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.

[microgood]

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.

No, this is just stating you do not know the difference between a theory and a fact. A fact is something like : The sun came up today. A theory is something like : based on our theories of radiometric dating and various other assumptions we make about surrounding environment where a fossil is found, we theorize this fossil is 20 million years old.

In addition, facts cannot be derived from theories, so you cannot say that based on all our theoretical age and type theories of fossils, evolution is a fact. Or, based on our finding that chimps and humans both have what we theorize is a retrovirus insertion in our DNA, and that based on our unproven assumption that the process is random, the odds are astronomical that we would not have a common ancestor with a chimp, and therefore it is a fact that we have common ancestor with a chimp.

I know the guy at talkorigins wants everyone to start calling evolution a fact (an attempt at propaganda), but you cannot do that without changing the definition of fact to mean what a theory means now.

[Coyoteman]

I know the guy at talkorigins wants everyone to start calling evolution a fact (an attempt at propaganda), but you cannot do that without changing the definition of fact to mean what a theory means now.

Definitions:

Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"

Fact: when an observation is confirmed repeatedly and by many independent and competent observers, it can become a fact

That evolution occurs is a fact, otherwise we would not be worried about this bird flu kicking around (and evolving like mad apparently).

The explanation for how this evolution occurs is the theory of evolution, as opposed to the fact that things evolve (i.e., change through time). It is easy to get these two concepts confused.

[jwalsh07]

Where is the limiting factor that stops significant change in a species?

You tell me sharpy. No new phyla since the Cambrian. Why?

[b_sharp]

"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

Dawkins' purpose was to show that cumulative selection can produce large changes in morphology. He did not claim it was a perfect analogue to evolution.
This makes your talking points specious.

There are many other computer models of evolution that are more accurate, models that include the possibility of extinction, deleterious changes and the possibility of reduced populations including the possibility of founder effects, yet they show similar results to Dawkins' program. TIERRA by Thomas Ray being one.

Do you have any suggested David Wise readings?

[b_sharp]

"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!

I'm afraid I left my 'Book of Insults' in the car and it's way way too cold to go outside and get it. :^)

It is different isn't it?

[Virginia-American]

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

micrograd: 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.

The fossil fact is called (or used to be called) the law of faunal succession. A particular kind of fossil is only found in certain strata, and these are always ordered the same way. Also, there are many fossils of extinct animals and plants.

There were a number of attempts to explain this law, by Lamarck and others. Darwin's insight was that the same method used by animal and plant breeders was a sufficient explanation.

History of evolution

[b_sharp]

"No, this is just stating you do not know the difference between a theory and a fact. A fact is something like : The sun came up today. A theory is something like : based on our theories of radiometric dating and various other assumptions we make about surrounding environment where a fossil is found, we theorize this fossil is 20 million years old.

It has been claimed that I do not know the difference between a fact and a theory. I'm in a real quandary now, unsure if the information I've been disseminating here for the past year is right or wrong. Please help me decide. Am I right or wrong?

"In addition, facts cannot be derived from theories, so you cannot say that based on all our theoretical age and type theories of fossils, evolution is a fact. Or, based on our finding that chimps and humans both have what we theorize is a retrovirus insertion in our DNA, and that based on our unproven assumption that the process is random, the odds are astronomical that we would not have a common ancestor with a chimp, and therefore it is a fact that we have common ancestor with a chimp.

It is astronomical isn't it.

"I know the guy at talkorigins wants everyone to start calling evolution a fact (an attempt at propaganda), but you cannot do that without changing the definition of fact to mean what a theory means now.

Which guy might that be? Which of the dozens of scientists there that agree with me might you be talking about?

[Virginia-American]

No new phyla since the Cambrian. Why?

From a Wikipedia article, has links to talkorigins and other sources

... Although many new animal forms appeared during the Cambrian, not all did. According to one reference [Collins 1994], 11 of 32 metazoan phyla appear during the Cambrian, one appears Precambrian, 8 after the Cambrian, and 12 have no fossil record...

