Readers: Thoughts on the following from Tom Bethell?
Automobile history tells us much the same thing. It might even fit into Steve Meyer’s book on the Cambrian explosion [Darwin’s Doubt]. The number of animal “start-ups” at the time of the Cambrian was huge. Auto development – ditto.
Wikipedia shows a list of current and defunct automobile manufacturers in the United States: “There were over 1,800 automobile manufacturers in the United States from 1896 to 1930. Very few survived and only a few new ones were started after that period.” Amazing! That was the auto equivalent of the Cambrian explosion.
Forbes magazine has reported that there were only *40 car brands available in the U.S in 2008. And these are originated all over the world, e.g. in Japan and Germany. There are no British auto makers left.* (Extinction, anyone?) The U.S. has little more than GM, Ford and a few stragglers. (Chrysler is now German, right?) Fascinating auto “phylogenies” are available on the web.
The idea here is that human designers unconsciously follow in the footsteps of the Great Designer; or maybe are subject to similar constraints. It is an idea that might have interested S.J. Gould, except he and other Darwinians ruled it out in their own assumptions. The correspondence between human and supernatural design is one that should be explored here.
Okay, but supernatural need not mean personal. It just means above inanimate nature.* We can’t rule out, in principle, the idea that the cosmos is governed by an impersonal principle that organizes and gives laws (that is, it is top down, not bottom up).
Note: On this view, Berra’s blunder was that he was oblivious to the fact that automobiles are designed, not procreated. But that is simply a matter of (in his case, unobserved) fact. If procreation is the chosen method of manufacture, engineering could work the same way. Intelligence would still, of course be required, for large inputs of information. See also: Everything we need to know about airplanes van be explained without reference to aviation engineers.
* The naturalist holds that there is only inanimate nature, that thoughts are an illusion created by the activity of neurons in the brain, an illusion that may or may not promote survival.
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