Religion & Law

Not All Oldies Are Goodies

By John Pieret

Intelligent Design advocates like to pretend that ID is "cutting edge" science, while "Darwinism" is worn out 19th Century thinking. It doesn't take much digging into ID, however, to realize that it is based, on William Paley's watch analogy, merely dressed up in new clothes, and that even Michael Behe's "irreducible complexity" was already an old idea, argued by Georges Cuvier, when Darwin penned the Origin. However, Elliot Sober in his book, Evidence and Evolution, points out that Behe cribbed his notion of IC right out of Paley:

IN crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible in the second case, as in the first? For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone) that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day; that, if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, of a different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it.

How is Behe's framework related to Paley's? Behe says that an irreducibly complex system is a single system composed of several well matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning (1996: 39)." Behe's notion of irreducible complexity is very close to the concepts of usefulness and intolerance that Paley (1802) described. Both require that the system have a function or purpose or that it be useful. However, there is a modest difference between Paley and Behe that concerns how they spell out the second requirement. Behe asks whether removing any part would result in the system's malfunctioning, whereas Paley asks whether changing the shape, size, or placement of any part would do so.

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on April 03, 2009 (boomark / email).