…and this is a 
Reclaiming design?
Category: Creationism
Posted on: February 22, 2008 11:19 AM, by PZ Myers
Ken Miller makes an interesting proposal to James Randerson: he thinks we ought to reclaim the word "design," and apply it to evolution. Not in the sense that the Intelligent Designists use it, as a proxy to imply a divine being, but because he says "design" is an emergent property of evolution. It's an interesting idea, but I have a couple of objections.
One is brought up by Randerson: doesn't "design" imply a "designer"? It's a problem that we might possibly overcome someday — I can say the word "thunder" now, without an audience immediately thinking of Thor — but language associations are a really tough nut to crack. Look at all the flailings about over the word "theory"; lay people will hear that word being used by scientists and conclude that the creationists must have been right all along long before they get around to remapping their mental connections to design.
Another problem is of even greater concern. The word "design" carries other implications: purpose, planning, calculation. These are not present in evolution! Miller isn't even trying to propose purposefulness in evolution — design, he is saying, is a consequence of the natural mechanism.
I don't think it can work. The creationists know PR and rhetoric, even if they are ignorant of biology, and they picked the word "design" by design — they know full well all the baggage the term hauls, and it's exactly the freight they want it to carry. They even use the word in the name of their rebranded creationism. Miller may be an excellent rhetorician in his own right, but I don't think he's good enough to pull off this switcheroo, which I suspect would be immediately spun by the creationist noise machine as a capitulation.
Comments
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Posted by: wÒÓ† | February 22, 2008 11:27 AM
I agree with you, PZ.
I do design work, & it's a purposeful process.
My clients generally don't seem to realize that what I do is to design something for them! They call it everything but design, usually 'report' or 'calculations'. I don't know what they think design is. Maybe they mostly think that design is coming up with a scheme or styling?
Posted by: Richard Harris | February 22, 2008 11:37 AM
I see the word "design" used in papers discussing evolved structures and systems, so it's not exactly without precedent. "Design" need not imply a "designer," it may refer simply to a kind of layout or pattern. One may say "the design of snowflakes," if one chooses, at least in the right context.
On the whole, though, I'm against using the term "design" for what has evolved. That's because we need to have a word for, say, the "designs" of genetically modified organisms. Sure, we can say they're "engineered," but that has different connotations than does "design," and often we might prefer to say that the computer chip, or the modified organism, was "designed" in the sense that implies a "designer".
We have words other than "design" for what has evolved, words like "adapted," "selected" (for a certain kind of evolution, for both of those words), "changed through time," or "evolved." Let's use them, and cease with the ambiguity of words like "design" for non-engineered life.
We should be able to speak of "designing life" as a kind of counterpart to "evolving life." The two are manifestly not the same (and Dawkins does us a disservice in suggesting that life looks designed--it really doesn't), there are indications of rationality in the narrower meaning of "design," while evolution is something which is not rational (even if it can sometimes produce results similar to a rational process).
So it's not that "design" cannot apply to matters without "designers," it's that really the word "design" ought to be pushed toward the sense that "design implies a designer." We need words which apply largely, if not exclusively, to rational processes, and which do not designate what evolution does on its own.
Ken Miller is an excellent scientist and a good guy, but he really ought to be pushing for better distinctions and less ambiguity, not worse distinctions and more ambiguity.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 11:38 AM
I have similar concerns. The same sort of semantics could be used to cloud the differentiation between a Deist and an atheist, because that differentiation depends on the meaning of the word "God". If "God" is simply the process, or force, that brought the universe into existence (assuming we can even nail down a specific definition of "existence"), it would arguably make Deists of us all. Similarly, we can no doubt tweak the meaning of design to include processes directed by natural external forces, rather than an internal sentient will. But we don't advance anywhere by farting around with language in this manner. If anything, this will spread confusions and doubt, which has been the central strategy of the Discovery Institute from the get-go. I fear that any sign of scientists vacillating over over semantics in this manner will only work to the DI's benefit more than anybody else's.
Posted by: DSK Samways | February 22, 2008 11:41 AM
I agree with your objections, but if there is anyone who could pull it off, it just might be Miller and others of like mind (very religious) who just might be able to shield themselves from the IDists attacks because of their religious connection. And above all I think he's right in that design IS an emergent property of evolution. And since evolution isn't a designer to begin with, that's why we're poorly 'designed'.
Posted by: severalspeciesof | February 22, 2008 11:41 AM
Well, evolution IS a design process, as evidenced by the usefulness of genetic algorithms in industry and computer science, but there definitely is a semantic problem with using the term "design." Evolution's "designer" is a combination of environment and causality, and that's going to be a hard sell to your typical fundamentalist.
Posted by: TheElkMechanic | February 22, 2008 11:42 AM
I always thought that Darwin avoided the word "evolution" because of worries connected to these. "Evolutio" means an unfolding of types (i.e., progress), whereas "descent with modification" avoids this.
Posted by: Bob | February 22, 2008 11:51 AM
Denyse O'Leary, has already got wind of this and made a reference on one of her 3 zillion ID Blogs that Miller is starting to use the 'design' word (I should try and dig out the link but why give her more hits, it only goes to her head). I think we all know what she's going to do with this...any nuance or subtlety in using the word will be predictably completely lost on her.
