Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Mary Midgley: “ID is going to give us a great deal of trouble”

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Mary Midgley’s “A Plague on Both Their Houses” purports to set the record straight about ID and evolution. ID is bad science, and evolution, when used to justify atheism, is bad philosophy. If both sides in this debate could only recognize the proper limits of science and philosophy, we could dispense with this needless controversy.

Midgley’s analysis is disappointing. For it to work, ID’s scientific critique of and its counterproposal to standard evolutionary theory must fail. And for Midgley it does, as follows:

Biologists have pointed out the feebleness of the mechanical analogy, of course. Organisms and their parts do not consist of separate items that must be put together deliberately in the workshop, but of continuous tissue, areas of which often have several different functions and can shift between them by what is called ‘co-option’. No helpful designer was needed in order to provide a cow with a fly-whisk: cows themselves acquired one merely by using a rather undifferentiated tail in a new way. But the public which is impressed by ID theory does not read these replies.

The public, insofar as it has read the ID literature, has read these replies because the ID literature treats Midgley’s co-option approach to building biological complexity at length — and shows it to be deficient. It is remarkable that Midgley refers to organisms as consisting of “continuous tissue” as though this undercuts the ID proponents’ “mechanical analogy.” ID stakes its claim at the level of molecular biology, not at the level of “continuous tissues.” At the level of molecular biology, we have protein machines that are machines literally and not just analogically. Consider the following remark by Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, in his introduction to the December 2003 special issue on molecular machines:

The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.

Yes, organisms are more than machines, but at the subcellular level they contain machines — actual machines. Moreover, co-option hardly explains how such molecular machines might have arisen (see, for instance, chapter 6 of THE DESIGN OF LIFE).

Midgley concludes her essay by remarking, “It seems to me that ID is going to give us a great deal of trouble.” If the “us” here is smug cossetted intellectuals who think caricaturing ID is the same as refuting it, she is probably right.

Comments
It is interesting that Midgley is accusing ID of being "imperialistic." But, I suppose, what goes around comes around, see Ben Stein's movie blog, (re previous threat about his new movie Expelled), Oct 31 entry, which rightly calls Darwinism "imperialistic": http://www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/ Not only is Midgley's terminology offensive & outrageous, but one can find many trivial faults & direct contradictions in her article. It is a really shoddy analysis, if one can call it such. Example: if science deals with facts and religion with meaning, well, let religion give meaning to the facts founds by science and there will be no clashes and no need for the "creation-peddlers" to smuggle God into science or into schools!rockyr
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
02:38 PM
2
02
38
PM
PDT
“moreover, as Einstein put it, religion without science is lame, while science without religion is blind”
WHAT!? She didn't even get the quote right. It is "science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Science being the facts and religion the inspiration to go out and get those facts. Yet if the inspiration is evil or misguided by bad facts (science) then its search is blind. I guess she just misquoted.Frost122585
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
04:01 AM
4
04
01
AM
PDT
Mary Midgley is 88 years old so she may be limited in what new information she can absorb. Most 88 years old still alive are most looney tunes these days so while ill informed she is quite feisty for her age.jerry
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
02:10 AM
2
02
10
AM
PDT
I love the comment from the Design of Life website "Most of origin-of-life research is as relevant to the real problem of life's origin as rubber-band powered propeller model planes are to the military's most sophisticated stealth aircraft." Amazon says my book has been shipped. Can't wait to read it. Oh, and Midgely sounds like a snooty theistic evolutionist who thinks the servants have gotten uppity and don't know their place. After all she was born to a chaplain of Cambridge and educated at Oxford and once was schooled in the same house that Darwin lived in. Barbarians are at the gate.jerry
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
02:05 AM
2
02
05
AM
PDT
"Sensible students have therefore increasingly agreed with the great evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky that science and religion cannot clash…"
Well, I must say I think that it is wonderful that she thinks science and religion complement each other. Being that they CANNOT clash let’s tech them together in public school in the same class called religion and science that way they can learn from each other and work together and help develop those two separate jobs that they just happen to exist to serve. And Marry you will be the first one to sign the petition! The truth here is that she knows that science cant get at the questions that religion raises or philosophy for that matter- i.e. is there a god, where did the universe come from, why do things happen, why aren’t things otherwise etc.- Nor can DE get at the questions ID poses. DE cant even critique ID. So instead of admitting science's inadequacies she insists on categorical fallacies like
“Sensible students have therefore increasingly agreed with the great evolutionist…"
in an attempt to say that evolution (code for Darwinism) has gotten the last laugh. Unfortunately her whole argument was just a list of assertions some of which totally demented like this one
"Biologists have pointed out the feebleness of the mechanical analogy, of course. Organisms and their parts do not consist of separate items that must be put together deliberately in the workshop, but of continuous tissue, areas of which often have several different functions and can shift between them by what is called ‘co-option’. No helpful designer was needed in order to provide a cow with a fly-whisk: cows themselves acquired one merely by using a rather undifferentiated tail in a new way. But the public which is impressed by ID theory does not read these replies.'
Wait??? What did she just say? And this one adds nothing enlightening against ID -
"moreover, as Einstein put it, religion without science is lame, while science without religion is blind"
This quote is easily compatible with ID while not inextricably linked. The bottom line was that Mary Midgley was too lazy to go and look for good scientific/ philosophical arguments against ID so she did two things one she used the science/religion dychotomy to drive a wedge between ID and DE but then she "almost cleverly" said "but they are both friends" in an attempt to deny that there exists major problems as science currently operates publically under the religion of DE. Basically she just denied that there was a scientific controversy and used classic defense #1. Outdated- religious-Creationists!Frost122585
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
02:03 AM
2
02
03
AM
PDT
Mary Midgley it seems, has failed to even read a single work on ID by our side. It appears she got her ideas second hand ? from Dawkins or Miller. She does not grasp the central concepts of ID. Without being properly informed, she has no authority to speak.idnet.com.au
December 3, 2007
December
12
Dec
3
03
2007
12:54 AM
12
12
54
AM
PDT

Leave a Reply