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ARN Contest: Should “irreducible complexity” be taught in engineering?

Denyse O'Leary
June 17, 2019
Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity
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That’s Michael Behe’s irreducible complexity in case the Darwinians among us need a reason to freak out.

Access Research Network is offering a $50 Visa voucher for the best answer to the following Question of the Month. Send your response here.

The whole question:

QUESTION OF THE MONTH

What ought to be taught in public schools regarding the ultimate question of our origins? Be thinking about courses including History, Philosophy, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

For extra credit: Should the concept of irreducible complexity be taught in Engineering or Computer Science classes? For even more credit: Should Darwinian Naturalism be taught in English classes when discussing science fiction. Explain.

Feel free to test out ideas here.

See also: May:

In the Introduction to his Origin of Species Charles Darwin admitted, “I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived.”

What directly opposite conclusions could Darwin have meant?

How could natural selection inhibit major evolutionary change from occurring on a gradual step-by-step basis?


Previous questions

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Comments
What engineers try to avoid is unnecessary complexity. And by learning about and understanding IC they would understand where the redundancies are required for continued functionality and where the redundancies wouldn't be required to maintain functionality. So you would focus on any IC core to make sure it is as failsafe as it can be. Starting with the lever/ fulcrum system, irreducible complexity is practically unavoidable in engineering.ET
June 17, 2019
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IC is orthogonal to redundancy. Making a system highly redundant does not make it less irreducibly complex. Redundancy means it becomes harder to eliminate the key functionality of the system, but that does not mean the system can still function without its components. However, one interesting aspect of engineering that differentiates it from Darwinian evolution is that engineers can evolve an IC system. The current standard practice for new software engineering projects is a process known as "agile development". The key in agile development is that large system development take place through many small iterations and prototypes. Each prototype is a small segment of the larger functionality, and is useless by itself. So, if each segment were judged solely on its own merits, it would be discarded, and the complete project would never come together. The only reason that agile development works is because it is guided by the ultimate purpose of the designers, who understand each useless component must be developed in order to create the useful system. So, software engineering is a good example of why the generation of irreducible complexity necessitates intelligent agency and design. Another area where irreducible complexity is very important is in the field of development operations, DevOps for short. Modern web applications are part of a very complex system of networks and layers, very analogous to biological organisms. These systems are very irreducibly complex, and thus require large amounts of redundancy in order to provide high reliability and responsiveness in the face of such complexity. Thus, it seems that in order to develop more effective engineering processes irreducible complex systems, and how they are created and maintained, is an important part of software engineering research and becomes ever more important as modern applications develop.EricMH
June 17, 2019
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The engineering world is full of IC structures. And that is why redundancy is a fundamental aspect. So the purpose of teaching IC in engineering would be to give them the proper term and make sure they understand it.ET
June 17, 2019
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I don't understand what the purpose of teaching irreducible complexity in engineering would be. Redundancy of key components is a fundamental aspect of many types of engineering. Where possible, they try to avoid irreducible complexity.Brother Brian
June 17, 2019
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Nice response :cool:ET
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