Posted by: Timcol | February 22, 2008 11:52 AM
Yet what's the alternative?
They say "eyes are designed to see", what's the response?
Hm. In some ways, this reminds me of the argument over the theory of evolution being "flawed" vs "not incorrect, but incomplete". Although there, the ambiguity is I think easier to resolve.
While it's correct, I think there's still a problem, maybe: adaptation; selection; changed; evolution: these are all words that refer to the process. "Design" refers to the current function.
Perhaps Miller is right, and we ought to combine the process with the current function, in direct opposition to "intelligent design"
"Eyes are evolutionarily designed to see."
?
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 22, 2008 11:55 AM
I forsee paroxysms of rage eminating from the direction of one L Moran!
Posted by: SteveF | February 22, 2008 11:57 AM
Here's an example of a paper which uses "design" as Miller would like us to do:
No, it's not a biology paper (I took the first one I found), but it does indicate how the "order of living systems" is sometimes called the "design of living systems." I looked at Nature's site because it's not an American journal, for the British haven't had as much reason to shy away from words like "design" that creationists/IDists will misconstrue for their own purposes.
Anyway, as I said previously, I think it's better to have more distinct words, rather than less distinct words, to avoid both accidental and deliberate confusion of what we mean.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 11:58 AM
And indeed lost of most of the people who think that ID could be in any way plausible. Add that to the deliberate bad faith and chicanery of Dumbski and his Disco Institute and this project is a dead duck. It's too easy to twist around and to no good purpose that I can see.
Posted by: Lilly de Lure | February 22, 2008 11:58 AM
An even tougher nut to crack is use of teleology in evolution. Do biological structures have purposes? Does the heart "function" to pump blood or is it merely the consequence of favorable adaptations that happens to pump blood?
Posted by: Jon Strong | February 22, 2008 11:58 AM
Design means CONSCIOUS design. We can't let these guys start labeling evolution this way, because it is not conscious. Design, implies planning. It implies intent to achieve a certain configuration. None of this is part of evolution.
I suspect this is just another way the ID proponents are trying to get to evolution. It reminds me of the claims that atheism is a "religion". Atheism is not a religion, and evolutions has nothing to do with design.
Posted by: Leart | February 22, 2008 12:01 PM
I've often derailed an argument from design by agreeing that (insert feature, most commonly "the eye") is designed, and then clarifying that "the designer" is the non-intentional duo of descent with modification and natural selection. This only works when dealing with the intellectually honest, though. Otherwise, they start bleating that design requires a designer, and only an intelligent entity can be a designer. It's usually no good to ask them to provide arguments for those viewpoints, or to point to counterexamples like genetic programming.
Posted by: ShavenYak | February 22, 2008 12:05 PM
Or at least to the current arrangement of parts. "Function" and "design" are not synonyms.
But sure, you have a legitimate point. However, we also have words that can substitue for "design" as the "current arrangment" (does "arrangement" imply an "arranger"? By convention, not as much as "designer" tends to imply a "designer," even though "design" need not do so, either), like layout, pattern, articulations, or, yes, "arrangement".
As I implied in my more recent post, Americans have tended to avoid "design" for living things more than the British, and they have not been stymied by a lack of usable words to get across their meaning. I myself would prefer for "design" to become more heavily, perhaps exclusively, used for that which was purposefully designed, so that when we don't use that word we will be indicating that we're not at all implying purpose or telic processes behind what we see today in non-engineered biology.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 12:17 PM
Ken Miller says that design is real and that it is an emergent property of evolution.
I couldn't agree more.
Evolution is a process of change over time. In the course of this change. organization (not complexity!) emerges. Miller fails however to identify the mechanism by which this design emerges.
The real quention is whether random processes, accidental events or fortuitous occurrences can generate the design he (and everyone else) can clearly see.
Answer? They cannot. The only way that this "design" (which I call organization} can occur is with intelligent input.
A mousetrap has a quality called organization, which is much different from complexity or order. Each part of the mousetrap, the platform, the holding bar, the spring, the hammer and the catch each have specific functions. And each of these functions are organized in such a way that they support the other functions and the overall function of the mousetrap, which is to catch mice. The function of the platform is to hold the parts, but it's there ultimately to facilitate the process of mouse catching. The function of the spring is to exert a force on the hammer, but it's ultimate goal is to enable the process of mouse catching. All of the parts have functions that not only support the other functions, but ultimately support the overall function of the device. This type of organization is not obtainable without insight, and insight always requires intelligence. There is no way that these parts could be assembled in such a manner without insight. A mousetrap is a simple machine, made up of several structures and processes and exists for a purpose. The construction of the mousetrap was initiated with intent, and fashioned for a purpose. Living organisms are similarly machines, with structures and processes that work together to create a function. In fact, all complex, highly organized machines in which means are adapted to ends are the product of intelligent design. The important point is that the adaptation of means to ends, the adaptation of structure and process to function requires insight. A mousetrap is unevolvable without intelligent input, not because you can't take it apart without it losing it's function, it's unevolvable because you can't put it together in the first place using only random, non-directed, accidental occurrences. The selection of the parts, the configuration in which they're aligned, the assembly into one unit all require intelligent decisions at every step of the way. Similarly, living organisms show the same characteristics. It's not that you can't remove parts and lose total function, it's that you can't explain why these particular parts were selected, why they're integrated together in just such a way and how they were assembled from raw materials without invoking an intelligent agent.
