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]

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

Where is TRex when you need him? Not the dinosaur, the musician..... BANG A GONG!!!! This is the issue and always has been as far as I am concerned. I wish I could surround this with flashing lights. It is not so much that he does this that irritates me. We can talk about whether it is proper to do so in any number of forums. It is that he repeatedly refuses to address the question, asserting "that is just the way it is" as if that were an answer, and then deriding others for asking. I don't like him because he is not honest. (condescending too, but that is an occupational hazard of academics)

[PatrickHenry]

There is no physical causation in the void - the first cause must be uncaused and the only candidate for uncaused cause is God.

True, by definition, and accepted on faith. No problem. But the logic by which we arrive at an uncaused cause is a bit troublesome -- at least to me. The reason we reach so far back into the chain of causation is because we observe that everything has a cause. Were it not for that observation, we wouldn't be searching for the earliest causes and expecting to find them. But when we arrive at the First Cause, we change the rules! Having gone as far back as we can go, we don't say that we're simply stuck for an answer (which we logically are). No, instead of saying that we don't know how to keep going, we just drop the very reason that impelled us to go on this chase in the first place, and we declare that although we got to this point only because everything has a cause, suddenly a cause isn't necessary. This is inconsistent reasoning, which is why the issue of a First Cause is a matter of faith, not logic. Or so it seems to me.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

Sure there can. Postulate an inversion center in the center of the Milky Way. Now perform an inversion. Is the Milky Way the same? That tells you if it has inversion symmetry. Time doesn't enter into it. You don't have to be able to do the operation, you just have to conceive of it.

For Lurkers wanting to understand your assertion: Mathworld: Inversion

Inversion geometry is a construct, an "it", a "thing" - a "universal" which exists in space/time. Were it not for space/time, inversion geometry would not exist.

The conceptualization of a test of inversion symmetry in the center of the Milky Way, or the singularity at the beginning of the big bang, likewise is a construct, an "it", a "thing" - a "universal" which exists in space/time. Were it not for space/time, the conceptualization would not exist.

The singularity or black hole itself is likewise not the void. It has entropy, i.e. exists in a physical sense. And it is geometric. Were it not for space/time, black holes would not exist.

[aNYCguy]

immoral people make very poor philosophers. There is a tremendous amount of empirical data supporting this theory...

I didn't realize Kant and Hume have been widely considered to be "very poor philosophers." At any rate, I remain skeptical of any "theory" whose body of empirical evidence is entirely comprised of your sexual judgements of dead philosophers.

[aNYCguy]

immoral people make very poor philosophers. There is a tremendous amount of empirical data supporting this theory...

I didn't realize Kant and Hume have been widely considered to be "very poor philosophers." At any rate, I remain skeptical of any "theory" whose body of empirical evidence is entirely comprised of your sexual judgements of dead philosophers.

[cornelis]

Aquinasfan is exactly right.

Looking for the cause of the uncaused is absurd.

You might like to posit an infinite regress of causes, which is less absurd.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for your excellent essay-post!

You seem to be more interested in what a thing "looks like" than what actually is.

You've hit the nail on the head, IMHO. Many people cannot see the difference between "what something looks like" v. "what something is".

[Right Wing Professor]

Were it not for space/time, inversion geometry would not exist.

We can define an inversion in an entirely hypothetical one dimensional universe.

[b_sharp]

"Perhaps you need to read his original publication. Again, another bunny trail. He used a computer to simulate evolution. His demonstration sought to convince the public that evolution by natural selection is a scientifically proven fact. Try reading THE BLIND WATCHMAKER again. He failed to prove anything. If you believe he was successful, please site exactly what he proved and your proof. I believe this might be called science if you can handle it. So please, tell me exactly what aspect of your talking points do you wish to defend?

Let's narrow things down a bit. Your original complaint was against the programs Dawkins used in the book, not the focus or direction of the book. You claim that Dawkins was using the programs to prove the evolution is a fact. This is untrue. The programs were used by Dawkins to show the value of cumulative selection over single step selection which of course is the straw man creation of creationists. Here is a quote from the book:

"The cumulative process is directed by nonrandom survival.The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the power of this cumulative selection as a fundamentally nonrandom process" .pg.43 1996 edition

