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]

.... but by then there were over a hundred women with whom I had sex Does that make me a bad person,

I guess that all depends on whose standard we are using. I personally had rather talk with a lothario who will tell me they disagree with me but treat me with respect than a religious person whose every statement drips with disdain for me becaue I fail some test of his. I am a fervent Christian, by the way.

Of course, there is also the distinction between being a "bad" person and being an enjoyable person. I have known many people whose moral standards were quite different than mine, in fact, I found their standards quite frightening, who I found utterly delightful to be around, and there are people whose views I consider "bad" who are nevertheless agreeable enough in the way they present them.

Then again, sometimes you will find someone like Dawkins who manages to be both utterly reprehensible in his personal life (a lab tech of my acquaintance who once worked for him found him an absolutely ruthless, dishonest, hateful boor), hatefully vicious in his interaction with those with whom he disagrees, and just plain wicked in his hatred of religion itself. I believe that with Dawkins we have hit the trifecta.

[b_sharp]

"I am aware that Dawkins says that evolution is a fact in the paper cited at the top of this exchange. Are you aware of that? Or shall we decide that Dr. Dawkins is not speaking as a scientist when he pens an introduction to an evolution textbook for the purported instruction of collegiate heads full of mush? That must be quite convenient.

Evolution is a fact. It is observable in extant species, and can be logically extrapolated from fossil evidence and current DNA studies. The explanation for these observations is a theory. It is called the Theory of Evolution. One is an observation, the other an explanation, or a model if you prefer.

"And common sense always looks rambling to those who lack it.

You assume common sense is always valid, appropriate and true.

[Stultis]

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.

Much later in his life Darwin would refer to this as, IIRC, "a damnable doctrine". But as for this early period I'm absolutely certain that your recall is faulty.

Darwin never "left" divinity school in the sense of abandoning it. At the time he left on the Beagle, and throughout the journey, he maintained every expectation that he would take up orders and become an Anglican cleric on his return. It was often referred to in his correspondence, even if the focus was more on the leisure that a quiet pastorate would afford for pursuing private natural history studies than on the prospect of saving souls!

What happened was that Darwin, on returning from his voyage, immediately became fully immersed in analyzing, sorting and/or distributing his numerous specimens, writing up his findings, etc, and the issue of entering the church simply became irrelevant. Darwin found that his assiduous collecting, letters, and his geological reports had already developed for him a nascent but respectable scientific reputation, and that he was able to manage his stipend from his father sufficiently well (Darwin was an excellent manager of money) to operate as a gentleman scientist without an income or rectorage from the church.

[microgood]

I wouldn't care to sign my name to every statement that Richard Dawkins has ever made.

He might actually have some good points if you could get past his personality. He seems to rile even his own colleagues.

[rootkidslim]

That's the great thing about being a guy... there are no consequences if you are careful, so you don't need high standards. (that is not to say I didn't hit a high note on occasion) Evolutionary psychology dictates a different strategy for women. The funny thing is that I consider myself deprived. I know guys who've done much better with the ladies, if you believe their stories.

[chronic_loser]

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.

As a scientist, am I discovering how God rules his universe, or am I determining the behavior of this object which is inanimate and has no reference point outside itself? Both answers permit me to use the scientific method (indeed,the philosophical substrate of Xty launched modern science itself), but the assumptions I draw about the nature of the universe I am in are vastly different.

That is the problem I have with Dawkins. Both "starting" points are equally valid in science proper. There is NO intrinsic reason why an empirical basis should be the starting point for scientific endeavor, much less the mewling nonsense that one viewpoint is not science and is in fact anti-scientific.

(Actually, I have been out of the lab for well over 15 years, so it is technically not correct to predicate my first sentence with "As a scientist.")

[microgood]

Evolution is a fact. It is observable in extant species, and can be logically extrapolated from fossil evidence and current DNA studies.

You are wrong. And no matter how many times you say it, it will still be wrong. Evolution never has been, and never will be a fact.

[Stultis]

Darwin declined to become a minister because he didn't to agree with all of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion.

Wrong. Darwin never at any point affirmatively "declined to become a minister". The issue was simply dropped without looking back when Darwin returned from his voyage. (See my previous message.)

Darwin had to explicity agree to the 39 Articles, and did, simply to be admitted to Cambridge in the first place.

