In a message dated 5/5/01 4:14:35 AM Mountain Daylight Time,
RDehaan237@aol.com writes:
(in reply to Howard Van Till)
> Here is what Bill Dembski wrote in his forthcoming book, _No Free Lunch_
> about the meaning of design;
>
> "How a designer gets from thought to thing is, at
> least in broad strokes, straightforward: (1) A
> designer conceives a purpose. (2) To accomplish that
> purpose, the designer forms a plan. (3) To execute
> the plan, the designer specifies building materials
> and assembly instructions. (4) Finally, the designer
> or some surrogate applies the assembly instructions
> to the building materials. What emerges is a designed
> object, and the designer is successful to the degree
> that the object fulfills the designer's purpose.
> <SNIP>
>
> Does this satisfy your desire for the leadership of ID to come forward and
> declare whether design is just the creative thought, or the implementation
> of
> it as well?
>
It's interesting that Dembski uses the words "How a designer gets from thought to thing"
in his definition of design. Henry Petroski, who has written an excellent series of books
on engineering design, titled one of his recent works "Invention by Design: How Engineers
Get from Thought to Thing" (Harvard University Press, 1996). One of his best known books
is aptly titled "The Evolution of Useful Things." Having read his books and others from the
engineering community, it seems to me that there may be useful analogs for discussing how
intelligent design might be carried out (as opposed to the more common discussion on
how design is detected).
Is anyone aware of a systematic review comparing human design processes to those that
might be used by an intelligent designer that could lead to the "artifacts" we see in nature?
Other comments?
Thanks.
Bill Nelson
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