Hmm, could this be a possible argument for intelligent design? Oh, no, poppycock.

According to many, ingenious engineering came about from no intelligence. Matter begat design and information and yet has never done it again in recorded history.

Excellent post, by the way. I agree about the brilliance of nature's shape and form. I plan to share this with my friends.

--FW

thanks Nick, very interesting, not that I understood it

I confess, Eric, that I dropped a note to Professor Bejan on the off-chance that he might have time to give this a glance and ensure I'd understood it myself!
I had to read the articles a couple of times before their significance sank in.
Thanks for the comments. Most certainly I see all this as a compelling argument for intelligent design, but if we mean natural design by an "intelligence", I think Bejan leaves that question more open.
However, there are some intriguing meeting places between his theory and Darwin's view of evolutionary process.

I don't think there can ever be "proof" of intelligent design, it's inductive, but certainly the more we learn about the universe(s), the easier it is to believe in it.

Et tu, Eric? It's all too easy to fall into this Intelligent Design trap. If you had been around 4000 years ago, and had walked outside your hut, tasked by a tribal elder with developing a cosmology, you would have first noted the obvious fact that the Universe is a flat piece of dirt with a blue boww over it.

People are always too willing to take the fact that we don' t yet know EVERYTHING about creation as indication that there must have been an omniscient being behind our existence. Scientific investigation of Big Questions takes time. The people responsible for those investigations are now faced with having to fend off naysayers who use as evidence for their ID conjectures the very facts and contradictions that the scientific community discovers. The ID crowd supposes that if contradictions in a scientific theory exist, then the whole theory must be wrong. That just shows lack of appreciation for the history of science.

If there is a Creator, he gave us the ability to ask questions about the Universe, and, more remarkably, gave us the ability to find the answers. But it takes time. And it takes support from the citizenry. Maybe we will find the Creator at the end of it all. But maybe we won't. It's worth looking. But we won't be able do that if science grinds to a halt because we decide to stop trying.

I don't want anything to stop, and as I said, there can't be "proof" of intelligent design beyond people saying "that's enough anecdotal evidence and coincidences for me."

I understand that intelligent design can be seen as an easy way out, but assuming that all of this design has intelligence behind it doesn't explain the mechanisms of how it was done, nor preclude any kind of scientific work I can think of.

I don't see it as a way to conduct science, just a personal perspective like religion. Religious belief doesn't preclude any real scientists from going about their work and neither should intelligent design - it's just a meta-theory that can never be scientifically proved or disproved.

Intelligent Design cannot be proven, short of the Creator paying us a visit. But would you entertain the possibility that it can be disproven? I believe it is possible that in the distant future a complete cosmology could be worked out, including the evolution of life. And I do mean distant, because I think one thing that will have to happen first is that we find other examples of biological evolution, which presupposes the possibility of unmanned (most likely) interstellar space travel, discovery of extraterrestrial lifeforms, and the development of new exobiological theories. On the larger scale, physics research is now on the trail of dark matter and dark energy, as well as the possible unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity via superstring theory. All new stuff, and all things that were unimaginable only 100 years ago. My concern is that the backers of the ID conjecture are attempting to supplant curiosity, and the audacity that modern civilization has needed to confront these issues, with a comforting notion that we are all being watched over. That does tend to inhibit the scientific drive.

I get the impression that the ID argument isn't about what science hasn't explained, it's about how many patterns and examples of order show up in nature. The argument being: how could such things happen by accident?

If you think about our perspective, being creatures who design things to efficiently do tasks, it's natural for us to infer a "designer" when we find something being done efficiently in nature.

And then there is the observation that so many specific conditions are required for us to exist. Some wonder how all those conditions could be so conveniently met just by accident.

I'm not sure there is anything that could disprove ntelligent design short of God saying "I didn't design this," just as Duane mentioned there is no way to prove it short of something similar but opposite.

JR, that's how I see it - it's matter of people saying "wow, how unlikely is that?" If there are many universes and we live in the one that could support life because it can suport life, that would solve the statistical aspect, but it stil wouldn't prove it wasn't designed that way on purpose.

It is a philosophical rather than a scientific argument.