Posted by: abu el banat | February 22, 2008 12:18 PM
What would be the pitfall in the term "Natural Design" as opposed to "Intelligent Design?"
For one, if you set it up as the Battle of Designs -- Natural vs. Intelligent -- it makes it more palatable for the public to understand. Scientists, ND proponents, can say "here's all the evidence that shows design is natural and not supernatural, certainly not intelligent" and the ID people would still be left to the same insurmountable task of having to show evidence for Intelligent Design. Fruit won't work at that point, and ND wins by default.
This of course changes nothing as evolution still has all the evidence and ID has none. But it would be harder for ID proponents to chip away at evolution with their petty attacks and vapid arguments if the "other" design was stacked up in a column right next to ID, with all the evidence tipping the scale. I think this would be more palatable for the general public.
Ken Miller has a good idea. It could be a brilliant and effective riposte that could conceivably send the IDers further into the abyss of shame in which they've entrenched themselves..
Posted by: MarquisDeSade | February 22, 2008 12:20 PM
With a qualifier the word design could work. Personally I really like the sound of Evolutionary Emergent Design or just Emergent Design. Emergent Design has another meaning in education reform theory, but it's not uncommon for words to have dual meanings.
I mean come on wouldn't it be useful to say, "yes there is design but it is not intelligent design it is emergent design, ED not ID."
Posted by: Colin | February 22, 2008 12:21 PM
I like it, for at least one reason. That would be, as soon as you say, 'fine, it WAS designed --by natural selection, by a contingent, stochastic process,' then you can contrast that with the IDer's meaning, 'rational design methods.' And since it's trivially easy to show that many living structures and systems were designed with anything but rational methods, the IDer absolutely has to start with some attempt at characterization of the designer's methods or an obvious evasion of same.
"Subtle is the Lord," indeed, but what IDer wants to start there? I think it highlights that ID is just more apologetics.
Better rhetorically, to me, than Dawkins's circumlocution, 'designoid.' Taking that tack just encourages them. And assuming up front that creationists are better at rhetoric is BS. Go ahead, give 'em some rope. The first thing they'll do, every time, is tie a noose. After that, they need very little encouragement to try it on for size.
Posted by: CJO | February 22, 2008 12:26 PM
Design, implies planning. It implies intent to achieve a certain configuration. None of this is part of evolution.
Yes, it is. We evolved, and one of the things we evolved to do was to have the capacity to design things. I don't think this is such a red herring.
Posted by: speedwell | February 22, 2008 12:29 PM
No, I think it's exactly the opposite. Miller is the worst person to try this because of his religious background -- the atheists are going to see him as trying to sneak religion into evolution just like the IDists and will oppose it, while the theists are going to see it the same way and support it for the same reason many like ID. A Dawkins would be more credible on this plan, because no one would see him as trying to smuggle planning and purpose into evolution.
Posted by: PZ Myers | February 22, 2008 12:29 PM
I've always liked Richard Dawkin's word: designoid ("Designoid objects - those which owe their good fit to functional constraints to causes other than conscious intention or selection.") I think it acknowledges the designed-like features of living things without implying a designer (or a Designer, if you prefer...)
Posted by: Philip T | February 22, 2008 12:30 PM
What is wrong with using the word "design" to indicate function? Eyes are obviously designed to provide vision, lungs oxygen, muscles motility, etc. Denying common word usage is not a good tactic in argument. But then again, "reclaiming" that word is not going to impress anyone, either.
Posted by: uncle noel | February 22, 2008 12:30 PM
Posted by: Stanton | February 22, 2008 12:31 PM
"designo -are [to mark out , trace, plan]; in gen., [to point out, indicate, signify; to portray, delineate]; polit., [to nominate, elect]; partic. designatus -a -um, [elected, designated]."
Etymology doesn't really favour the use of this word with respect to evolution. I'm sure scientists have been tempted to use it in the past, but then scientists have also used the term "theory" in its weaker, mainstream sense before, and in doing so provided the anti-science crowd with no small amount of ammunition. We should be clearing up our semantic act, not rendering it even more fuzzy and open to liberal interpretation.
Posted by: DSK Samways | February 22, 2008 12:39 PM
Has it never occurred to you people that the mousetrap is used as an "analogy" for life precisely because it could never evolve? It reveals absolutely none of the traits of evolved organisms, as it cannot reproduce, it has no genetic history with, say, tieclips, and it is precisely and rationally considered with a purpose in mind.
The closest equivalents in biology are organisms like hawks and venus fly-traps (scale it up, and it might catch mice). These things are nothing like a designed mousetrap, they are almost completely different.
They are not made out of metals, for biology is constrained by its past, and evolving to have a steel spring is well-nigh impossible. That's why life lacks metal springs, because it evolved, it was not designed.
Hawks and venus fly-traps also betray their evolutionary pasts in ways never seen in designed objects (design often does have antecedents, but never the kind of adherence to past structures that life has). For instance, why does the hawk have wings modified from dinosaur forelegs? What possible design principle could explain that? I'm waiting, tell me what design principle making wings out of dinosaur forelegs entails
Why weren't hawk wings made from pterodactyl wings? Or from pterodactyl legs, if your "designer" has some kind of mental problem that prevents adapting wings to make wings? Why are bat wings modified from mammalian legs. Why are bat wings modified from bird wings, from dinosaur legs, from pterodactyl wings, or from pterodactyl legs?
