Darwin and Design

Darwin and Design

Michael Ruse’s Darwin and Design is a biological look into the idea of life’s design. Ruse has many references from many different sources to prove and his points as well as strengthens his arguments against others. Early philosophers and pioneers of design such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as well as modern day Christians are just a few of the many sources used in this book.

Ruse’s major idea of the book is shown through his views of biology and teleology. It is evident in the book of Ruse’s biology background and the biological views almost disprove teleology completely.

Ruse’s theory of cause and effect was one that stood out the most at the beginning of the book. The missing goal object as he describes it “if causes come before effects, then you are never stuck with having to explain effects that have no causes.” This relates to evolution in the fact that we see the effects of something that happened millions of years ago, and now we look for the cause of it.

The questioning of adaptation versus design was the most intriguing question in the book. Were subjects born the way they are now for a purpose, or did they adapt to their environment through out evolution? Reznick’s study of the maturing rate of the guppy is shown as an example in this book. Reznick’s study showed that in areas where predation on adults was greater, the fish matured faster and gave birth sooner. To determine that this was not design, Reznick took fish from an area where predators focused on smaller fish, and there for maturation time was normal, and put them into an area where the predators focused on the larger fish. After studying for years and about 25 generations Reznick was able to conclude that the newly introduced fish had adapted to the new predators and were maturing more quickly. This was a direct showing of adaptation versus design.

Ruse also brings up the paradoxical question that if there design then there must be a designer by definition. This is a very tough question to even hypothesize an answer for because of the pure never ending answer for it. If there is one designer, then who designed that designer, and so on.

This book relates very strongly to the course in the way that it is a direct comparison in many parts between science and religion. This was the first I had learned about the Atomists and their theories of random grouping of atoms and molecules. Ruse takes the reader from pre Darwin theories of the origin of life, the original theories