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.

[js1138]

Don't worry about 680. Try 683.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1535529/posts?page=683#683

[don asmussen]

Somehow or other, so far I have managed to be spared The Clan of the Cave Bear!

Try it, you may like it.. The series is fairly well written speculative fiction, about a point in time when two species of men existed together. Everything the author writes about ~could~ have happened.
- It is not fantasy.

[ChessExpert]

Dawkins writes:

“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.”

That sounds impressive. I would like to confirm this claim. I would like to see "almost cinematic records" going from the first mammal to each of the following mammals as we find them today: bat, whale, elephant, zebra, and cheetah. I did not pick these to be especially hard, or especially easy. This independent selection simply shows some variety among mammals. Please, no artist reconstructions, claymations, cartoon animations, or computer animations should be advanced. Fossils should be ordered for our cinema without benefit of the theory of evolution. Each fossil should be independently dated for sequencing in the cinema. One dating method should be chosen and used throughout to avoid suspicion of cherry-picking of methods. My request should not be especially difficult given the nearly one hundred fifty years of effort attempting to prove (not test) the theory of evolution, and the frequent claims that evolution is so well established that even the term "theory" does an injustice to it's empirical foundation. When the existence of these five cinema's have been confirmed, we can get serious and move on to more challenging assignments. It is sad to say, but some might be tempted to fraud. One should consider the case of the "Piltdown man" that was successfully used for many decades to win converts to evolution, before it was acknowledged to be a fraud. Evolutionists are still trying to live that one down.

[hosepipe]

[ Somehow or other, so far I have managed to be spared The Clan of the Cave Bear! Try it, you may like it.. ]

My long dead wife cajoled me into reading "The Clan of the Cave Bear"(first on in the series).. I laughed at romance drama readers(wife) and wouldnt be caught in a 1000 years reading one.. Educated and snooty professional that I was.. But it was O.K. for the underachievers, heck they had to have something to amuse them..

This lady(wife) was way ahead of me.. She said.. read 10 pages and if you don't like it then you don't.. so there.. I fell for it.. Heck I could read 10 pages in a heartbeat before the wordless glanceing wry smile as I looked over my John Denver glasses and tossed the book on the coffee table..

Needless to say thats not what happened..
You want to know what happened.?..
Well I ain't tellin.. Nyah!.. d;-)~',',

(fill in the blanks)

[betty boop]

...a point in time when two species of men existed together

I'm sure that would be a most interesting speculation, don. But I confess my real interest in this question is the succession, or transition, of one to the other, and why that transition was successful. We do not get that sort of information from the consideration of biological data alone. Or so it seems to me.

Thank you so much for writing!

[betty boop]

Why not?

[don asmussen]

a point in time when two species of men existed together --

I'm sure that would be a most interesting speculation, don. But I confess my real interest in this question is the succession, or transition, of one to the other, and why that transition was successful.
We do not get that sort of information from the consideration of biological data alone. Or so it seems to me.

Hmmm, -- are you suggesting that we can surmise why our species survived without using scientific data?

btw.. What would be your reaction if were proved that Neanderthal genes live on in modern humans? That hybrid vigor contributed to our 'successful transition'?

[ChessExpert]

"People often assert that no one is ever convinced one way or the other by debates on this issue, but this is not true"

People assert all sorts of things of course. I assume that many people are open to arguments based on reason and fact. Some of these move toward, some away, from evolutionary theory.

I followed your links. They do not convince me that Denton and Behe are evolutionists. The Denton link introduces the idea of directed evolution. That's not evolution as most know it. It seems to accept some, and reject other, tenets of standard evolutionary theory. The Behe link shows Behe calmly and civilly responding to eight attack quotes, half of which refer to him as "ignorant." In context, he seems to be saying that his book only dealt with the lack of demonstrated evolutionary mechanism at the biochemical level.

"Nearly all the major players in the ID game accept common descent, even if they quibble over details of mechanism."

Sorry, but I'm not convinced.

I knew a little about Behe. Thanks to your post, I may buy a couple of books by Denton! Is Nature's Destiny the last book he wrote?

[Virginia-American]

...One should consider the case of the "Piltdown man" that was successfully used for many decades to win converts to evolution, before it was acknowledged to be a fraud. Evolutionists are still trying to live that one down...