Intelligent Design is "Creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo," as I've seen it put. The driving force behind the ID onslaught is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which is funded at $4M per year by religious organizations with a very definite agenda, the foremost of which is to overthrow the Theory of Evolution. One of their modes of operation is to take discrepancies in scientific theory, which are identified by scientists (!), and then cast doubt on the scientific enterprise. In fact, they accuse the scientific community of having an agenda, which, not surprisingly, is to overthrow the concept of supernaturality in the Universe.

OK, scientists are only human, and are subject to their own foibles, like anyone else. I'm sure some of them do have an agenda, and some of them attend church, and others like Madonna, and some of them listen to death metal. But to argue that scientists, as a group, are conspiring against spirituality is a gross misconception and really quite offensive. Closed minds did not bring us from goat sacrificing to exploring the outer Solar System. Scientists do tend to question the NECESSITY of a Creator, however. That is not the same thing as refuting the existence of such. There is a fair amount of agnosticism among scientists. ID advocates have already made up their minds, whereas scientists actually prefer to explore new ideas, and tear down established theories, in the interest of (1) gaining a deeper understanding of Nature, and (2) becoming famous within their field. Scientists rarely become famous by defending the status quo.

JR makes some good points. The Universe is indeed a wondrous place. Let me remind you that it is scientists, and not religious authorities who are discovering its beauty. The apparent coincidences that are necessary to allow life on Earth are discussed in the context of the Weak Anthropic Principle and the Strong Anthropic Principle, which are fascinating. I hope it won't surprise you to learn that scientists were the first to point out the delicate balance that exists within nature. This is actually a rather old subject, which has been expounded upon by astronomers and physicists since the 1960s, although the ID crowd doesn't mind being credited for bringing this to light.

We are stardust, as Joni Mitchell said. Who do you suppose figured that out? Using quantum mechanics, which was developed in the 1920s, physicists of the 1930s and 1940s put together a working theory of the sequence of nuclear reactions in stellar interiors that produces the elements from which we're made. Creationsists, at least the ones who are willing to dispense with their literal reading of The Bible and their 6000-year-old Universe, are then forced to back off a little and claim, "Well, then God must have designed stars to produce the stuff we're made of." This need to progressively back off from religious dogma worries the people who are funding the ID pundits. Why do you suppose that is?

Dude, you're preachin' to the choir here, so to speak.

It just seemed to me that you were disputing a different (and weaker) argument for ID than the one Eric was making.

The evolution-doesn't-explain-everything-therefore-it's-wrong argument is obviously lame. Worse still is the attempt to "teach" Intellegent Design in public school biology courses. There's nothing to it to teach! You either believe in a creator or you don't; outside of church who cares? You're certainly not going to impress the recruiter from Genentech with your knowledge of ID. They should spend the time teaching kids how to think and give them the knowledge to compete with the Japanese, Chinese, Germans, et al for biotech jobs. At this rate you'll have to send your kids to Catholic school to learn the science of evolution (which the Vatican has endorsed).

Interesting choice of words, JR. Preaching I was, I suppose. I'm sure that I was anticipating more input from ID supporters.

Eric's "argument" based on seeming coincidences is the subject of the Anthropic Principles, which I mentioned in my previous post. I can't go into those here, because it would take a book's worth of yammering. Suffice to say, that because something is hard to understand in 2003 doesn't mean that we won't understand it some day. Just today, I was reading that the great Ptolemy of Alexandria (AD 150 or so), who dominated astronomical thought well into the 1500s, insisted that the Earth could not be rotating on its axis because everything would be thrown off the surface.

Also, as JR mentions, let's hope that the need to economically competitive with the rest of the world will hold the ID folks at bay.

Heavens!
Seeing so much debate in this morning's mail was quite a surprise.
"It's natural for us to infer a 'designer' when we find something being done efficiently in nature."
I go along with JR on that. I guess I do infer intelligence myself, but to slap a label on it and call that God is something I find very much harder.

I haven't had a peep out of Prof. Bejan... ;)

I found the comprehensive catalog of current books on Creation, Evolution and on Intelligent Design at http://www.torontochristianbooks/CREATION.HTM very useful in addressing scientific proofs and other arguments on this topic.