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.

[ml1954]

Science is wholly engaged in exploring the supernatural. Just because a phenomena occurs regularly and is capable of human, or scientific, explanation does not nullify the nature of creation as it stands.

Does unknown = supernatural?

[js1138]

Ghostbusters.

[grey_whiskers]

Remind me of this post over Christmas or New Year's when I have time to chew it over.

...and the funny point is, I can't even tell which side of the debate you're on :-)

But you seem to be concerned with details of mechanism, rather than hand-waving, which is always a good thing in my book.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

In the meantime serve justice: do good to friends and evil to enemies. Merry Christmas!

Kind of ironic to juxtapose those, given Christ's injunction to "love your enemies" and "pray for those who despitefully use you".

Even more ironic how often this seems to be ignored by -- well, by the literal definition -- "professing" Christians -- those who make the statement that they are Christians -- on the crevo threads.

Cheers!

[ml1954]

There could be money in this.

[furball4paws]

Or maybe a bag of time.

[b_sharp]

"How contradicted? Are you saying that God cannot cause anything if he is himself eternal, unlimited, and uncreated? Do you think only finite created things can create anything? Or are you saying that you think God is coextensive with the universe? E.g., the universe is similarly eternal, unlimited, and uncreated? Forgive me: I'm not sure I'm following you here, aNYCguy. Please help me understand you? (Are you a Buddhist?)

You placed God outside our physical realm. How do you justify God's ability to affect the physical realm if he/she/it is not a physical being. You also created this non-physical world where you claim no physical rules apply. According to the way you justify this 'void' (or world) outside our physical world, your only requirement for its existence is that we can imagine it. From there we can also postulate another world external to both ours and God's that could contain God's creator.

"The creator is not "in" the universe. We know that the things "in" the universe -- physical things -- have physical causes. But you cannot infinitely regress the chain of causation. It must begin somewhere, or nothing could be anything at all.

The fact that the creator is not in this universe is not a fact at all but simply a jump in logic based on our current inability to explain the origin of the universe. The God void is an artificial default.

"There would be only a random accidental development that has no reason to become anything; and there would be no answer to Leibntz's two great questions: (1) Why is there something, why not nothing? and (2) Why are things the way they are and not some other way?"

Leibniz may have had many good questions; none of which impact on the reality of existence. Before the BB nothing existed, not time, not space, not logical interaction, not 'laws' of physics. The BB occurred and with it came interactions between matter and energy that are consistent and predictable and result without input from some designer guy. We do not need to assume things need a 'reason' to be, nor that those interactions are random.

"I won't even say that God is sui-generis, self-caused. All one can really say about God is, as Parmenides put it, "Is!" Or as the God of Sinai said to Moses, "I Am That Am."

As does Popeye.

"God as creator, being outside spacetime, is not subject to the "rules" of spacetime reality. There is nothing that says God must have a cause. To insist that he must have a cause is simply to apply the information we have about what goes on in the physico-temporal category of reality to a "category" -- God -- where they do not at all apply.

There is nothing to say that the BB need have a cause since the laws of physics as we know them did not exist before.

"To put it bluntly, you want God to "play by your rules," but the point is, he doesn't need to in any way, shape, or form; and I gather he doesn't. :^)

No we want you to play by the rules you expect us to abide by. If you can place God in some imaginary non-physical void, we can imagine a God creator. If you can discern God through purely rational means rather than through physical means we can use the same technique to discern God's God.

[js1138]

If I could save thyme in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

[Fester Chugabrew]

Everything is supernatural. Calling it otherwise does not change it. Taking the supernatural and calling it natural does not change its nature, and more than calling something true makes it true. The terms "supernatural" and "natural" are arbitrary terms based on human comprehension.

The "natural" course of the universe is to disintegrate into nothing. The elements down to all that is known about them will lose their cohesiveness if supernatural forces are withdrawn from all material entities.

[ml1954]

Too bad Croce died young.

[ml1954]

Everything is supernatural.

Okay.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Too bad Croce died young."


Amen.

[js1138]

I've never been able to figure out how real songwriters get away with lines that don't scan worth a hoot. One of life's great mysteries.

[ml1954]

I've thought about that too. Something in the sequence of words and sounds (or in the sequence of ideas and sounds) sticks.

[ml1954]

If only it were possible.

[snarks_when_bored]

You seem to be suggesting that in a contest between infinite mercy and infinite justice, infinite justice wins. Why would that be so?

[grey_whiskers]

Talk to Ichneumon--I believe he was the one who recommended Penzey's spices ...

Full Disclosure: still whittling down my supply of conventional spices. But I haven't forgotten.

Cheers!

[spunkets]

"You think this is relevant to whether one of two atoms decays?"

Yes. However, take note that the considerations apply to any calculation in QM, in particular QED for eletromagnetic decays QCD for strong decay. The interactions considered in the QED calculations are not considered in QM. In QM the particles are quantized, in QED the fields are quantized and the particles arise out of the fields.

In general calculations are done in the simplest fashion. QED results in rather exact results, but it's complicated accounting for all the interactions and solving the integrals that represent that particular interacitons contribution to the total E.

In QED, calculaitons are made that minimize the energy over all possible interaction pathways. The result is some average value for the energy. A lifetime calculation looks at the stability of that system vs time. In any lifetime calc, say it's simple chemical stability, there's an activaiton E. If it's supplied, the reaction occurs. Those high energy paths in the path integrals of QED have a certain probablity of being taken. If they're taken within the system, the effective activation energy is present and the particle system decay.

I should note that atoms don't undergo radioactive decay, the nucleus does. Atoms in an excited state will decay, as will some Baryons, which are systems of particles like an atom. The cause is in the particulars of the dynamics of the force involved, strong weak or electromagnetic and the fact that the system ends up in a lower energy state.

Regardless, what you are not seeing is that all action has a cause and "random" is not a cause. Random describes the distribution of interaciton outcomes. The random distribuiton is the one most often seen in any interaction outcome.

" I'd like to see a citation for this, aside from your personal word."

You can google Feynman diagrams. You might find a site that lists and simplifies the explainaiton for the various interactions involved in any calc for QED. In any of them, note the cause for the action is the electromagnetic field. If they discuss excited state lifetimes, the cause is the EM field. All observations will be X +/- some random spread. You can also consider the shooting example I gave. You can ID the forces, now try to either predict, or shoot perfect holes. Do it from a machine rest with "perfect" ammo.

[grey_whiskers]

It is the theists that are moving God, not science. Science simply investigates those areas that God used to inhabit and finds nature inhabiting the area instead.

Instead?? This only holds if you assume God or gods were invented as a mechanism to 'explain'.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Space is smooth, so there's no quantized t.

How does this follow? Not doubting, just want the details, please. Or at least a decent link. :-)

Cheers!