Content deleted Content added
m →Law of conservation of information: Removed erroneous space and general fixes (task 1) |
m Fixed typo Tags: Visual edit Mobile edit Mobile web edit |
||
| (32 intermediate revisions by 25 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{Short description|Creationist argument by William Dembski}}
{{Intelligent Design}}
'''Specified complexity''' is a creationist
Dembski argues that it is impossible for specified complexity to exist in patterns displayed by configurations formed by unguided processes. Therefore, Dembski argues, the fact that specified complex patterns can be found in living things indicates some kind of guidance in their formation, which is indicative of intelligence. Dembski further argues that one can show by applying [[No free lunch in search and optimization|no-free-lunch theorems]] the inability of evolutionary algorithms to select or generate configurations of high specified complexity. Dembski states that specified complexity is a reliable marker of design by an [[intelligent designer|intelligent agent]]—a central tenet to intelligent design, which Dembski argues for in opposition to [[evolution|modern evolutionary theory]]. Specified complexity is what Dembski terms an "explanatory filter": one can recognize design by detecting
The concept of specified complexity is widely regarded as mathematically unsound and has not been the basis for further independent work in [[information theory]], in the theory of [[complex systems]], or in [[biology]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/dembski.html |title=Information Theory and Creationism: William Dembski |author=Rich Baldwin |year=2005 |publisher=[[TalkOrigins Archive]] |access-date=2010-05-10}}</ref><ref>Mark Perakh, (2005). ''[http://www.talkreason.org/articles/newmath.cfm Dembski "displaces Darwinism" mathematically -- or does he?]''</ref><ref>Jason Rosenhouse, (2001). ''[http://educ.jmu.edu/~rosenhjd/sewell.pdf How Anti-Evolutionists Abuse Mathematics]'' The Mathematical Intelligencer, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2001, pp. 3–8.</ref> A study by [[Wesley R. Elsberry|Wesley Elsberry]] and [[Jeffrey Shallit]] states: "Dembski's work is riddled with inconsistencies, equivocation, flawed use of mathematics, poor scholarship, and misrepresentation of others' results."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.talkreason.org/articles/eandsdembski.pdf|last1=Elsberry|first1=Wesley|last2=Shallit|first2=Jeffrey|year=2003|title=Information Theory, Evolutionary Computation, and Dembski's 'Complex Specified Information|access-date=20 October 2017}}</ref> Another objection concerns Dembski's calculation of probabilities. According to [[Martin Nowak]], a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology, "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation."<ref name="
Wallis, Claudia (2005). [http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1090909,00.html Time Magazine], printed 15 August 2005, page 32
</ref>
Line 53 ⟶ 45:
</blockquote>
Dembski notes that the term "Law of Conservation of Information" was previously used by [[Peter Medawar]] in his book <cite>The Limits of Science</cite> (1984) "to describe the weaker claim that deterministic laws cannot produce novel information."<ref>[http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.03.Searching_Large_Spaces.pdf "Searching Large Spaces: Displacement and the No Free Lunch Regress (356k PDF)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104032640/http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.03.Searching_Large_Spaces.pdf |date=2015-01-04 }}", pp. 15-16, describing an argument made by [[Michael Shermer]] in ''How We Believe: Science, Skepticism, and the Search for God'', 2nd ed. (2003).</ref> The actual validity and utility of Dembski's proposed law are uncertain; it is neither widely used by the scientific community nor cited in mainstream scientific literature. A 2002 essay by Erik Tellgren provided a mathematical rebuttal of Dembski's law and concludes that it is "mathematically unsubstantiated."<ref>[http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dembski_LCI.pdf On Dembski's law of conservation of information] Erik Tellgren. talkreason.org, 2002. (PDF file)</ref>
==Specificity==
In a more recent paper,<ref>William A. Dembski (2005). [http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf ''Specification: The Pattern that Signifies intelligence''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070728121523/http://www.designinference.com/documents/2005.06.Specification.pdf |date=2007-07-28 }}</ref> Dembski provides an account which he claims is simpler and adheres more closely to the theory of [[statistical hypothesis testing]] as formulated by [[Ronald Fisher]]. In general terms, Dembski proposes to view design inference as a statistical test to reject a chance hypothesis P on a space of outcomes Ω.
Dembski's proposed test is based on the [[Kolmogorov complexity]] of a pattern ''T'' that is exhibited by an event ''E'' that has occurred. Mathematically, ''E'' is a subset of Ω, the pattern ''T'' specifies a set of outcomes in Ω and ''E'' is a subset of ''T''. Quoting Dembski<ref>(loc. cit. p. 16)</ref>
Line 63 ⟶ 55:
Kolmogorov complexity provides a measure of the computational resources needed to specify a pattern (such as a DNA sequence or a sequence of alphabetic characters).<ref>Michael Sipser (1997). ''Introduction to the Theory of Computation'', PWS Publishing Company.</ref> Given a pattern ''T'', the number of other patterns may have Kolmogorov complexity no larger than that of ''T'' is denoted by φ(''T''). The number φ(''T'') thus provides a ranking of patterns from the simplest to the most complex. For example, for a pattern ''T'' which describes the bacterial [[flagellum]], Dembski claims to obtain the upper bound φ(''T'') ≤ 10<sup>20</sup>.