Could you please provide a source for the bolded claim. I've never heard anything of the sort before.

[ChessExpert]

O.K. I'll get on that. But I'm going to watch "Survivor" first. So that's a delay of three hours. I might get to it tomorrow. Maybe someone else can post first.

[caffe]

If you check my posts, I'm not talking about hard sciences: I believe this thread is responding to Dawkin's trivial application of science to his own desired outcomes.

Actually, a creationists would know that when Adam and Eve sinned, the whole earth was tainted by sin. This is why we have germs. Believing this does not mean one cannot be a physician, microbiologist, immunologist or any other scientists. Believing in atheistic evolution, theistic evolution, Intelligent Design or the literal Biblical creation account has NO bearing on hard science .

[reasonisfaith]

I would say Dawkins receives far too much credit for his unremarkable style of thinking which appears to be marked by regular examples of carelessness.

In the paragraph which begins “Yet the highly improbable…” Dawkins starts out by saying the improbability argument doesn’t work for anti-evolutionists because improbability exists in the real world. Then, in blatant self-contradiction, he criticizes intelligent design by his own use of the improbability argument.

In the very next sentence Dawkins’ language is a bit disorganized. (Why does he make use of a premise by Hoyle immediately after describing that premise as a mistake?) He uses the improbability argument to discredit the notion of God’s existence, but then he somehow gets himself into the position of suggesting that God’s existence is unnecessary because natural selection can “do his work for him.”

So Dawkins maintains that God’s existence is highly improbable but if true is unnecessary anyway.

This ugly little pothole in Dawkins’ thinking reveals a pattern of logic observable during the interrogation of a suspect by law enforcement when the suspect is attempting to malinger an explanation of his innocence. For example, the suspect will state that he could not have shot the murder victim because at the time of the shooting he was in another city hundreds of miles away. Then the suspect will provide a second reason, saying that even if he were in town at the time of the shooting he couldn’t have been the shooter because it took place inside the victim’s house, and he had no access to a key.

Either alibi alone would be significant as evidence, but somehow when used together each serves to discredit the other. This technique, using multiple separate and independent excuses, is identified by expert witnesses as a strong indication that the person is lying.

The anti-Christian movement needs to find a better hit man.

[ChessExpert]

I found three books in my limited library that refer to the Piltdown Man. In each case, I went to the index, then zeroed in on the reference with the greatest number of pages. I'll give one reference from each book.

Phillip E. Johnson's Darwin on Trial has a brief but good comment on pg82.

Jonathan Wells' Icons of Evolution devotes a section, the Piltdown fraud, on pgs 217-218.

Cremo and Thompson's The Hidden History or the Human Race, devotes a chapter, The Piltdown Showdown, pgs 177-190.

The story is the same. The Piltdown Man was a significant missing link on display in the British Museum of Natural History from 1912 to 1953. It is generally agreed that this was intentional fraud. Some have spun it as the self-correcting nature of science. Some have spun it as the tip of the iceberg, a visible case of calculated fraud, over an invisible mountain of biased research.

[ChessExpert]

Darwin's Howard Dean?

[reasonisfaith]

Good point.

I just hope Darwin doesn’t have a Hillary Clinton.

[betty boop]

...are you suggesting that we can surmise why our species survived without using scientific data?

Why do we need such data, when we clearly and readily see that we have "survived?" (Otherwise you wouldn't be around to ask this question, nor me to reply to it.)

What would be your reaction if were proved that Neanderthal genes live on in modern humans?

If Neanderthals were actually protohuman (which designation seems to cover a whole lot these days), that wouldn't surpise me at all. And it seems they were.

Are these "trick questions," don?

[snarks_when_bored]

No claymations???? You ask too much, sir!

[Alamo-Girl]

LOLOL! Thanks for the chuckle!

[snarks_when_bored]

[ If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it must not be a duck. ]

O.K.. Bring out the big guns...

Al Gores Law..

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for sharing these additional aspects of your worldview!

Reality is a metaphor, a division of the word, an illusion.

There are no laws, no patterns in nature.

Considering these views of reality, I don't really see where we have anything to explore.

I run into the same kind of problem with those who view reality as their own consciousness and everything else as merely an illusion - i.e. no common ground, no language to discuss nature or spirit.