[b_sharp]

"Yes. The former reflects a universally recognized moral laws (i.e., theft is wrong). The fact that all people recognize the natural moral law as binding on all people at all times indicates the existence of a timeless moral authority, since only an authority can bind someone to a law.

Theft is only considered wrong in cultures that have the concept of ownership. It is hardly universal.

In the cases where there is a putative universally held 'human' law, practicality, and shared genes, are a more compelling explanation than some 'timeless moral authority'.

"The laws of grammar correspond to universally recognized first principles of reason, such as the law of non-contradiction. Only minds can reason, so the source of eternal principles of reason must be an eternal mind.

Is that why grammar is different in different language groups and changes over time?

Try programming in a number of different computer languages to see how liquid grammar and the representation of logic can be.

This is another case of anthropomorphization.

[b_sharp]

Which creationist source did you get this from?

[sauron]

Purity of heart and wisdom go hand in hand. Wouldn't it be in the interest of someone who treats human beings as disposable objects of pleasure to support a philosophy that reduces human beings to mere physical processes?

Such wonderfully composed clarity of thought.

[b_sharp]

"Do you know for a fact that there is no giver to the laws of physics or chemistry

Do you know that the lack of argument against is not an argument for?

[Stultis]

Here's Darwin's discussion from his Autobiography of how he accepted the "Creed" before entering Cambridge:

After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Immediately following this Darwin affirms that there was never an explicit decision against entering the clergy, but that it was simply given up:

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formerly given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the "Beagle" as naturalist.

[chronic_loser]

Darwin had to explicity agree to the 39 Articles, and did, simply to be admitted to Cambridge in the first place

His quote on his views while on the HMS Beagle (from his autobiography): " But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. The question then continually rose, before my mind and would not be banished,--is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindoos, he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu, Siva, &c., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me utterly incredible"

If that is "orthodox," then I am a pink gerbil.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Darwin had to explicity agree to the 39 Articles, and did, simply to be admitted to Cambridge in the first place."

You're right of course, he did have to sign them to be admitted. It was my impression though that part of the reason he never became a minister was because he did not agree with all the 39 Articles. He could have become the cleric of a little parsonage and still maintained an active pursuit of natural history. In fact, that was the norm.

I'll have to look up my Darwin biographies to check my claim though. It's been a while since I have read them.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"" But I had gradually come by this time, i.e. 1836 to 1839"

He came back from the Beagle voyage on October 2, 1836. The views you quoted were from AFTER his return.

[Right Wing Professor]

As a scientist, am I discovering how God rules his universe, or am I determining the behavior of this object which is inanimate and has no reference point outside itself... Both "starting" points are equally valid in science proper.

The first starting point is scientific only if it comes with no consequences (God would have/would not have done X). And if it comes with no consequences, then it's a somewhat pointless assumption, isn't it? It's the ultimate violation of Occam's razor: assuming an entity that makes no difference at all.

[b_sharp]

"The thought occurs to me, snarks, that Dawkins never accounts for the origins of the "unaided" laws of physics. I guess that's a question an atheist simply refuses to ask.

It is asked all the time. However at this point we simply do not know. You'll have to talk to the BB theorists and the Multiverse theorists to answer that one.

Our current inability to explain it is hardly an argument *for* ID. Or is there a specific date we need to know everything by?

"He's happy enough to start, not from the beginning, but from Step 2....

As do creationists.

[chronic_loser]

It seems that a life of relative ease and freedom to do other stuff that interested you was available to one who was a "minister." Hmmmm. Some things don't change. Some of the sorriest pieces of shit I have ever known have been small town preachers. They aren't paid much (they aren't worth much!) and no one bugs them, and they just coast.

I knew of a guy who kept an inner tube in the back of his car with his fishing rod. When he passed a likely looking pond, he would just pull out the tube and the tackle box and fish the afternoon away. His "sermon preparation" consisted of figuring out what he would say on the way up to the pulpit on Sunday a.m. Didn't have much to say, but at least he didn't take long to say it. His "job for the week" was over in 15 mins, 12 if he lost his train of thought.

Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

[chronic_loser]

actually, assuming the Christian God is rife with the very assumptions that make science possible...., uniformity of matter, and the predictability/consistency of His activity with regard to laws of behavior.