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.

[b_sharp]

1) I find him obnoxious, condescending, arrogant, and intolerable.

Yes he can be.

2) I realize that this is not a substantive review of the article to say that I find him obnoxious, condescending, arrogant, and intolerable.

Excellent. Many do come here with that idea. 3) I do think that the sleight of hand substitution of empiricism for science is both academically incorrect and fundamentally dishonest.

True, a bit of magic is quite uncalled for. I didn't see that bit of illusion.

4) My personal distaste for Dawkins only exacerbates number 3) above.

Point taken.

There is a penchant for some to consider ad hominem attacks as good arguments against some issue. I had assumed your's was similar. I was incorrect, I apologize.

[b_sharp]

Cool :)

[b_sharp]

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

Needs just a wee bit of polish.

[b_sharp]

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

Why, is your battery low? (Where is Gumlegs).

[chronic_loser]

thanks. I am not really a "creationist" in that sense of the word, although I am an orthodox Christian and I do think that creation shouts to us of its creator.

I am fairly familiar with the history of the church. Therefore I know enough dirt on just about all the good guys to know that ad hominem arguments are really a bad road to take for Christians. Personal character is not an argument for truth or falsity of anything (although it can be supportive). Some of the most despicable persons have had views that I support wholeheartedly, and some very enjoyable people have had views I find abhorrent.

[b_sharp]

Does it ever wear out? I mean do you keep spares on hand, just in case?

[chronic_loser]

You know, I think you are right and I am wrong!

I made an assumption from the text that I can see I should not have made. It came honestly, tho. Thanks for the correction

[furball4paws]

No, I have been complaining about anthropomorphizing physical process for so lon, I was just glad to see that someone else had picked up the ball.

Why do some people think that because we ask why and what for, that a snowflake or bacterium does the same?

[muir_redwoods]

"Yet after a lifetime of studying Americans -- I have gone to school with them, I have argued with them, I have had sex with them, and now I live with them -- I am still puzzled.

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?"

Aren't you making an assumption? How do you know anything about Michael Ruse's assertion or the nature of his relationship.

[RightWhale]

never accounts for the origins of the "unaided" laws of physics

That is a corollary of design, necessary to physicists, sort of handy for biologists, but not design itself. We have to rely on consistency over time; what is the alternative? but we don't have to assume design.

[caffe]

If you would care to challenge anything I stated, please do so. I find it amusing that the responses i've received love to use the word "creationist" but never respond to the truth of the lack of science. People like Dawkins simply lead the cultists down the bunny trail. Instead of questioning me, why don't you actually try and research Hawkin's methods. If you bother reading some scientists who dare question Dawkin's scientific method, you may discover some painful facts.
Try reading David Wise who notes this. He is not a creationist but a true scientist. LOL

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"You know, I think you are right and I am wrong!"

It's easy to get dates mixed up. As for myself, I forgot that he needed to sign the 39 Articles in order to get into Cambridge. I still think that his uncomfortableness with some of them factored into his decision to not become a clergyman. As I posted to someone else, I have to look it up again to be sure.

Cheers!

[b_sharp]

"From the discussions around here, you might think that.

Are you sure?

[puroresu]

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


Yes.

[puroresu]

BTW, I should have also noted to you (and others here right now) that this is one of the most polite discussions I've seen here on the evolution vs. ID controversy. Thank you for your polite discourse!

[b_sharp]

"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."

I hope this isn't an attempt to play those silly little creationist games where you say that microevolution occurs but nobody has observed macroevolution. We have never witnessed a cat give birth to a dog and there are no transitional fossils.

The definition of evolution was determined initially by Darwin and later modified and made more accurate by evolutionary scientists. The definition of evolution will always be some form of the following:
The variation of allele frequencies within a population over time as determined by differential reproduction.
No manner of semantic twisting is going to make the definition of evolution to be the change of one phylum into another phylum or some other higher taxon.

Cats do not give birth to dogs, all changes are small (or relatively small) incremental morphological differences. There is no mechanism that will stop the cumulative changes between a parent sequence and a daughter sequence from resulting in two different organisms that taxonomists would class as different species, or genera or any other taxa based on the morphological changes. If you could identify and test such a genetic stop sign you would undoubtedly win a Nobel.

It gets so tiring watching uninformed and/or mislead creationists continually play this silly micro/macro card as if it had any meaning. They continually complain that the fossil record shows abrupt changes instead of small cumulative changes then complain about the small cumulative changes we do see in extant species. Make up your minds!

The 'information' canard is a non-starter; all that is necessary is for the genome to differ in size and/or content for the change from a single celled organism to human to result. We 'witness' beneficial mutations that affect a single base pair, a single codon, multiple codons, a single gene and multiple genes. We see gene duplication, gene flipping, genes being turned on, being turned off and even genes switching codons. Introns get shortened, introns get lengthened, introns disappear. We even see chromosomes being duplicated, split and combined.

Where is the limiting factor that stops significant change in a species? Scientists have found that some states will only allow change in a specific direction, but nothing that will stop change completely. You find that limiter, that 'microevolution' governor if you will and let us know.

[stanz]

It gets so tiring watching uninformed and/or mislead creationists continually play this silly micro/macro card as if it had any meaning. They continually complain that the fossil record shows abrupt changes instead of small cumulative changes then complain about the small cumulative changes we do see in extant species. Make up your minds!

Well put! This was a refreshing way to end my evening. Thank you.

[b_sharp]

"No, I have been complaining about anthropomorphizing physical process for so lon, I was just glad to see that someone else had picked up the ball.

I had assumed as much (you being first I mean). I just wanted to start another three stooges riff.

I've been bugged about both reification and anthropomorphization for as long as I've been here. I just haven't been as vocal about it as I should have been until recently.

(Right now I'm just hoping the royalties aren't too steep).

"Why do some people think that because we ask why and what for, that a snowflake or bacterium does the same?

They want there to be an intelligent designer.

[furball4paws]

Well, when Gummy shows up maybe the Stooges can get something going.

I think the more rabid of our Creationoid brethren are worn out after yesterday.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

" I think the more rabid of our Creationoid brethren are worn out after yesterday."

Why, what happened yesterday? lol