Also, flowering plants appear *much* later than Cambrian.

[Coyoteman]

They want there to be an intelligent designer.

There is a good summary of the recent ID movement in the recent Dover trial, in the Plaintiffs' Findings of Fact. Kind of decimates some of the claims we see on these threads.

319. Intelligent design does not qualify as science for a variety of reasons:

(a) It violates the ground rules of science, as they have been practiced for hundreds of years since the scientific revolution, because it i) posits a supernatural actor as an explanation for natural phenomena and ii) it cannot be tested.

(b) It has been universally rejected as science by the scientific community.

(c) It finds no support in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

(d) It is not the subject of scientific testing and research.

(e) It makes no predictions and offers no explanations other than “the intelligent designer did it.”

(f) It is primarily a negative argument against evolution.

(g) The arguments made against evolution distort and misrepresent the real state of scientific knowledge.

[Dover] Plaintiffs' Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, pp. 140-141.

[grey_whiskers]

But it's important to remember that Aristotle was the greatest philosopher in history, at least up to St. Thomas' time, so Aquinas' adoption of some of Aristotle's flawed theories regarding the natural world is understandable.

Somewhere in the mix here is the murky and ill-defined transition from scholasticism to empiricism. And it is empiricism which gives science its strength and reliability. But the politicization even of science by the left (from global warming to embryonic stem cells) threatens to replace empiricism by argument from authority, and undo the hard-won gains of the last several hundred years.

[grey_whiskers]

We don't know many of the details of how life began on this planet. Dawkins would acknowledge that. But that's no reason to throw up one's hands and say, "Dang, a miracle must've happened here!" And, even if you do that, you've still got the problem of explaining precisely how that miracle happened: What mechanisms did a designer employ to push atoms together to make specific kinds of molecules and then to push these molecules together to make cellular structures? What forces were employed? Why is there zero evidence of such forces being employed nowadays? Etc.

Howzabout, "Geez, we still don't know for sure." ??

Besides, I seem to recall reading on several other crevo threads that the theory of evolution is not intrinsically about abiogenesis.

Or is that only when it's convenient for one side or the other? ;-)

Cheers!

[furball4paws]

When microgood morphs into macrogood, maybe he'll get it right. Keep up the QC.

[grey_whiskers]

Sometimes 'assumptions', such as the noninterference of the supernatural, must be made to enable certainty of conclusion. Generally assumptions like that are based on the consistency of nature and are more accurately called 'conclusions'.

Crux of the matter right here.

If nature is regular, then there is ("Occam's razor") no need to invoke a designer; empirically, it "just is" that way.

If nature is irregular, why would a designer screw it up so bad?

At least that's the way I read the dilemna...

Cheers!

[Boazo]

What a moronic statement! Idiot

[furball4paws]

There is another possibility: the designer is malignant. Not a comforting thought.

[grey_whiskers]

But he's not a candidate for prom king or sainthood,

Thus you are revenged upon me for my square root of -1 jest on another thread at King Prout's expense.

I misread that as "prion king"...

[grey_whiskers]

Plenty of organic compounds have been spotted floating around in space.

Details, please? I know that there are, I just want the lurkers to have a list of what specific compounds are. :-)

[edsheppa]

... or is incompetent or just doesn't care or maybe it's "tough love" or ...

[jwalsh07]

Animal Kingdom.

My understanding is approximately 50 body plans at Cambrian. Today, maybe 30-34. Something limits phyla obviously. Question is why?

I know why is tough to answer btw. Much easier to measure than to answer why.

[furball4paws]

The "doesn't care" actually is readily supported if one assumes only a Prime Mover.

He realizes that every combo of idiots will come into existence and that ultimately he will get what he started out to make.

But then, we could just be lizards in a jar and that would be colossal joke that I would join in with.