Behe's argument for intelligent design hinges upon the notion of irreducible complexity found in nature. But if you ask. me (uh, nobody did...), what's more interesting than irreducible complexity is irreducible simplicity: that is, the way in which higher level operations are related to lower level operations. Scientists and philosophers who recognize this irreducibility often refer to it as "emergence." Polanyi discusses it in The Tacit Dimension. Aquinas talks about something quite similar as well (especially when he compares how the sensus communis is related to the proper senses). I'll call this characteristic "emergence" without intended to subscribe to any particular explanation of how these higher level powers arise in the first place.
Although Behe doesn't mention emergence, the complexity that he calls "irreducible" has a couple of similarities to emergent properties. Both involve a whole that relies upon its many parts to work together in order to perform a single function that is in some way is more than the sum of all of the lower parts. The flagellum, for example, depends upon the operations of may parts in propelling a bacteria cell. It does so in a manner similar to how a mousetrap relies upon its many parts to do something -- catch a mouse -- that no one part gets even partial credit for doing. If a mousetrap has 20 parts, it is not the case that each does, on the average, 5% of the task. Rather, the function of the whole is something other than a kind of arithmetic sum of the functions of the parts. Unlike a mousetrap, however, the functionality of a flagellum is not imposed upon or projected upon by an extrinsic source. In this latter way, the flagellum is unlike a machine.
But the IC function (that is, the one relying upon irreducible complexity) is not an emergent property. For the IC function is not itself an operation over and above the operations of the parts. It is instead the effect or result that the operations of the parts have upon the whole. An emergent property, on the other hand is something the organism does over and above what each of the parts does.
Behe doesn't take note of emergent properties--perhaps because biochemistry does not offer him the requisite lens to see this sort of thing. Biochemistry instead looks at everything in the same way--as a chemical interaction. Nevertheless, it seems to me that focusing on an emergent property as an irreducible simplicity is a more promising way to uncover a teleological view of nature than looking at organisms asirreducibly complex machines.
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