We know why bat wings are modified mammallian forelimbs, which is that evolution had no other material to work with. That is to say, evolution predicts that bats won't have for their flying function modified bird wings (so long as horizontal gene transfer between vertebrates is limited, as it is--and even if it weren't, it's not clear if such a transfer could actually take place) or modified pterodactyl wings, or modified forelimbs of any organism except for their ancestors.
Design principles would suggest that bat wings, or hawk wings, would come either from first principles, or from using similar (and I mean similar in origin) forms for similar problems. You know what? We never, ever see either design from first principles or similar forms for similar problems in organisms which are limited in horizontal gene transfer, we always see only modifications of ancestral traits in such organisms. No design principles are ever found to have informed evolution.
Find something in life that is like a mousetrap. That's your duty. Find something that was conceived as a solution to a problem, rationally considered, and implemented with the best materials available for the purpose. You'll never find that in non-engineered life, for life isn't the least bit like a mousetrap.
But thanks for bringing up the mousetrap, for it does reveal something, which is that an object which is designed is fundamentally different from one that has evolved, like a hawk or a venus fly-trap.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 12:40 PM
As a designer myself, I can see both view points. Sure, traditionally, designing has meant creating a plan to build something, whether in one, two, or three dimensions. Obviously, this would be innapropriate when considering life forms. However, the Eamses definition of design, that it's about problem solving, could perhaps be used.
Still, I tend to agree with PZ and others here who have voiced concerns over how the use of this word would play out in society.
Posted by: Dahan | February 22, 2008 12:43 PM
I think it could be worth trying, but only if the word Design is properly qualified :
Example
- it appears as if elements of the natural world are designed, but this apparent design is not the result of a purposeful designer, but one that emerges from nature itself, via the process of evolution.
I think it is important to comfront this important issue of apparent design in nature, at least for the more moderate and sufficiently educated folks. A lot of them think that many elements of nature look designed, and we should explain why there is this appearance of design.
For the fundies, and the blatantly ignorant crowds, nothing will work anyway.
One thing I like is that it does go straight against the IDists which keep playing the card that the "apparent design", can only be the work of a highly intelligent designer. It will force them into having to define who is this designer (which they always refuse to do, as they obviously cannot).
I think it needs work, but it is definitely worth thinking about.
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 22, 2008 12:45 PM
My last post was in response to abu el banat. It was clear enough when I wrote it, but when I softened it (realizing that his was a more polite and reasonable post than those of most creationists we get), who I was responding to got taken out.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 12:45 PM
Daniel Dennett has already taken some big steps in appropriating the word Design to account for design by blind algorythmical (sp?) processes in his book 'Darwin's Dangerous Idea'.
Posted by: Mark S | February 22, 2008 12:48 PM
I agree with the above critique, and the matter is made worse by the fact that Ken Miller, though a fine biologist and supporter of evolution, -does- believe in a designer. (He is, nominally, Catholic.)
Interestingly enough (to me), I was compared to Dr. Miller by his daughter in high school, so I know he can't be all bad. :-)
Posted by: B. Dewhirst | February 22, 2008 12:50 PM
I forsee paroxysms of rage eminating from the direction of one L Moran!
....and soft-spoken, erudite and measured disagreement from the direction of Melbourne.
I agree with the "anti" side: the word "design" carries way too much teleological baggage (and I find Dawkins "appearance of..." language to be a bit of an obfuscatory cop-out). For that matter, even "function" implies purpose, which suggests intent. It's damned hard to navigate the semantic minefield.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | February 22, 2008 12:51 PM
And just how do they appear to be designed?
Just because Dawkins says so doesn't make it true. He lacks the training to deal precisely with linguistic distinctions.
Additionally, while one could perhaps make a case for life "looking designed" prior to the development of the well-attested predictions from evolution, the fact is that life looks evolved in the light of evolution, with a huge number of clearly evident differences existing between our designs and the arrangements of life.
You only have to "comfront this important issue of apparent design in nature" if it's true. And those who say it's true have the "burden of proof." So give us this endlessly prattled "appearance of design" if you can, or act like scientists and simply deal with what is given sans prejudice and without an overlay of antiquated metaphysical BS.
I get very tired of this nonsense, which I expect from creationists, but which are wholly unwarranted from anyone who claims to prefer science to old prejudices.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 12:54 PM
Sorry, my last paragraph should have read :
"One thing I like is that it does go straight against the IDists which keep playing the card that the Design, can only be the work of a highly intelligent designer. It will force them into having to define who is this designer (which they always refuse to do, as they obviously cannot). "
We need to point out that Design is only Apparant.
It appears designed, but this apparance stems from well understood and already observed natural processes.
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 22, 2008 12:59 PM
The very word design implies intelligence and yes, planning. I totally disagree with calling evolution "design". As a designer, I hear the word misused enough as it is, people fling it around in reference to all kinds of things from random patterns to the work of highly skilled engineers. The word evolution is far more suited to the facts regarding living things and their makeup, which simply haven't been planned by any intelligent being. I would tend to think chaos-type patterns, organic fractal information, is more of what is at work there.
