The Mythology of Evolution by Chris Bateman

Author:Chris Bateman [Bateman, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780996509
Publisher: Zero Books

4. Metaphors of Design

Intelligent Design

The wing of the swift resembles the wing of a fighter jet not by coincidence but because it is an effective shape for something intending to fly fast and make agile turns. Other birds, those which do not race around the sky with the speed of the swift, have different shaped wings, each reflecting different needs. The elliptical wing of the crow is suited for tight maneuvering in confined spaces, such as among trees; the extra-long wing of the albatross is perfect for gliding but requires a long taxi to get airborne, and are thus more easily used over the ocean; the eagle’s wide, slotted wings are perfect for soaring and a quick take-off. Airplanes often have broadly similar shapes, because the aerodynamics of flight are the same for machines as they are for living creatures.

This explains why planes and birds have resemblance, but it does not explain why birds have wings that are so perfectly suited to this kind of flying. The evolutionary explanation of adaptation says that the wings conform to the environmental circumstances within which the bird can be found, and that this happens as a consequence of natural selection. Those birds that were better suited to the relevant circumstances thrived and thus, by differential survivorship, the wings gradually evolved to fit those conditions of life. This is Darwin’s big idea in a nutshell.

However, this account has some limitations. For a start, Darwin’s fitness to environment, which is invoked in explaining adaptation, is still only a metaphor. It doesn’t actually answer the question of why the swifts are adapted for high-speed flight so much as it provides a way of imagining how it may have happened. A complete explanation requires knowing something about how the genetic toolbox is able to create the different kind of wings, an account of the circumstances that caused the ancestors of swifts to pursue this lifestyle, and more besides. Some of this information is attainable, and some of it can only be speculated. Often, talk of adaptation occurs as the pure speculation I have called How-Why games, and falls considerably short of fully explicating a particular feature (although this is not to deny that it might be possible to do so in certain cases).

Some people, however, claim the Darwinian account of adaptation isn’t just limited, it is entirely misleading. They claim that there is detectable evidence of intentional design in the living world – that the swift is better explained by inferring a designer than it is by adaptation, natural selection and so forth. They claim unguided and unintelligent causes are insufficient to explain the wings of the swift and many other aspects of both the living world and the universe. Based on the evidence of design that can readily be seen in nature – like the swift’s wing, which seems designed for high speed flight – they believe the best explanation must be some sort of intelligence, whatever it might turn out to be. This is the fifth myth of evolution, intelligent design.

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