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Hello Stan,
"Irreducibly complexity" is a distinct term (IC) although Mike does
use "complexity" by itself and in the colloquial sense elsewhere
in his book. Thus IC and "complexity" are separate things. Or
to put it better, IC refers to mostly one type of thing while
"complexity" means lot of things in Behe's book.
As it's defined an IC system is one which will no longer work if
any any part or subfunction can be removed. These systems are
also labeled "complex" just because, well... Heck, I don't know.
"Irreducible" would have worked fine by itself. If one needs more
than a 5-syllable term for scientific respectability, "ir-
reducible system" (IS) might do the trick.
Regards,
Tim Ikeda (tikeda@sprintmail.com)
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Thanks for your comments, Tim. I am familiar with Behe's concept
of IC, and believe it to be potentially useful. My point in my
original post was to question whether the use of the word
"complex" in IC is misleading. Your response illustrates quite
well that "complex" was probably used by Behe in a colloquial
sense that certainly does not correspond to the concept of
complexity in information theory. I believe that Behe's
idea is really about functionality and not complexity in the
technical sense. So perhaps, as you pointed out, it should
just be explained as an "irreducible system" or an "irreducible
functionality" of a biological system. I wonder if some of
the objections to Behe's concept come from the use of "complexity"
in the colloquial sense.
Stan Zygmunt
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Valparaiso University
Valparaiso, IN 46383