Posted by: Laura | February 22, 2008 1:01 PM
"- it appears as if elements of the natural world are designed, but this apparent design is not the result of a purposeful designer, but one that emerges from nature itself, via the process of evolution."
But we cannot say this. The best strategy has always been to simply state, "We cannot test the hypothesis that there is a God, it is purely an ontological issue" and leave it at that. After all, there could be a designer in the conventional sense (as all Catholics must believe, even Ken Miller), but we have no way of testing for it. There is already an "out", as it were, for theists to believe in evolution and a creator (it's a tenuous out, but it suffices on the basis of its inability to be proven one way or the other); I don't think Kenneth Miller needs to build on that "out".
So not only is the appropriation of creationist language probably going to cause more harm than good, it isn't even required anyway.
Re the current definitions of "design" and the word's etymology, in the vast majority of cases the word is used to describe a sentient action. Short of some spectacular redefinition of the word, and for that redefinition to be rapidly and expansively established among the laity, Ken Miller's plan is sure to backfire, imho.
Posted by: DSK Samways | February 22, 2008 1:03 PM
Design isn't a good word because it can be so easily misconstrued. Design has multiple meanings. I think it would be better to emphasize a different word, one that can be more easily shaped to mean what the biologists want it to mean, and one that doesn't have so many possible meanings.
For example, no one would say "Structure implies there's a Structurer!" or "Form implies a former!". Yet "Design implies a Designer" works.
Posted by: Inoculated Mind | February 22, 2008 1:05 PM
Glen,
"And just how do they appear to be designed?"
but I think that's the idea, many folks believe that they were designed, well no, we tell them that this is just an appearance. That in fact, this appearance stems from purely natural processes.
Same as the sun appears to be orbiting the earth, when we know it's the other way round.
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 22, 2008 1:05 PM
It's the concept of emergenge and emergent properties in complex structures that needs to be stressed, studied, understood, and propagated. It's not necessarily an easy concept to wrap one's brain around, but neither is it unapproachable by the layperson. I understand it (however imperfectly) and I'm not a scientist. Once emergence becomes the paradigm around which we understand how ID arguments like irreducible complexity are refuted, then we can realize that "design" could simply become a synonymous term to emergenge, as long as the context is maintained intact.
For those readers who are not up to speed on emergence, I strongly recommend a little reading up. My favorite is from Scientific Realism: Selected Essays by Mario Bunge, Edited by Martin Mahner, Prometheus Books 2001; specifically Chapter 4, Emergence and the Mind. Of course, there's plenty of online material available too, and you're invited to do your own searching.
The concept of emergent properties is fascinating. For me, it finally explained how what we call "mind" is indeed only a function of brain activity, even though it seems that a human mind is much too complex a thing to be solely physically based. And yet, once you understand emergence, it becomes necessarily clear.
Posted by: Forrest Prince | February 22, 2008 1:08 PM
Unfortunately, the term "designability" is used in structural biology already, and I've never liked it precisely because it sounds uncomfortably close to "intelligent design". A highly designable fold in a protein is one that can be achieved with many different amino acid sequences, and it has even been correlated with evolutionary rates:
Jesse D. Bloom , D. Allan Drummond , Frances H. Arnold , and Claus O. Wilke (2006) Structural Determinants of the Rate of Protein Evolution in Yeast. Mol Biol Evol 23: 1751-1761.
Where the relevant portion of the abstract is:
"Our basic hypothesis is that proteins with highly designable structures (structures that are encoded by many sequences) will evolve more rapidly. Recent theoretical advances argue that structures with a higher density of interresidue contacts are more designable, and we show that high contact density is correlated with an increased rate of sequence evolution in yeast."
Obviously, Bloom et al. (2006) aren't saying anything positive about ID. But it seems to me that expanding the use of the term design even further in evolutionary biology is a bad idea.
Posted by: Edward Braun | February 22, 2008 1:10 PM
Many of the ancient myths of animal and human origin do not include purposeful "design" of any kind. Indeed, the tales are often enough about some kind of reproduction or transformation. Others do involve sculpture of some sort (as in Genesis), but this is simply a matter of reproducing what the god saw, that is, Yahweh models humans on himself. He does not "design" in the manner that humans design oxcarts, he's an artist, mimicking what already exists.
How could it be otherwise? What we make doesn't happen to look like life, and humans have always known this to be the case. Already in Homer we see automata being made by Hephaistos. Why weren't these robots called life, instead of techne (whether Homer uses the word "techne" I don't recall, but that's the mode of their portrayal, in any case)? It's because the Greeks already differentiated between techne and physis. Techne was what humans did, physis was the "nature of life" so to speak, something that was quite different from (and generally thought better than) techne.
The bare, horrible idea of "design" of life, that is, in the same sense as humans design things, comes in around the 18th and 19th centuries, with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Paley's notions of "designed life" (he had predecessors for that claim, unsurprisingly). Previous to that, life was something divine, a soul, a spark. Yahweh was not "just an artist" in Genesis, he also breathed spirit into Adam. Life wasn't analogous to what we made, life was not only quantitatively but qualitatively different. Indeed, vitalism afflicted even evolution for much of the 19th century and into the 20th century.
