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Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
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List Price: $15.00
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Manufacturer: Free Press
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 572.838
EAN: 9780743290319
ISBN: 0743290313
Label: Free Press
Manufacturer: Free Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2006-03-07
Publisher: Free Press
Studio: Free Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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The groundbreaking, "seminal work" (Time) on intelligent design that dares to ask, was Darwin wrong? In 1996, Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the intelligent design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text -- the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it. In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Unscientific Twaddle
Comment: What a shame that this unscientific twaddle is the only type of exposure to Darwinism many people will ever have.
David Hume hit it right on the mark: "The gazing populace receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition and promotes wonder."
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Expelled"...For a Good Reason!
Comment: Don't buy the hype. Evolution isn't a theory in crisis. Evolutionary theory is the most successful scientific theory currently available. Behe's idea of "irreducible complexity", which he defines as "a single system composed of several well-matched interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, where in the removal any one of the parts causes the system to cease functioning", is the most recent creationist argument against evolution. Unfortunately for Behe, irreducible complexity is only an argument against his own misconceived caricature of evolution theory, not the rigorous theory utilized by biologists across the globe.
In his book Behe provides the bacterial flagellum as an example of irreducible complexity. He maintains that the removal of any of the many protein subunits that compose the bacterial flagellum will result in its complete loss of function. Shortly after Behe's book was published, scientists discovered a bacterial organelle, the type III secretion apparatus, that was composed of a combination of some, but not all the proteins of the bacterial flagellum. It seems that Behe didn't take into account that systems of interacting parts can change function as parts are added or taken away. If components of the supposedly irreducibly complex bacterial flagellum are taken away, it may lose function as a flagellum, but it functions perfectly well as the type III secretion apparatus.
Behe didn't take into account a fundamental premise of evolutionary theory, that through natural selection new functions are discovered for preexisting structures. As described by François Jacob in 1977, evolution acts as a tinkerer, not an engineer. The mammalian inner ear bones are known to have evolved from jaw bones of mammalian ancestors, for example. As the proteins that compose the bacterial flagellum were slowly cobbled together by evolutionary processes, the intermediate stages need not, and most likely didn't, function as a flagellum.
Behe's "irreducible complexity" is not repairable. Evolutionary theory already provides mechanisms that produce supposedly irreducibly complex systems. Even if an organ was discovered that could be proven to be irreducibly complex, that would only be evidence against natural selection, not evidence in favor of Intelligent Design. Genetic drift is one evolutionary mechanism that allows evolving lineages to explore "adaptive landscapes" and discover new adaptive possibilities that would have been invisible to natural selection alone. Irreducible complexity is a failed negative argument against evolutionary theory, not a positive argument in favor of Intelligent Design.
For those reading this review that are actually interested in how evolutionary processes have produced the diversity of life we see in nature, I recommend Climbing Mount Improbable, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Ancestors Tale by Richard Dawkins and Endless Forms Most Beautiful and The Making of the Fittest by Sean B. Carroll. These books are easy to read and full of amazing examples of evolution in action and the power of evolutionary theory. Behe's ideas have been expelled from the scientific community, for good reason!
Climbing Mount ImprobableThe Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without DesignThe Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of EvolutionEndless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo DevoThe Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
Customer Rating:
Summary: Absolutely fascinating!
Comment: I found this book absolutely fascinating. What a wonderful case for intelligent design without the usual "fall-back" to biblical references. It would be hard to deny ID after reading this book. A great read for someone who is honestly seeking answers.
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Summary: Well written - read it for yourself
Comment: Very well written book. Despite the impression that some reviews give, the book is quite logical in its approach. There are some very in depth descriptions of cellular mechanics and certain biological functions (such as blood clotting). But the author sets these difficult passages apart from the main text, providing a simpler overview, and a more in-depth analysis for science-minded folks who like to know the finer details. Not for causal reading, but certainly an excellent read to stimulate those synapses.
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Summary: Why buy a book about something the author now admits is wrong?
Comment: In the Kitzmiller v. Dover decision the Court noted that "Professor Behe admitted in "Reply to My Critics" that there was a defect in his view of irreducible complexity because, while it purports to be a challenge to natural selection, it does not actually address "the task facing natural selection."" [and] "Professor Behe specifically explained that "[t]he current definition [of irreducible complexity] puts the focus on removing a part from an already functioning system," but "[t]he difficult task facing Darwinian evolution, however, would not be to remove parts from sophisticated pre-existing systems; it would be to bring together components to make a new system in the first place." Id. In that article, Professor Behe wrote that he hoped to "repair this defect in future work;" however, he has failed to do so even four years after elucidating his defect."
In other words, the only thing that Irreducible Complexity proved was to be wrong.
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