Egad, I hope you're wrong too :-). The quartet already has
one lawyer, and that's twice as many as they need :-).
Just kidding. Though I often disagree with Johnson,
I like and respect him a great deal.
I would readily admit that I really like Berlinski's
"style" and it's quite possible that my conclusions
were swayed by this.
Perhaps the best thing to do is to take a look at
some of his arguments. What one sees is the usual
type of argument we've all seen before (generically
anyway) but presented and defended in a different
manner. One of the key differences is that Berlinski
does not seem to really contest any of the "facts"
about evolution:
"I am happy to salute Archaeopteryx, recognizing the
little monster as half-bird and half-reptile
(or anything Eugenie C. Scott wishes)." -- DB
nor does he employ the argument from the false
alternative, ie the pretense that an argument
against Darwinism is an argument in favor of
creation or intelligent design:
===begin quote===
Darwinian theorists accept the first of Paley's
inferences, but reject the second. Biological artifacts
are complex, they say, but not designed. Their existence
may be explained in terms of random variation and natural
selection. I dispute this claim, without endorsing Paley's
theological inference. It is not necessary to choose
between doctrines. The rational alternative to Darwin's
theory is intelligent uncertainty. -- DB
===end=========
One of the most difficult (for me to follow) of Berlinski's
arguments is the following:
==begin quote==
I do not doubt that Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge
are convinced of the "essential truth of organic evolution";
or that they believe natural selection to be "at least one
mechanism of it." The difficulty with this observation is
that it is compromised by its qualifications. At any given
moment, if the phases of the moon happened to be right, I
might align myself with Mr. Gross's essential truth of
organic evolution; as for natural selection, nothing at
all remains at issue if it is demoted from its central
position in Darwin's theory. The idea that evolution
proceeds by means of many different forces is both
unanswerable and uninteresting. To his credit, this is
something Richard Dawkins recognizes.
==end==========
So, what's he getting at here? It may be really nice and
desirable to have a relatively simple theory with only
one principal mechanism, but we don't always get what
we want.
It seems to me perfectly logical that something as complex
as evolution will likely have many competing mechanisms.
Why this is unanswerable is beyond me. And as for uninteresting,
I disagree completely. As far as I'm concerned, problems
increase in interest in proportion to their increase in
complexity.
The above becomes even odder in view of Berlinski's
stated purpose:
======begin quote==
I was concerned in my essay to question the thesis that
random variation and natural selection are the mechanisms
by which the appearance, development, and organization of
life on earth are to be explained. --DB
===end=======
Well, I'm certainly willing to concede this point. Now
what? Berlinski claims he does not support creation or
intelligent design, so why does he object to taking the
next logical step, that of considering evolution as a
process with several competing mechanisms?
Now it's time to pay a visit to King Louie, er I
mean the Head Monkey. King Louie is, of course,
a character from <The Jungle Book> while the
Head Monkey is a character invented by Berlinski
to replace the computer in making selections
in Dawkin's monkey program.
Dawkin's monkey program has been discussed here many
times with many of us, myself included, objecting to
the typical manner in which most creationists criticize
the program.
I want to put these objections aside since Berlinski's
argument seems to me to be unique. Essentially, he
wants to turn the tables around completely so that
the program is an illustration of his own claims,
namely that chance plus selection does not, indeed
*cannot*, work unless guided by a "Head Monkey".
====begin====
When I observed that Richard Dawkins was unable to write a
computer program that simulated his linguistic thought
experiment, I did not mean that the task at hand was
difficult. It is impossible.
[...]
...When natural selection is given its proper Darwinian
interpretation as a force or property denied access to the
future, it loses its power to seal off random success.
It is this point that my Head Monkey was intended to
establish. Once he has been dismissed from the scene,
the Darwinian mechanism again acts randomly. In one way or
another, all Darwinian scenarios involve an attempt to
bring that monkey back. -- DB
===end========
I appreciate Berlinski going out on limb in this way,
actually giving an argument which can be refuted. Since
he says such programs are impossible, we only need to
find one example. I offer as that example Tom Ray's
Tierra World. Unless I've missed something, this simulation
does model Darwinism and there is nothing analogous in
it to a Head Monkey.
Surfing around on Ray's site I found an example that
would seem to me to qualify as irreducibly complex:
=====begin=======
INCREASING COMPLEXITY
The unrolled loop (the section ``an intricate adaptation'')
is an example of the ability of evolution to produce an
increase in complexity, gradually over a long period of
time. The interesting thing about the loop unrolling
optimization technique is that it requires more complex
code. The resulting creature has a genome size of 36,
compared to its ancestor of size 80, yet it has packed a
much more complex algorithm into less than half the space
(Appendix E).
This is a classic example of intricate design in evolution.
One wonders how it could have arisen through random bit
flips, as every component of the code must be in place in
order for the algorithm to function. Yet the code includes
a classic mix of apparent intelligent design, and the
chaotic hand of evolution. The optimization technique is a
very clever one invented by humans, yet it is implemented
in a mixed up but functional style that no human would use
(unless perhaps very intoxicated).
from:
Evolution, Ecology and Optimization of Digital Organisms
--Thomas S. Ray
http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/pubs/tierra/tierrahtml.html
=====end============
I think I'll call it quits for the time being, hopefully
I'll be able to come back to this later. In particular,
much can and should be said about chance and its role in
evolution since this is a major part of Berlinski's
argument.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Applied Mechanics
The Ohio State University
"... we have learned from much experience that all
philosophical intuitions about what nature is going
to do fail." -- Richard Feynman