Darwin's Black Box

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The Cover of Darwin's Black Box

Darwin's Black Box : The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution is a 1996 book by Michael J. Behe in which he argues that many biochemical systems are irreducibly complex, and thus not amenable to explanation by Darwinian evolution; he does not rule out evolution as the explanation for other, macroscopic biological phenomena. The book has caused much controversy, as it is considered to be pseudoscience by many in the scientific community, who state that Behe's ideas are not falsifiable, that his definition of an irreducibly complex system is ambiguous, and that he ignores previous work in biochemical evolution. Many claim that the book is an attempt to bring religion, specifically creationism, into science, as a part of the Wedge strategy.

Conversely, others more sympathetic to his cause would point out that Behe's book may have demonstrated the limits of the currently dominant scientific philosophy—limits that exclude evidence which may point in a direction contrary to the underlying naturalism upon which much of scientific thought is grounded.

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Overview

The "black box" in the title refers to the conceptual tool in which, for one reason or another, the internal workings of a device are taken for granted, so that its function may be discussed.

Behe begins by reminding the general reader of revolutionary developments in the history of science: "When foundations are unearthed, the structures that rest upon them are shaken; sometimes they collapse. When sciences such as physics finally uncovered their foundations, old ways of understanding the world had to be tossed out, extensively revised, or restricted to a limited part of nature." His idea popularizes the idea of "revolutionary science" presented in Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Behe suggests that this is now the case in biology due to discoveries in biochemistry. Behe notes the acceptance of Darwinism by "the great majority" of scientists, and states that "most (though not all) do so based on authority."

He then notes that proposed elucidations of the evolutionary history of various biological features typically assume the existence of certain abilities as their starting point. As an example, he gives Darwin's explanation of how the eye evolved, which begins with light-sensitive spots, which then develop in depressions of increasing depth, which are then covered by a gelatinous material, which then becomes a lens, etc. Behe points out that Darwin dismissed the need to explain the origin of the "simple" light-sensitive spot; he then follows with his own five-paragraph of the modern understanding of the biochemistry of vision. He claims that many other evolutionary explanations face a similar challenge.

The concept of irreducible complexity is then introduced and defined by Behe as "a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning." As a simple example, he offers the typical household mousetrap, with its wooden platform, wire "hammer," spring, catch, and holding bar. John McDonald, in response to this example, demonstrated "A reducibly complex mousetrap" [1]

Next, Behe devotes several chapters to particular biological mechanisms: the cilium, the bacterial flagellum, blood clotting, gated and vesicular transport within the cell, and the immune system. In each case, Behe claims that the underlying biochemical mechanisms are vastly underappreciated, and that they, in fact, constitute instances of irreducible complexity. He states that other examples abound, and identifies several more.

Behe anticipates and attempts to address one of the primary counter-arguments: "Perhaps [at] some point several parts that were being used for other purposes suddenly came together to produce a [different function]." He states that an "exhaustive consideration of all possible roles for a particular component can't be done [but] it is extremely implausible that components used for other purposes fortuitously adapted to new roles in a complex system." He further states that "the focus simply shifts from 'making' the components to 'modifying' them."

His entirely unsuccessful attempts to discover elucidations in scientific journals of evolutionary pathways for any complex biochemical systems is then recounted by Behe. Although he does identify "assertions that such evolution occurred, absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations."

He concludes the book by offering intelligent design as an explanation of irreducible complexity.

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Darwin's Black Box peer review controversy

In 2005, while testifying for the defense in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Michael Behe claimed under oath that Darwin's Black Box received even more thorough peer review than a scholarly article in a refereed journal [2] (PDF file).

Behe's testimony has resulted in controversy as it appears to be in direct conflict with known facts about the book's peer review. Four of the book's five reviewers — Michael Atchison, Robert Shapiro, K. John Morrow, and Russell Doolittle — have made statements that do not support Behe's claim of having passed a rigorous peer review process.

Atchison has stated that he did not review the book at all, but spent 10 minutes on the phone receiving a brief overview of the book which he then endorsed without ever seeing the text [3]. Robert Shapiro has said that he did review the book, and while he agreed with some of his analysis of origin-of-life research, he thinks Behe's conclusions are false. He did, however, say that he thought that Behe's book was the best explanation of the argument from design that was available [4]. K. John Morrow panned the book as appalling and unsupported, which contributed to the original publisher turning down the book for publication [5]. And Dr. Russell Doolittle, whose own work on blood clotting Behe based much of the arguments in Darwin's Black Box on reviewed the book and described it as misrepresenting many important points and disenguous, which also contributed to the original publisher turning down the book for publication [6].

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