The mousetrap
Life is too complex for evolution to explain, say supporters of
intelligent design. Yet they insist market forces will suffice for the
economy, writes John Allen Paulos
The theory of intelligent design, the purportedly more scientific
descendant of creation science, rejects Darwin's theory of evolution as
being unable to explain the complexity of life. How, ask its supporters,
can biological phenomena such as the clotting of blood have arisen just by
chance?
A key supporter likens the "irreducible complexity" of such phenomena to
the irreducible complexity of a mousetrap. If one piece is missing -
spring, metal platform or board - it is useless. The implicit suggestion
is that all the parts of a mousetrap would have had to come into being at
once, an impossibility unless there were an intelligent designer. Design
proponents argue that what's true for the mousetrap is all the more true
for complex biological phenomena. If any of the 20 or so proteins involved
in blood clotting is absent, clotting doesn't occur. So, the creationist
argument goes, these proteins must have all been brought into being at
once by a designer.
But the theory of evolution does explain the evolution of complex
biological organisms and phenomena, and the argument from design, which
dates from the 18th century, has been decisively refuted. Rehashing the
refutation is not my goal. Those who reject evolution are usually immune
to such arguments.
Rather, my intention here is to develop some loose analogies between these
biological issues and related economic ones and to show that these
analogies point to a surprising crossing of political lines. Let me begin
by asking how it is that modern free market economies are as complex as
they are, boasting amazingly elaborate production, distribution and
communication systems? Go into almost any drug store and you can find your
favourite candy bar. And what's true at the personal level is true at the
industrial level. Somehow there are enough ball bearings and computer
chips in just the right places in factories all over the country. The
physical infrastructure and communication networks are also marvels of
integrated complexity. Fuel supplies are, by and large, where they're
needed. Email reaches you in Miami as well as in Milwaukee, not to mention
Barcelona and Bangkok.
The natural question, discussed first by Adam Smith and later by Friedrich
Hayek and Karl Popper among others, is who designed this marvel of
complexity? Which commissar decreed the number of packets of dental floss
for each retail outlet? The answer, of course, is that no economic god
designed this system. It emerged and grew by itself. No one argues that
all the components of the candy bar distribution system must have been put
into place at once, or else there would be no Snickers at the corner
store.
So far, so good. What is more than a bit odd, however, is that some of the
most ardent opponents of Darwinian evolution - for example, many
fundamentalist Christians - are among the most ardent supporters of the
free market. They accept the market's complexity without qualm, yet insist
the complexity of biological phenomena requires a designer.
They would reject the idea that there is or should be central planning in
the economy. They would point out that simple economic exchanges which are
beneficial to people become entrenched and then gradually modified as they
become part of larger systems of exchange, while those that are not
beneficial die out. Yet some of these same people refuse to believe
natural selection and "blind processes" can lead to biological order
arising spontaneously.
There are, of course, quite significant differences and disanalogies
between biological systems and economic ones (one being that biology is a
much more substantive science than economics), but these shouldn't blind
us to their similarities nor mask the obvious analogies.
These analogies prompt two final questions. What would you think of
someone who studied economic entities and their interactions in a modern
free market economy and insisted that they were, despite a perfectly
reasonable and empirically supported Smithian account of their
development, the consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed
economic law-giver? You might deem such a person a conspiracy theorist.
And what would you think of someone who studied biological processes and
organisms and insisted that they were, despite an perfectly reasonable and
empirically supported Darwinian account of their development, the
consequence of some all-powerful, detail-obsessed biological law-giver?
· John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University,
Philadelphia. www.math.temple.edu/paulos
· What did you think of this article? Mail your responses to
life@guardian.co.uk and include your name and address.
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