In a sense, the IDists want both vitalism and Frankenstein. We're supposed to look at life and notice that it's just machines, after all, which they sometimes suggest could be made by aliens having a high technology. On the other hand, they insist on vitalism, that consciousness is something that "materialism" can never explain, and that the soul exists (after all, what's going to survive death and reap the reward of religion?).
Their "appearance of design" is always a kind of "design" which is unlike our own, and suspiciously close to what evolution predicts (ad hoc fitting is the reason, naturally). Ergo, life "appears designed," but it's really qualitatively different, at least in humans, and the design isn't actually analogous with our own design.
What could it possibly mean to say that life "looks designed" when it doesn't look like known design, that is, our designs? What it really means is that life does not look designed, they just want to shove God in our faces and proclaim that life actually is a vitalistic miracle not only beyond our own power to engineer, but even beyond our comprehension ('we'll never understand consciousness').
If life "looks designed," that implies that it looks like our designs, because in the more narrow and usual sense of "design," it is known only through what we produce. Sure, there are some resemblances between our designs and living organisms, but the differences are so great that most of the ancients always saw life as being obviously qualititatively different from design.
Don't forget, the IDists aren't so much claiming that life was designed, as that it was "miracled" into existence. They know that life doesn't appear to be designed, they know that in the past, and in the present of too many people, life looks like a miracle. They couldn't sell miracles by name to science, so they're claiming that life is so well designed that it looks miraculous, and in fact it is miraculous in the case of human consciousness.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 1:31 PM
The very essence of framing, PZ. You noted all the baggage of the word "design" and don't want to influence people to make all the associations to a designer, where the creationists do want those associations and so use the word. Ta da.
Posted by: Efogoto | February 22, 2008 1:33 PM
I just want to fashion the above, the last sentence of my previous post, into a better design, to keep things clear:
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 1:35 PM
I'm entirely against it. The word "design" definitely implies a designer -- there's no two ways about it.
I'm a graphic designer, so that may influence my thinking about the word. However, every popular dictionary I checked also consists of definitions that imply foresight, which we know works against what we would like the other side to understand. The root of their problem is a confusion over natural selection -- if anything, that's the phrase we should be refining if our ultimate purpose is a better understanding by the public.
I think using "design" would backfire. As soon as a few serious scholars used it, the ID crowd, not having the burden of having something constructive to do, would work overtime to quote those uses and imply that those scientists were pointing to a designer. It doesn't matter if they meant to, they would just quote it and use it and never bother to correct it -- as usual.
Posted by: Kyle W. | February 22, 2008 1:37 PM
Matthew 22:21
Render unto
Caeasarbiologists what isCaesar'sbiologists', and toGodcreationists what isGod'screationists'.Posted by: Tony Jeremiah | February 22, 2008 1:38 PM
Well, this is not a new problem. After all, Darwin faced it too in connection with "Natural Selection," which implies a "selector." Wallace told him:
Of course, "survival of the fittest" brought its own set of problems, didn't it?
Posted by: John Pieret | February 22, 2008 1:46 PM
I was going to disagree with you until I realized (DUH!!) that one of the favorite tricks IDists use is the misuse of quotes.
Posted by: severalspeciesof | February 22, 2008 1:48 PM
It's not "design" everybody sees. It's "pattern", isn't it?
Posted by: T.J. | February 22, 2008 1:52 PM
Merriam-Webster online gives 8 subsections for the noun form of design; all but 2 of them refer to conscious intention. I think the semantic deck is too stacked against Miller on this one. I mean, if the preponderance of meanings don't matter, why not say that organisms were "masterminded" by evolutionary processes? No--preponderance of meanings does matter.
For an interesting linguistic experiment, consider this. Would you say that a snowflake "has a design"? Now, would you say that a snowflake "is designed"? Notice how you are (I would guess) much more reluctant to admit the second phrase than the first. This is because the bare noun "design" is interpreted in the context of a snowflake as a pattern, whereas the past participle "designed" is almost always used in English in the context of some intelligent agent--a designer--behind it.
I get the sense that it is functionality which makes all the difference. Snowflakes have no function. They are intricate, but they don't do anything with that intricacy (other than appeal to the eye). When intricate structures do specific things we start to think of them as "designed"--but one has to wonder how much of that is a semantic borrowing from our common conception that intricate things which do something are made by people?
Posted by: cm | February 22, 2008 1:53 PM
I'm at work, so I don't have time to add anything of substance, but I know /I/ always think of Thor when there's thunder. (And rock and roll.)
Posted by: Andrew | February 22, 2008 1:54 PM
J. Scott Turner, a physiologist at SUNY, and definitely not an ID creationist, has written much on this topic. Some of his stuff is available here; note especially this recent book.
Other than, you know, writing about a dozen excellent books. What are your latest accomplishments, Glen?
Posted by: Sven DiMIlo | February 22, 2008 1:55 PM
negentropyeater said:
Does anyone know who it was (a philosopher, maybe Wittgenstein, or was it a scientist?) who supposedly had a dialogue with a friend about this very point and hushed his friend by saying something to the effect of, "Well, what would it appear like if the Earth rotated?" (the point being, that what we observe is completely consistent with that too, and there is a mistake to assume that it only looks like the sun appears to be orbiting the Earth).I rather enjoyed this point, but I can't remember where I read it. Help, please.
Posted by: cm | February 22, 2008 1:59 PM
Don't know how I missed the repeated references, but several are still claiming that the eye is "designed to see," and then clarifying that statement by pointing out that the "designer" is blind and ignorant. The qualifying statement destroys the use of the word "design." Design implies the intention to have a particular end result. There is no such thing as blind design unless you're willing to completely redefine design.
If you wanted to say that the eye does have a design, it would (maybe) only be applicable in the sense that our DNA contains the instructions for cells to build a certain mass of tissue with certain properties, connected to the brain in a certain way (which happens to allow us to see). This is "design" in the sense that there is a set of genetic blueprints which output a particular end result... but the resulting eyeball doesn't see because it was designed to see, it is just reconstructing the DNA passed along to it. That DNA was passed along because of favorable traits, i.e. the sense of sight, that allowed the organism to survive and procreate. I don't believe anyone here is having trouble understanding how that works. DNA does contain what could be termed designs, but they are not purposeful designs -- they're just mimicking the previous generation's favorable traits (again, not because it finds them favorable, but because the process of living does). I have no problem with using "design" in describing individual aspects of organisms, but attempting to use it in the realm of evolution would be a disservice to science.
Posted by: Kyle W. | February 22, 2008 2:00 PM
Glen D:
Superficially. That is, on the surface. And that is the problem. We're dealing with people whose thought processes are themselves totally superficial (and usually dishonest but that's another topic). They really cannot believe that something as exquisite as a snowdrop - or a snow flake - can come about by accident. 'Accidental' being their only alternative explanation.
Incidentally, I passed by a discarded length of wire-fencing today. Just broken and tossed aside. It had trapped half a dozen plastic bags, flapping in the wind. Hm, a plasticbagtrap. Very efficient, too. How ... intelligent. How ... designed.
Posted by: pedlar | February 22, 2008 2:01 PM
Stupid question: I accept that evolution doesn't reflect planning or calculation, but isn't there purpose? Isn't evolutionary change motivated by a particular environmental or biological need? If so, wouldn't that essentially define it as a purposeful action/reaction to stimulus?
Sorry, just being a semantic stickler.
Posted by: defectiverobot | February 22, 2008 2:07 PM
Glen,
"What it really means is that life does not look designed..."
I was there just a few years back. I had a vague recollection from my biology classes many years ago, and when hearing someone saying "there is design in Nature", I'd think, hmmm, actually , Nature does look as if it were designed.
Then I decided, at age 40, to start studying Biology again, to really try to better understand. I had received a scientific education (French "Grande Ecole"), and I was really interested to find out what was the truth, and quite quickly, I realised why this appearance of Design was just a useless preconception. That it looked designed, but that it wasn't. That it is a purely natural, unguided, process, that of evolution, that leads to a given result. That this result may look designed, a priori, but that it is just not the case. Just an appearance, something which emerges from the process. But in order to understand that, one has first to understand the process well enough. And for many, many people, that's not easy.
That's why, you cannot ignore these preconceptions. You have to explain why they are wrong.
Posted by: negentropyeater | February 22, 2008 2:09 PM
Another way of looking that the design-miracle connection that the IDists rely upon, while trying to hide it in some cases, is that IDists like Dembksi simply think of "design" as being something outside of nature. Whether it's humans or gods, creativity and design are doing what nature and its "lawful processes" are unable to do.
That's why things "look designed" to them. They really don't go around pointing to similarities between our machines and life--except sometimes when prosetylizing--instead they're "pointing out" that natural processes can't make life. They say that things "look designed," because design is magic, and magic is design, hence the miracles and creativity that God used to make life is "design" to them.
That's also why "inferring design" is the default position whenever something can't be precisely explained. The point isn't that a "process of design" explains why a bird is as it is, the point indeed is that nothing explains it, which means to them that a miraculous process like human consciousness and thought did it. The fact that a bird isn't like our designs isn't important to them, because they don't think in terms of design being "natural" or "predictable," rather they see design as miraculous and unpredictable.
The situation is that their vitalistic notions regarding the human mind are what make conversing with them useless. They were never talking about observed design when they said that "life looks designed," they were saying that "life looks magical and unexplainable except through the magic of godlike or god-given minds." They weren't trying to explain the unknown through the known, because to them, by definition, the human mind and its processes are unknowns. They were trying to explain the unknown (to them) by the unknown (to them), explaining the mystery of life through the mystery of life.
The whole project is hideously circular, then. The mind is supernatural and unpredictable, and only something supernatural and unpredictable could give rise to the mind. Hence God, who is also supernatural and unpredictable mind, gave rise to mind.
The only flaw in that circularity is that life is predictable in many of its aspects via evolutionary theory. That is why evolutionary theory must go. Were they going to try to show that evolutionary theory doesn't work in science, either as an organizer or as a useful idea? Of course not, their entire reason for hating evolution is that it explains life, and they need life to be necessarily dependent for its origins upon God.
Therefore they have to "prove" that life can't be explained by MET, and we're quite familiar with their usual bumbling, misapprehension, and ideology-driven prevarication in their attempts to do so. Evolution destroys their miraculous mind which has to come from another miraculous mind, which means that evolution must be destroyed.
To their minds, saying that "life looks designed" makes perfect sense in their desire to overthrow evolution, because they're operating on the assumption that "it doesn't look like it appeared naturally" is exactly the same thing as "look designed" to them. Dembski's EF depends on that notion--he doesn't care about showing that life looks or is designed by comparing design with design, he's implicitly counting on the equation "not natural=designed." All that the EF is even supposed to do is to show that life is "not natural." That would mean nothing at all with respect to design if Dembski didn't presuppose that "not natural=designed."
So not even the IDists think that life "looks designed" in the ordinary sense, they really mean that life "doesn't look natural," which to their minds means that it was produced by the supernatural, IOW, a mind.
I have no idea why Dawkins thinks that life "appears designed," except that he was acculturated to believe that it does. The IDists don't even mean the same thing as he does when they say that life "appears designed," because the IDists think that "looks miraculous=looks designed."
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 22, 2008 2:19 PM
I don't get that at all, I would think he was trying to nail down the confusion (and in some cases, obfuscation) with people mistaking emergent "designs" for designed artifacts.
"Designoids" is more of a side step IMHO. I would prefer to abstract it instead, as "functional structures" would work. Or at least I imagine so, as I understand that evolution results in functions, and here we are discussing structures performing said functions.
Besides, as a physicist reminds us - structures, patterns, boundary conditions, and a method of interpretation is all we need. Not Miller's superfluous "designer".
(Indeed, it feels like the usual bait-and-switch scam, as Miller will immediately replace the natural process "designer" with his theistic evolution designer when he wants to.)
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson, OM | February 22, 2008 2:22 PM
If I ask whether external ears are designed more for increased sensitivity or telling direction, no one is going to think I'm promoting religion. Wouldn't it be obtuse to object to the word "design" in that context?
The relevant point here is whether it's a good idea to claim that natural selection really designs things, to which I would have to say "no": things that just happen naturally aren't designed.
Posted by: uncle noel | February 22, 2008 2:24 PM
It's similar to the problem of the word "creature" implying "creator."
also - the designs of evolution require no designers, only design appreciators (us).
Posted by: Rick | February 22, 2008 2:24 PM
defectiverobot said:
I have to answer no to the first two, and therefore also to the third.
Is there purpose? No. The changes that are beneficial are random and aren't a matter of the organism willfully changing itself to better suit its environment.
Is evolutionary change motivated by a particular environmental or biological need? Again I say no. Evolutionary change is started by random mutation, not as a response to "environmental or biological needs." An animal doesn't look to nature, realize it would be beneficial if it had armored skin, and set the process of developing thick skin in motion. The randomness of the changes precludes our use of words like design, plan, purpose, etc.
Posted by: Kyle W. | February 22, 2008 2:26 PM
Y'know, sometimes I read this blog and think that the Pharyngula crowd is so provincial and intellectually inbred it's horrifying.
I am a self-proclaimed "ignorant computer scientist," but I have some ivory-tower biology (and scientific/engineering dilettante ) background and I'm working on getting more. I know a lot of biology researchers. I read a lot of biology books and papers.
I know a lot of you are all up-in-arms about the "intelligent design" (bowel) movement, but frankly, a whole lot of world-class biology researchers use "design" commonly in describing entirely valid things that support evolution all the time.
There is a legitimate argument that teleology sometimes leads to misconceptions (although I think there is a similar argument that denial of all teleology also leads to misconceptions) but all this bullshit about "design" being a four-letter word rejects all sorts of mainstream biologists. I'm sitting in on a class taught by Eric Davidson on cis-regulatory networks and their evo-devo implications and I've noticed that he uses the word "design" occasionally to describe things like how gene batteries lead to embryogenesis and such, not because he thinks that there's an intelligent designer or any such crap (which never comes up at all, of course) but because it's a terse way of describing the systems.
It can be a metaphor, which is always good to keep in mind when doing technical stuff, but it's a useful shorthand for some people to think about some aspects of biology, just like I can tell my mechanic "when I hit the brakes, the car wants to go to the left" -- my mechanic and I both know damn well that the car doesn't "want" anything, but it's still a valid way to describe the failure mode in my wheel alignment in a terse way. Similarly, confusing selection pressure or evolutionary opportunism with intent can lead to mistakes, so it shouldn't be taken as a given, but it can also lead to insights if one thinks of it as "there is a big selective advantage to anything that stumbles on a better way to do X or to move to niche/environment Y" in the shorthand of "the bacteria want to find a way to survive in the presence of penicillin"-- the bacteria don't "want" anything, but it doesn't matter if you think of it that way if you're looking for the mechanism rather than the underlying philosophy.
Many authors I respect quite a bit, who aren't by any means associated with "Intelligent Design" pinheads and for all I know could be frothing-at-the-mouth atheists, have been using the word design for longer than the "intelligent design" movement has existed, or at least long before I ever heard of it. According to Wikipedia (dubious, of course) the ID "movement" started in response to a 1987 court ruling. Steven Vogel published Life's Devices in 1988, so I doubt ID existed when he was writing it. I've been astounded that J. Scott Turner gripes on his website that knee-jerk anti-creationists have attacked his lectures for use of "design," e.g. in his book The Tinkerer's Accomplice, which, if the attackers