文档介绍：Biology and Philosophy 16: 685–709, 2001.
© 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in herlands.
ReplytoMyCritics:
A Response to Reviews of Darwin’s Black Box:
The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
MICHAEL J. BEHE
Department of Biological Sciences
Lehigh University
111 Research Drive
Bethlehem, PA 18015
.
E-mail: michael.******@
Abstract. In Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution I argued that
purposeful intelligent design, rather than Darwinian natural selection, better explains some
aspects of plexity that modern science has discovered at the molecular foundation
of life. In the five years since its publication the book has been widely discussed and has
received considerable criticism. Here I respond to what I deem to be the most fundamental
objections. In the first part of the article I address empirical criticisms based on experimental
studies alleging either that biochemical systems I discussed are not plex or
that similar systems have been demonstrated to be able to evolve by Darwinian processes.
In the remainder of the article I address methodological concerns, including whether a claim
of intelligent design is falsifiable and whether intelligent design is a permissible scientific
conclusion.
Key words: Darwinism, evolution, falsifiability, intelligent design, plexity,
natural selection
1. Empirical objections
. Is the question open?
In Darwin’s Black Box (Behe 1996) I argued there are good reasons, based
on the physical structures and functional properties of some biochemical
systems, to think that they had been deliberately designed. (The focus of the
book was exclusively on the mechanism of evolution. I agreed that descent-
with-modification is well-supported.) The necessary starting point of the
book was to show that the question is open – that, contrary mon
assumption, the origins of many intricate cellular systems have not yet been
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adequately explained in Darwinian terms. This point