Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Irreducible Complexity Revisited (PCID)
[Dembski, PCID, '04]
Abstract:
"Michael Behe's concept of irreducible complexity, and in particular his use of this concept to critique Darwinism, continues to come under heavy fire from the biological community. The problem with Behe, so Darwinists inform us, is that he has created a problem where there is no problem. Far from constituting an obstacle to the Darwinian mechanism of random variation and natural selection, irreducible complexity is thus supposed to be eminently explainable by this same mechanism. But is it really? It's been eight years since Behe introduced irreducible complexity in Darwin's Black Box - a book that continues to sell 15,000 copies per year in English alone (Amazon UK | US). I want in this essay to revisit Behe's concept of irreducible complexity and indicate why the problem he has raised is, if anything, still more vexing for Darwinism than when he first raised it. The first four sections of this essay review and extend material that I've treated elsewhere. The last section contains some novel material."
technorati tags: irreducible+complexity, darwinism, natural+selection, darwin, dembski
As promised in last night's Personal Post (Are Human Beings 'Irreducibly Complex'? A whimsical thought...) here is the caveat:
My perception of the concept [irreducible complexity] is similar to that of Pierre-Paul Grasse who believed 'Internal Factors' were involved in how evolutionary changes occurred - see Grasse, Behe, and "Irreducible Complexity". [John Latter]
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