]

I stopped counting when I was in my mid-thirties, but by then there were over a hundred women with whom I had sex. I'm no Wilt Chamberlain, but I'm sure it's over three hundred now. Does that make me a bad person, or bring doubt on my reason? I wouldn't have missed any one of them, no regrets, no apologies to you or anyone else! They are all wonderful memories.

[snarks_when_bored]

We'll have to discuss the philosophical bases of the scientific method at another time. But, as a rule of thumb, it's probably best to allow scientists to determine what it is they're doing...after all, they're doing it. Philosophers will always kibbitz, but it's just kibbitzing.

[furball4paws]

" They have to form in such a way with the proper helper enzymes so that they fold into the correct shapes, otherwise they are usless or even harmful."

This is factually more than stretched. While there are some proteins that require chaperones to keep them from folding incorrectly during translation, most will form the correct three dimensional structure on their own without help, especially if they are the water soluble varieties with no diffusible cofactors.

[b_sharp]

"But we do know the chemical processes required

We know that chemical processes are necessary. We do not know the specific chemicals needed, the specific chemicals available, the energy available, the availability of pre-built amino acids, even the necessity of amino acids. In short we know very little about the initial conditions. We do not even know if the initial pre-life used DNA, RNA or some other molecule.

"and we know the chemicals required by life require life.

We do not know this. We know that the complex life extant today needs to come from pre-existing life, but this does not apply to pre-life, whatever form it may take.

"There's a reason smart evolutionists whistle loudly and proclaim the theory doesn't talk about origins of life.

The reason we separate abiogenesis from evolutionary mechanisms is because mechanisms such as natural selection, sexual selection, even to a certain extent drift, require variation during replication. Abiogenesis may very well have provided the variation necessary for these mechanisms but that will remain unknown until we come up with a more mature theory of the origin of life. Darwin's book was the 'Origin of Species' not the Origin of Life for a reason. The origin of species (as defined by science) can be both observed and extrapolated from extinct and extant species. Nothing can be observed or extrapolated 'yet' from abiogenesis. Abiogenesis as a science is in its infancy

"The hard, cold, impenetrable wall of physics stands guard there and none may pass.

I'm sure that you can substantiate this claim with more than opinion.

[Quark2005]

I stopped counting when I was in my mid-thirties, but by then there were over a hundred women with whom I had sex. I'm no Wilt Chamberlain, but I'm sure it's over three hundred now. Does that make me a bad person, or bring doubt on my reason?

No, but it does make one think you could afford to raise your standards. :-)

[snarks_when_bored]

bb, I think Dawkins means that the changes wrought over deep time by natural actions can produce structures that appear to be designed. I wouldn't put too much weight on the word 'mimcry'. But that's just my take...

By the way, there are studies which address the question of the origin of physical laws. I'm going to have to withdraw from this discussion for now, but if I can find the studies later, I'll post links.

Best regards...

[b_sharp]

"Massive things pull things towards them? Inverse square law? Something like that"

Ooops.

[b_sharp]

Apparently you do not have a grasp of evolution"

"I guess not. 12 years of public school down the drain!

All they teach is evolution?

[furball4paws]

"All they teach is evolution?"

From the discussions around here, you might think that.