The book was an attempt to counter a number of creationist and ID strawman arguments. The chapter in which the programs were discussed was a counter argument to single step development. Dawkins never claimed the programs were to prove all of evolution as fact. The reason computer programs were used is simply because of speed and the ability of computers of the day to pseudo-randomize. He hoped that this randomization would quell suggestions he was 'fixing' the outcome. By running the program as a simple randomizer Dawkins was able to show that creation of the target phrase in one sequence of letters was highly improbable. He then went on to show that by cumulative selection on randomized strings, the target phrase could be reached relatively quickly. In this way he was quite successful in showing the value of cumulative changes over massive single-step changes. As Dawkins says in the same book:

"There is a big difference, then, between cumulative selection (in which each improvement, however slight, is used as a basis for future building), and single-step selection (in which each new 'try' is a fresh one). If evolutionary progress had had to rely on single-step selection, it would never have got anywhere." pg.49

"I would need to study Ray's simulation but I doubt if it proves anything. I wonder if he emulates Dawkin's unrealistic feature by determining fitness by comparison to a distant ideal target.

Dawkins acknowledged this very problem in the book and went on to explain the difficulties inherent in constructing a computer program capable of setting and selecting for realistic environmental constraints.

"Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breeding', the mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal."

As far as whether on not these programs are science, it would do well for us to remember that Dawkins' book is a popularization of science and as such uses simplified examples, analogies and language.

" In ten million years, a human-like population could substitute no more than 1,667 beneficial mutations.

Just how many beneficial mutations are required to go from our ape ancestor to ourselves?

"SInce evolutionists have failed to find error in Haldane's analysis, there are only two other possibilities:
1) Something is wrong with the present version of the evolutionary "story"
2) The standard model of evolutionary genetics - the one prominently displayed in all evolutionary textbooks is wrong.

Biologists have indeed found things wrong with Haldane's dilemma and the way it has been used.
I am going to let a source better equipped than I answer your claim:

Claim CB121:

J. B. S. Haldane calculated that new genes become fixed only after 300 generations due to the cost of natural selection (Haldane 1957). Since humans and apes differ in 4.8 × 107 genes, there has not been enough time for difference to accumulate. Only 1,667 gene substitutions could have occurred if their divergence was ten million years ago.

Source:
ReMine, Walter J., 1993. The Biotic Message, St. Paul Science, Inc.

Response:
Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).

Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.

ReMine (1993), who promotes the claim, makes several invalid assumptions. His model is contradicted by the following:
The vast majority of differences would probably be due to genetic drift, not selection.
Many genes would have been linked with genes that are selected and thus would have hitchhiked with them to fixation.
Many mutations, such as those due to unequal crossing over, affect more than one codon.
Human and ape genes both would be diverging from the common ancestor, doubling the difference.
ReMine's computer simulation supposedly showing the negative influence of Haldane's dilemma assumed a population size of only six (Musgrave 1999)
[Emphasis mine].
Information above taken from here

evolutionists might have to openly adopt a different model of population genetics, maybe truncation selection, as a possible theoretical solution to cost problems. This has severe problems as well. But they also would have to give up the illusion - that evolutionary processes are simple and inevitable.

I have no idea where you get the idea that scientists feel evolution is simple, but the scientists I have spoken to in the field say it is anything but simple. It is no easier to understand than any other complex system.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so very much for the kudos and for sharing your frustration with Dawkins! The observation was made by betty boop - so I'm pinging her for comment.

[chronic_loser]

The cosmological argument only makes sense if you posit an open system. The argument "who designed the designer" is not so much a refutation as an acknowledgement that the finite is finite. The undesigned designer who is infinite and outside the system is OF COURSE not subject to the rules of the system itself. Therefore, such a designer could, theoretically, be the progenitor of all causes, if this designer worked into the system. This is, of course, what Christianity teaches. Cosmology is evidence, not proof. The idea of "proving" the infinite to the finite is an absurdity in the first place.

[betty boop]

You seem to be under the misconception that a law is higher in the scientific hierarchy than a theory.

To the extent that theory is rational, law is not optional. Theories have to be based on something, something that is not purely phenomenal. In this sense, law is prior.

Of course, we may develop a better understanding of law as a result of theorizing. Lisa Randall's theory of a fifth dimension will be empirically tested in a few short years, and may well give us a better understanding of the law of gravity, among other things. Sometimes theoretical investigation may reveal the presence of something that may lead to the recognition of a new law. Theory in this case is the "tool" that allows that to happen. So there is a two-way street involved.

Still, a theory detached from the notion of basis in law is just an opinion at best, a second reality at worst. In short, theory must have a metron -- a ratio, a measure. FWIW

[Right Wing Professor]

Many people cannot see the difference between "what something looks like" v. "what something is".

