What if Evolution is Compatible with Design After All?

Dear Tim, thanks for the welcome! I found your representation of the book and your critique here less than fair, unfortunately. For example:

  • You mention critique of the design argument’s logic (arguing that a designer would make any phenomenon more probable, and therefore explains nothing). But you do not mention that I discuss this same criticism in the book and respond to it. I suspect you would react quite critically if a book defending your own position was criticized in this same manner - repeating arguments that are actually responded to in the book, without even mentioning the responses. Regardless, such philosophical critique of design arguments is distinct from critiques based on evolution as such.

  • Similarly, you now point out that the idea of “laws of form” is linked to structuralism as if this was something I should be surprised by - but I actually discuss this same issue in the book, and even reference the critique of structuralism from the Edge symposium Moran discusses in your link. However, I do point to lots of non-structuralists who also argue for the role of constraints in influencing evolution - and one does not have to use the term “laws of form” to come close to the same idea. I also argue that the general thesis of the compatibility of evolution and design does not depend on structuralism, though structuralism would fit it very well, I think.

Since you have access to the book, why not make an effort to steel-man my position a bit, and only then criticize it? And why not browse through the articles in the Zygon symposium, as well as my response, and then develop critique that goes a bit deeper than the ones there? I think this would be more helpful for developing good objections than, say, criticizing my acknowledgements-section or the Carroll-quote, which I do not use to say more than what it says right there.

1 Like