It doesn’t matter what we name them…
…the “machines” of the cell will still be what they are: complex, sophisticated molecular systems, essential for the living state. Like the proteasome on the right, a sub-cellular machine that degrades proteins, among its other functions.
Oops, there I went and did it — used the “machinery” language that Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) and Maarten Boudry (Univ. of Ghent) argue not only plays into the hands of ID advocates, but also misleads scientists themselves:
…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.