Essentialism has been abandoned by most philosophers. Nothing requires that you abandon it, of course, but then nothing requires I participate in a discussion whose premises I reject. When it comes to begging the question, I gave at the office. :-)

[Right Wing Professor]

Still, a theory detached from the notion of basis in law is just an opinion at best

What law is group theory based on?

[cornelis]

This is inconsistent reasoning, which is why the issue of a First Cause is a matter of faith, not logic.

It's not entirely lucid as to why Aristotle rejected an infinite regress of causes, although I suspect that his focus on finding the underlying phenomena of things made him reject motion as the essential nature of existence.

The mere concept of an unmoved mover is of course no evidence that such actually exists. And so perhaps you want to say that since all we see causality, it is more logical to keep it to that much. But the concept of an unmoved mover is not illogical. Nor is it a matter of faith, unless the unmoved mover has a will you can trust.

[chronic_loser]

But when we arrive at the First Cause, we change the rules!

Of course! the only two options are an infinite regression of causes, or an infinite "causer". Either way, you are faced with a choice that rationalism cannot circumscribe (with apologies to Bertrand Russel, who, when pressed on this point, claimed to be able to conceptualize an infinite series of doors, one behind the other).

A possible exception to this was that hit of acid I did once where I perfectly conceptualized the infinite, but I don't think that will work in this context.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

True, by definition, and accepted on faith. No problem. But the logic by which we arrive at an uncaused cause is a bit troublesome -- at least to me. The reason we reach so far back into the chain of causation is because we observe that everything has a cause. Were it not for that observation, we wouldn't be searching for the earliest causes and expecting to find them. But when we arrive at the First Cause, we change the rules! Having gone as far back as we can go, we don't say that we're simply stuck for an answer (which we logically are). No, instead of saying that we don't know how to keep going, we just drop the very reason that impelled us to go on this chase in the first place, and we declare that although we got to this point only because everything has a cause, suddenly a cause isn't necessary. This is inconsistent reasoning, which is why the issue of a First Cause is a matter of faith, not logic. Or so it seems to me.

I'm very sure the quest was not a matter of faith to Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers who arrived at the conclusion by reasoning rather than by Spiritual revelation.

In sum, one can reason about cosmology and determine that there was a beginning from void (or null) - and therefore what the first cause existence must be, e.g. transcedent (non-autonomous).

[aNYCguy]

I am aware that Dawkins says that evolution is a fact in the paper cited at the top of this exchange.

Yes, this unfortunate equivocation between scientific language and the vernacular has caused a lot of confusion. A scientific fact is a data point, or observation. When we talk of facts in day to day life, we're often talking about non-observed occurrances which are nevertheless so overwhelming supported by extrapolation from the observations that we can consider them functionally proven.

Evolution is a scientific theory. That evolution has occurred and continues to occur is a vernacular fact. I'm sure Dawkins knows this, and I do think he could have done a better job clarifying the equivocation. Ideally, the words would diverge, to eliminate the problem.

So there you go. Evolution is a "fact" as we normally use fact, as for example that Pluto orbits the Sun is a fact. It is a scientific theory, and not a vernacular theory, the latter of which roughly means "guess."

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?

This isn't the introduction to a college evolution textbook. It's a magazine article. I would nevertheless expect Dawkins to do a better job of educating the public, being as he is the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford.

[betty boop]

[Dawkins] repeatedly refuses to address the question [regarding "Step 1"], asserting "that is just the way it is" as if that were an answer, and then deriding others for asking. I don't like him because he is not honest. (condescending too, but that is an occupational hazard of academics)

I share your frustration, chronic_loser! But then I realized there is something hilariously comical about a guy expending so much time and energy beating up on something that he swears does not exist in the first place. (I.e.: the Creator.)

Dawkin's got this technique from Marx, though he never gives Marx the credit. The fact is Marx prohibited all questions regarding his system. You either had to accept it "whole cloth," or reject it "whole cloth." But if you reject it, then you become at least an object of ridicule or even, worst case, the enemy. But no questioning of his "scientific/dialectical materialism" is to be permitted!!! This is Marx's "First Rule of Debate."

Like Marx, I think Dawkins is an "intellectual swindler"....

[b_sharp]

Just to steal from another poster elsewhere who states my questions quite well.

(1) The alleged miracle occurred in the 8th century.

(2) There is nothing even remotely existing what we would all a chain of custody.

(3) There is only cardiac tissue and dried blood.

(4) Old blood types AB regardless of the original type (check forensics website)

(5) Only one physician performed the analyses.

(6) Analyses were only performed in Italy and not referred to any other sources for confirmation.

(7) No peer reviewed study has been published.