Specified complexity: Difference between revisions

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==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

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| 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"''].</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 10⁶⁵.<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 assertshow thathow a simple [[smooth function]] cannot gain information. He therefore arguesconcludes that there must be a designer to obtain CSI. However, natural selection has a branching mapping from one to many (replication) followed by pruning mapping of the many back down to a few (selection). When information is replicated, some copies can be differently modified while others remain the same, allowing information to increase. These increasing and reductional mappings were not modeled by Dembski. In other words, Dembski's calculations do not model birth and death. This basic flaw in his modeling renders all of Dembski's subsequent calculations and reasoning in ''No Free Lunch'' irrelevant because his basic model does not reflect reality. Since the basis of ''No Free Lunch'' relies on this flawed argument, the entire thesis of the book collapses.<ref>Thomas D. Schneider. (2002) [http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html Dissecting Dembski's "Complex Specified Information"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051026135240/http://www.lecb.ncifcrf.gov/~toms/paper/ev/dembski/specified.complexity.html |date=2005-10-26 }}</ref>

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="time.com"/>