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.

[RightWhale]

The Cross is Plato's twice divided line, among other things in geometry. We are in big trouble when we begin to critique our metaphors.

[cornelis]

We are in big trouble when we begin to critique our metaphors.

Welcome to life.

[RightWhale]

Row, row, row your boat . . .

[hosepipe]

[ The Cross is Plato's twice divided line, among other things in geometry. We are in big trouble when we begin to critique our metaphors. ]

Sorry.. I didnt mean the snippet I posted but the whole snippet in #817.. what I posted I can grasp I think..

[aNYCguy]

This suggest to me that the artist(s) was fully aware of his own mortality. Do you suppose that animals have such awareness? Or homo erectus, for that matter?

Homo erectus were tool users with problem-solving intelligence, and they ceramonially buried their dead with tools and objects like horn racks. Ditto Neandertals, of course. I think their awareness of mortality is obvious, but you can decide for yourself.

Elephants show a particular and unusual interest in other dead elephants, and distinguish between the bones of elephants and other animals. Again, you can decide for yourself:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1031_051031_elephantbones.html

[aNYCguy]

One thing's for certain. We'll all either blink off into oblivion or wake up face to face with God. We'll just have to see.

False dichotomy. There are infinitely other possibilities. Myself, I hope to wake up on a Hawaiian Beach face to face with a mountain of cheesesteaks.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your replies! But, if we are to engage in a discussion of this we’ll need to make sure we are on the same page.

From previous discussions on this thread (as I recall) your worldview is that time is an illusion rather than a dimension, energy is an illusion, mass is an illusion. If that is the case, then the first question ought to be what do you consider to be physically real?

Also, when you speak of a “zero dimension universe” I will take it to mean a physical universe not a mathematical construct because you use the term “universe”. If you wish to discuss a “zero dimensional construct” then physics would not apply – then again, it would not have anything to do with the original subject, the void. Moreover, if that is to be the direction of the conversation, I would not be as interested since there are various instances where mathematical constructs do not translate well to physics. Constructs with less than 2 spatial and 1 temporal dimension are among these - as is the mathematical construct of infinity.

Black hole entropy is based on thermodynamics not information: black hole entropy.

We also need to make sure we are speaking of singularity theory and not the larger subject of mathematical singularity.

As a final issue, we need to agree to the difference between “zero” spatial and temporal dimensions and null spatial or temporal dimensions.

For Lurkers: the number 201 means there are no tens, the zero is a placemarker. The number would be written differently if tens do not exist at all, e.g. 2_1.

[hosepipe]

[ False dichotomy. There are infinitely other possibilities. Myself, I hope to wake up on a Hawaiian Beach face to face with a mountain of cheesesteaks. ]

A little faith is better than none at all.. even if your God is your stomach.. Honesty reparte' is a blessing..

[cornelis]

I wouldn't be simplifying since the statement, like all good poetry, is already something complex simplified. I think that you want me to go the other way, back to the data that is concentrated in the thought.

And if I try, I would begin with the phrase "A is A," because that is somewhat familiar and what many like to return to, here.

The A-is-A phrase is an epistemological shorthand describing our human method of individuating. It describes human analysis. It is a circumscription so that we don't talk about everything at once. (Funny thing, it's used as a chant and an excuse to talk about everything at once.)

Why is this phrase so important? Because in our attempt to understand human life, we are in the habit of saying we've said it all when we merely have defined one aspect of human life. We mistake A for non-A, because we took A to be bigger than it was. Consider all the -isms. Each one of them are a diseased infatuation with a particular aspect of reality, turning a particular into a totality. The lawyer thinks all the world's a court. The psychologist thinks all the world's a couch.

The point is, human life always involves something else to which it belongs to. It's A is somehow connected to non-A. We are not symmetrical totalities by ourselves. And once we realize this, we reach a crossroads: we are what we are not and that is something darkling . . . and complex. Dogma and simplicity then become the temptation and substitutes (the second realities) to protect from complexity.

That's a start, hosepipe, and I hope it helps. It can be said in other ways and will be.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your reply!

If there is a kind of light beyond what we can measure or know about.. Could explain the problems with string theory.. and Einsteins dilema too, the gravity one. Ya think?..

From the physics point-of-view, massless particles could exist and escape detection if they have no indirect effect which is detectable. Likewise, it is posited that time-like paths of massive particles in four dimensions can arise from null paths in a fifth dimension, where there is an oscillation around the hypersurface we call space/time. Wesson also suggests that a particle in the fifth dimension could be multiply imaged in the four dimensions, and that the weak equivalence principle in the four dimensions may be the symmetry of a corresponding five-dimensional metric. Or to put it another way, instead of there being 10⁸⁰ particles in the visible four dimensions, it could actually be the case that as little as a single particle in the fifth dimension is multiply imaged.