Dembski defines
:<math> \sigma= - \log_2 [R \times \varphi(T) \times \operatorname{P}(T)], </math>
Line 105 ⟶ 97:
==Criticism==
{{Synthesis|section|date=May 2012}}
The soundness of Dembski's concept of specified complexity and the validity of arguments based on this concept are widely disputed. A frequent criticism (see Elsberry and Shallit) is that Dembski has used the terms "complexity", "information" and "improbability" interchangeably. These numbers measure properties of things of different types: Complexity measures how hard it is to describe an object (such as a bitstring), information is how much the uncertainty about the state of an object is reduced by knowing the state of another object or system,<ref>{{cite journal
Line 130 ⟶ 124:
| title = On Dembski's Law Of Conservation Of Information
| date = June 30, 2002
| author = Erik Tellgren}}</ref> Dembski responded in part that he is not "in the business of offering a strict [[mathematical proof]] for the inability of material mechanisms to generate specified complexity".<ref>William A. Dembski, (Aug 2002). [http://www.designinference.com/documents/2002.08.Erik_Response.htm ''If Only Darwinists Scrutinized Their Own Work as Closely: A Response to "Erik"''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130226010345/http://designinference.com/documents/2002.08.Erik_Response.htm |date=2013-02-26 }}.</ref> [[Jeffrey Shallit]] states that Demski's mathematical argument has multiple problems, for example; a crucial calculation on page 297 of ''No Free Lunch'' is off by a factor of approximately 10<sup>65</sup>.<ref name=shallit>[[Jeffrey Shallit]] (2002) [http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~shallit/nflr3.txt A review of Dembski's ''No Free Lunch'']</ref>
Dembski's calculations
According to Martin Nowak, a Harvard professor of mathematics and evolutionary biology "We cannot calculate the probability that an eye came about. We don't have the information to make the calculation".<ref name="
Dembski's critics note that specified complexity, as originally defined by Leslie Orgel, is precisely what Darwinian evolution is supposed to create. Critics maintain that Dembski uses "complex" as most people would use "absurdly improbable". They also claim that his argument is [[circular reasoning|circular]]: CSI cannot occur naturally because Dembski has defined it thus. They argue that to successfully demonstrate the existence of CSI, it would be necessary to show that some biological feature undoubtedly has an extremely low probability of occurring by any natural means whatsoever, something which Dembski and others have almost never attempted to do. Such calculations depend on the accurate assessment of numerous contributing probabilities, the determination of which is often necessarily subjective. Hence, CSI can at most provide a "very high probability", but not absolute certainty.
Another criticism refers to the problem of "arbitrary but specific outcomes". For example, if a coin is tossed randomly 1000 times, the probability of any particular outcome occurring is roughly one in 10<sup>300</sup>. For any particular specific outcome of the coin-tossing process, the ''a priori'' probability (probability measured before event happens) that this pattern occurred is thus one in 10<sup>300</sup>, which is astronomically smaller than Dembski's universal probability bound of one in 10<sup>150</sup>. Yet we know that the ''post hoc'' probability (
Apart from such theoretical considerations, critics cite reports of evidence of the kind of evolutionary "spontanteous generation" that Dembski claims is too improbable to occur naturally. For example, in 1982, B.G. Hall published research demonstrating that after removing a gene that allows sugar digestion in certain bacteria, those bacteria, when grown in media rich in sugar, rapidly evolve new sugar-digesting enzymes to replace those removed.<ref>B.G. Hall (1982). "Evolution of a regulated operon in the laboratory", ''[[Genetics (journal)|Genetics]]'', 101(3-4):335-44. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=6816666&query_hl=1 In PubMed.]</ref> Another widely cited example is the discovery of [[nylon eating bacteria]] that produce enzymes only useful for digesting synthetic materials that did not exist prior to the invention of [[nylon]] in 1935.
Line 161 ⟶ 155:
* [http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/dembski.html Information Theory and Creationism William Dembski] by Rich Baldwin, from Information Theory and Creationism, compiled by Ian Musgrave and Rich Baldwin
* [http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/orr.html Critique of ''No Free Lunch'' by H. Allen Orr] from the Boston Review
* [https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html Dissecting Dembski's "Complex Specified Information"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170317075913/https://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html |date=2017-03-17 }} by Thomas D. Schneider.
* [http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm William Dembski's treatment of the No Free Lunch theorems is written in jello] by No Free Lunch theorems co-founder, [[David Wolpert]]
* [
* [http://www.designinference.com/ Design Inference Website] - The writing of William A. Dembski
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20080313093300/http://csicop.org/sb/2000-12/reality-check.html Committee for Skeptical Inquiry - Reality Check, The Emperor's New Designer Clothes] - [[Victor J. Stenger]]
| |||