Reviews
"When examined with the powerful tools of modern biology, but not with its modern prejudices, life on a biochemical level can be a product, