The Search for Intelligent Design Theory

Gert Kortoff has written a review of Behe's Edge of Evolution. He points out:

Readers interested in "Intelligent Design Theory" will be disappointed. The reader won't find an exposition of the Intelligent Design Theory. Nine out of ten chapters are about the limitations of neo-Darwinian evolution and the last chapter is about fine-tuning. There is no chapter devoted to design theory. Not even one paragraph describing what design theory actually is. ... Behe has the complete freedom to write about design theory, but no coherent treatment of the theory can be found. Professor Jerry Coyne stated "his theory is flat wrong" (here). But, there is no design theory in this book. There are a bunch of observations and suggestive allusions to a theory. But not a coherent treatment of design theory. ... Is it really unfair or unreasonable to expect in this book a coherent description of design theory after more than 10 years since his Darwin's Black Box?

More like this

The title of this post is a famous question (posed, for example, by Joe Polchinski) which is modeled after an even more famous question by Ken Wilson, "What is Quantum Field Theory?".
Hoisted from the comments, Robin asks:
Bret Underwood, a friend of mine from my time in Madison, WI, saw my post on String Theory, and took issue with my statement that it wasn't testable. I'm still standing behind what I said, but let's address what Bret has to say.
"As of now, string theorists have no explanation of why there are three large dimensions as well as time, and the other dimensions are microscopic. Proposals about that have been all over the map." -Edward Witten

Disappointed, but not surprised. Has there ever been a book about Intelligent Design that was not a philipic against evolution? So many words, so little substance.

To see Stephen Colbert talk rings around Behe, click here.