From the theology point-of-view, physical light is a metaphor for good (v. evil) [Sermon on the Mount] and “God is Light” [Hebrews 1:3, I John 1:5] speaks to His person. Again looking at the physical realm as a metaphor, the cosmic microwave background recorded the harmonics in the sound waves of the early universe at the moment when the universe cooled and photons decoupled from electrons, protons and neutrons – atoms formed, and light went its way. And God said, let there be light (two meanings, heaven and earth, spiritual and physical).

[hosepipe]

[ Dogma and simplicity then become the temptation and substitutes (the second realities) to protect from complexity. ]

Masterful diagnosis and cure.. I'm healed Doc.. I'm not easy either.. Done with so few words.. simply brilliant!..

Simplicity then is both a curse and a blessing.. Big difference, then, between simplicity and simplistic..

"A man has gotta know his limitations"- Dirty Harry

[cornelis]

Is any argument/proof purely empirical?

[cornelis]

False dichotomy. There are infinitely other possibilities

Either we retain an identity or blink off into oblivion.

In retaining an identity we are necessarily a part of something that transcends the periodicity of material change. And whatever transcends this, is either personal or impersonal. Infinite possibilities may exist for a plurality of identities, but there are some basic dichotomies in play for us.

[cornelis]

I think I'm talking simplistic. : ) But there may be some overlap (hope so). It's just that simplic-ity gives symmetry with complex-ity.

[hosepipe]

[ From the theology point-of-view, physical light is a metaphor for good (v. evil) [Sermon on the Mount] and “God is Light” [Hebrews 1:3, I John 1:5] speaks to His person. Again looking at the physical realm as a metaphor, the cosmic microwave background recorded the harmonics in the sound waves of the early universe at the moment when the universe cooled and photons decoupled from electrons, protons and neutrons – atoms formed, and light went its way. And God said, let there be light (two meanings, heaven and earth, spiritual and physical). ]

Darn.. I think I understood all that.. at least some of it.. Your good, real good.. That made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.. maybe I ain't nutz.. The fact that there could be indeed an ligit argument for what, I think, I see is encouraging.. Thanks a million..

Gives me a some ideas to be developed and prayed about too.. What a blessing you three(list above) are to me.. Comments on this particular subject would appreciated by Boop and Cornelis too.. Trust me, its important to me.. And you too AG if you can expand on the two, lets say, photonic paradigms.. I'm gobstruck with this.. thanks again..

[hosepipe]

[ I think I'm talking simplistic. : ) But there may be some overlap (hope so). It's just that simplic-ity gives symmetry with complex-ity. ]

Any partial knowledge is simplistic to the whole.. 2 + 2 = 4 is simplistic in one context but complete in another context.. Various formulas for evolution seem to be true in one context but in another context seems to be untrue.. same kind of dicotomy...

Simple context and simplistic context.. as opposed to the whole text.. is a problem with arrogance.. Who then is totally aware on any subject.?.. If there were no God well there ought to be one.. Honest study then should drive one to the feet of God in abject humility.. even if there were no God.. He should create one as has been done time and time again..

Mankind sometimes to appears to be a two year trying to trick his Mommy.. The Mommy is so far ahead of the two year old.. his actions are cute.. Unless he is playing with fire.. or sticking something onto a light socket.. etc.

[grey_whiskers]

Somewhere along the line, perhaps about 1915, we left off the main line: which was the development of the science of science.

Fascinating idea, but why 1915 in particular?

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

A black hole contains a singularity due to to the illusion of relativity

Flesh this out, please?

Why do you call relativity an "illusion" ?

E.g. prediction of precession of perihelion of Mercury was predicted by relativity, not otherwise explainable classically...

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

Science is sophism.

Interesting take, and the hell of it is, you're right.

Never thought of it in that way before; but then why bother with experiments or mathematical proofs?

Oh well, at least it beats watching CSI or the OJ trial on TV :-)

[grey_whiskers]

False dichotomy. There are infinitely other possibilities. Myself, I hope to wake up on a Hawaiian Beach face to face with a mountain of cheesesteaks.

From my post #785 (I don't think it was to you, though...): "Hence you have an atheist countering "Pascal's wager" with a counter-dilemna of higher multiplicity: so I go to Hell if I don't believe in God, you say. But I can posit an infinite number of gods, so which one should I believe in..."

Cheers!

Full Disclosure: a mountain of cheesesteaks? No chips? No tuna salad on pumpernickel? No beer?
NO THANKS! :-)

Cheeres!