Design Paper Published in PNAS
01/26/2005 Can scientific progress be made from a
design perspective? The Intelligent Design movement says so, but
critics say ID has no place in science, which by definition must be
naturalistic; judges rule that alternatives to Darwinian evolution are
forbidden in public schools. The rationale is that anything else assumes God, and is
therefore religiously motivated. Then how do we interpret a paper in
PNAS this week,1 that is chock full of design
language? A team of Japanese and American biologists,
from Caltech and University of California and elsewhere, describe the heat
shock response in the cell. They not only compare this biological
system to good engineering, but treat the engineering paradigm as a proper
approach to the study of cellular systems: in fact, they say, “Viewed from
this perspective, heat shock itself constitutes an integral functional
module. Such a characterization of functional modules is
extremely useful, because it provides an inventory list of
cellular processes. An analogy would be a list of
machines and their function in a factory.” For more design
language, look at the abstract:
Molecular biology studies the
cause-and-effect relationships among microscopic processes
initiated by individual molecules within a cell and observes their
macroscopic phenotypic effects on cells and organisms. These
studies provide a wealth of information about the underlying
networks and pathways responsible for the basic
functionality and robustness of biological systems.
At the same time, these studies create exciting opportunities for the
development of quantitative and predictive models that connect
the mechanism to its phenotype then examine various modular structures
and the range of their dynamical behavior. The use of such models
enables a deeper understanding of the design principles underlying
biological organization and makes their reverse engineering
and manipulation both possible and tractable. The heat
shock response presents an interesting mechanism where such an
endeavor is possible. Using a model of heat shock, we extract
the design motifs in the system and justify their
existence in terms of various performance objectives. We also
offer a modular decomposition that parallels that of traditional
engineering control architectures. (Emphasis added in
all quotes.)
The paper is filled with design words:
engineering, robustness, feedback loops, feed-forward loops, modularity,
performance, functional criteria, and the like – all but the buzzphrase
“intelligent design.” For example, “Biology and engineering share
many similarities at the system level, including the use of
complexity to achieve robustness and performance rather than for
minimal functionality.” The only mention2 of
biological evolution is a passing reference in the final discussion that,
in the surrounding design language, seems almost irrelevant: “The
formulation of such a problem aside, the physical implementation of any of
its solutions seems to have been evolutionarily solved by using a
number of recurring motifs...” How it was solved, and who solved it,
is left unexplained. Instead, the authors seem enthusiastic that a
design-theoretic approach, viewing cellular mechanisms the way a computer
scientist would reverse-engineer software, can be a fruitful avenue for
research:
However, to understand the operational
principles of a certain machine, to repair it, or to
optimize its performance, it is often necessary to consider a
modular decomposition of the machine itself. Such a
decomposition does not necessarily require stripping the machine down to
the component level but rather identifying its submodules with their
predefined functionalities. A particularly successful such
modular decomposition has been extensively used in the field of
control and dynamical systems, where components of a
system are classified in terms of their role with respect
to the regulation objective. Similar decompositions exist
in computer science, for example, because modularity is a
basic principle of good programming.
The authors
make no mention of a Programmer, or state their personal beliefs about
origins. But that, again, supports a principle stated frequently in
the intelligent design literature: the identity of the designer is not the
issue. Design detection is a purely scientific question, and the
design-theoretic approach is a fruitful avenue of research.
1El-Samad, Kurata, Doyle, Gross and Khammash,
“Surviving heat shock: Control strategies for robustness and performance,”
Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 10.1073/pnas.0403510102,
published online before print January 24, 2005. 2The only
other possible allusion states, “Indeed, in higher level languages, a
complicated programming task is usually divided into a set of
modules, subroutines, or objects, with simple well defined
interfaces. This results in flexible and robustprograms, whose modules can be designed almost separately
and, as such, are more easily evolvable.” However, being in
the context of computer program design, the statement implies guided
evolution – i.e., upgrading – by intelligent design, not evolution by an
undirected or Darwinian process.
Big Science went ballistic when Stephen
Meyer published an ID paper in a minor journal, claiming it was a mistake to let such material pass peer
review. Well, ID scientists should print this paper and wave it in
the face of Eugenie Scott and Ken Miller and all the other Darwin Party
hacks who claim ID is illegitimate in science. Here again – and
this is one of many examples we have reported – ID is not only detectable in biological
phenomena, but ID itself is the most fruitful approach to doing
science. This is abundantly evident in this paper, written by
authors completely outside the “intelligent design movement” and
published in a leading secular journal. Most likely
unintentionally, they have underscored what the ID movement has been
saying all along: regardless of one’s religious beliefs (or lack of
them), a reasonable inquirer into a phenomenon can detect design, and
the design approach is productive for science. It’s the same
approach used by Faraday, Mendel, Kepler, Carver and most of the other
great scientists
of history. Only the Darwin Party welfare bums have a problem with
it.
[2005/01/26] Design Paper Published in PNAS
