>Here is some nice Intelligent Design language ("Quality Control"!) in a
>recent SCIENCE.
Thanks for posting these, Steve. It ties nicely into what I have been
speaking about lately.
>I wonder if the thought ever flickers across Darwinist minds that the `blind
>watchmaker' is getting more intelligent and less blind every day?
I seriously doubt it. I suspect most Darwinists believe this whole
issue was settled a long time ago and thus would react to claims of
intelligent design with mild amusement and flippant dismissal.
If someone suggests that something might be intelligently designed,
I suspect most Darwinists would not focus on the question of
whether it was designed, but instead focus on why in the world
someone even bothered to raise this question.
But I think it most telling that, while it officially excludes intelligent
design, biology works because it extensively employs intelligent
design language and concepts. As a physical scientist, Paul Davies,
wisely observed in his latest book:
" Concepts like information and software do not come from the
natural sciences at all, but from communication theory, and involve
qualifiers like context and mode of description - notions that are
quite alien to the physicist's description of the world. Yet most
scientists accept that information concepts do legitimately apply to
biological systems, and they cheerfully treat semantic information
as if it were a natural quantity like energy. Unfortunately, "meaning"
sounds perilously close to purpose, an utterly taboo subject in biology.
So we are left with the contradiction that we need to apply concepts
derived from purposeful human activities (communication, meaning,
context, semantics) to biological processes that certainly appear
purposeful, but are in fact not (or are not supposed to be)."
[Davies commitment to methodological naturalism prevents
him from following through on this "contradiction."]
The fact that biology invokes intelligent design concepts like
proofreading and quality control in order to make sense of life
is, to me, very suggestive. Of course, this is not the type of
thing that is likely to trigger the suspicions of a naturalist,
as his/her trigger is set to detect only things that essentially
amount to the designer him/herself paying a visit to that
naturalist. But if biology is supposed to reduce to nothing
more than chemistry and physics, why do we need to appeal
to engineering concepts to make sense of biology? Where in
geology, astronomy, physics, and chemistry do we find the
concepts of proofreading and quality control?
It is often said that ID is not science and has contributed
nothing to science. But how can this be when biology is
built around ID concepts and language? How is it that
advances in our own understanding of our own designs
help to illuminate biology in a very fundamental way?
For example, in trying to explain feedback and homeostasis
to new biology students, biologists do not draw from basic
chemistry or physics. They draw from the manner in which
furnaces and thermostats are designed to work.
Or consider how one Japanese biotech company
(Yokoyama CytoLogic) describes the cell:
"During the early stages of cell evolution a very clever system
of information manipulation evolved: DNA became a repository
of genetic information; messenger RNA served as an active
copy of this information; and transfer RNAs together with various
enzymes acted as adaptors/translators, producing functional products,
i.e. proteins. This was a decoding process, which became fundamental
logic of all future organisms. Interestingly, this process can also be
viewed
as a type of "computer". In the language of mathematics the DNA is the
domain (or code table), the transfer RNA and associated enzymes a
function, and the protein products the range. By changing the content
of the domain or the structure of the function it is possible to produce
a range comprising many products. Since there are many thousands of
copies of the RNAs and enzymes involved in this process in a cell, this
"computer system" can be though of as being massively parallel, far
beyond anything that can now be constructed using solid state computer
hardware. The gradual understanding of this molecular logic, which has
been preserved throughout evolution, has not only been a great success
of basic science, but has also opened up the possibility of much new and
interesting technology involving information and data processing. By
employing the basic strategy of nature it is now possible to conceive
of rationally modifying the DNA and/or the transfer RNAs and their
associated enzymes in order to produce a wide variety of products."
That cellular processes are likened to computer processes clearly
means that our understanding and design of computers has shed
light on cells. Thus, intelligent design clearly guides science.
One of these days, someone is going to blow the whistle on the
fact that biologists are constantly putting their hands in the ID
cookie jar.
Mike