Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

The Machinery Of Life

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Recently, I encountered two stunning cell animations which serve to highlight the sheer beauty, magnificence and power of intelligent design.

Those among us who have been in ID circles for some time will undoubtedly recognise much of the first. It is a compilation of clips which have been used in ID multimedia, put together in stunningly elegant fashion with an inspirational new background soundtrack.

A number of months ago, Pigliucci and Boundry expressed their strong dislike of machine metaphors in science (see also Paul Nelson’s remarks on this statement here). If you recall, Pigliucci and Boundry said that,

…if we want to keep Intelligent Design out of the classroom, not only do we have to exclude the ‘theory’ from the biology curriculum, but we also have to be weary [sic] of using scientific metaphors that bolster design-like misconceptions about living systems. We argue that the machine-information metaphor in biology not only misleads students and the public at large, but cannot but direct even the thinking of the scientists involved, and therefore the sort of questions they decide to pursue and how they approach them.

One can only imagine what their reaction might be to this animation. I dread to think. I’ll let you see for yourself.

Comments
That's an awesome video! EndoplasmicMessenger
I love it. "Design-like misconceptions." So if it looks like something that's been designed (say a motor, for example) but it hasn't (because Darwin says so), then it evolved. Their logic hurts my head and my common sense. Barb
Some of the terms used biology are of course metaphors, but some are not. I would grant that referring to a cell as a factory is a metaphor. According to one on-line dictionary, a metaphor is
a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance
The bacterial flagellum does not merely resemble a rotary motor, it is literally a rotary motor. If one were to pretend he was describing a piece of nanotechnology that had the same parts as a flagellar bacterium, Pigliucci would not know if you were describing a bacterium or a "nano-submarine." NeilBJ
Jonathan I've collected a few here: Articles and Videos on Molecular Machines and Motors http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfMzlkNjYydmRkZw&hl=en bornagain77

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