What if Evolution is Compatible with Design After All?

Thanks for the comments, everyone! I can respond to some questions and clarify a few points. If there are actual misunderstandings of biology or the relevant evidence in my book, I would be glad to hear.

The purpose of my article was to introduce the idea of the compatibility of evolution and design, as well as the symposium on the book which was published in Zygon. I am surprised that the idea seems so difficult to understand - I personally thought that my own explanation, as well as Glass’ and Wahlberg’s papers, were quite clear, though not focused on the scientific details. The compatibility of evolution and design-based explanations is a philosophical question though, so the philosophy is very relevant and should not be dismissed! If you reject the compatibility, this will also be based on philosophical ideas, so the philosophy cannot be avoided.

For the science, perhaps we need a further article on PS in the future to summarize the evidence. Before that, I will have to direct you to the summaries in my book, or to Peter Jeavons’ article in the book symposium for one aspect of it: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zygo.12840 .

On the Carroll quote, I do not understand how Tim formed the opinion that I have not read Carroll’s original work. It is true that I found the quote from biologist Denis Alexander’s book, whose commentary on it I quote, but of course I read the source myself as well. But in my academic culture, if one finds a quote through another scholar’s work, it is considered polite to also reference that scholar, not merely the original work. It’s a kind of tip of the hat, a show of gratefulness for their work.

Also, nothing about the context quoted by Tim invalidates my use of the Carroll quote. The idea of laws of form or physical constraints influencing the direction of evolution does not require that these factors solely determine what evolves, and I discuss arguments for the importance of contingent historical events a few pages later in my book. It seems there has been some misunderstanding here.

On the relation of the argument to ID, the idea of design I defend is indeed distinct from ID - nor are design arguments are historically restricted to the Intelligent Design movement. For instance, my defense of the idea is philosophical and compatible with the success of evolutionary explanations. I do discuss some ID arguments in the book, arguing (among other things) that several responses to these arguments themselves end up providing evidence for teleology. But this is just one part of the case.

And yes, I am indeed very familiar with both ID arguments and the responses to them, so I am not uncritical here. After all, I did write another book, The Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of Scientism (Routledge 2016), for which I tried to read everything I could get my eyes on, including lots of more obscure pieces. I have also written on topics like methodological naturalism.

I hope this clarifies some things!

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