Hi Brian!
You commented on Nelson's post:
>Nelson:
>Atoms may or may not be IC, however, you missed the entire point of my post.
>Atoms are not selected for, do not replicate themselves, do not undergo
>mutations,etc. IC is a biological concept, and it describes molecular
>machines. Apply the concept of IC to atoms is likeing applying Darwinian
>natural selection to rocks.
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Brian:
I'm confused. Are mousetraps irreducibly complex?
Actually, this brings up an important point which I've
tried to raise a couple of times. There are two separate
aspects in IC. Irreducibility and complexity. Things can
be irreducible but not complex. In fact, Maxwell once
gave an argument from design based on irreducible
simplicity. I can find the reference if anyone is interested.
How about a mousetrap? Well, this is obviously irreducibly
simple, at least in comparison with biological systems.
With this is mind, let's try the argument by analogy. The hallmark
of design is irreducible simplicity. Biological structures are
irreducibly complex. There are no known examples where a
designer has been able to fabricate a device that even approaches
the complexity we find in biology. Therefore, biological structures
are not designed.
Brian Harper
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
The Ohio State University
"One never knows, do one?"
-- Fats Waller
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OK, I'll bite. It is perhaps tempting to equate the concept
of a designed object with an object with "irreducible simplicity"
by the use of something like an Occam's razor principle. In other
words, a truly intelligent designer would only use a very simple
design, indeed perhaps the simplest possible one to achieve the
desired goal or function. However, assuming I understand what you
mean by "simplicity", I would challenge this notion. The use
of "multiple redundancy" (in spacecraft systems design, for example)
is the work of an intelligent designer who has the foresight to
anticipate adverse environmental conditions that might threaten
the system's operation and to plan ahead of time for such contingencies.
Thus, mechanical devices with such "backup systems" seem to me
to be inherently less simple that those without such systems; yet
they also seem to be more highly designed (although I admit it is
hard to conceive of a quantitative index for "degree of design").
It's not a very large leap from the human design concept of multiple
redundancy and the systems that employ this concept to the kinds of biological
systems that contain various "error-checking" mechanisms.
So, I must be missing something...or perhaps it's not so
"simple" after all. Can you help me?
Thanks,
Stan Zygmunt
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Valparaiso University
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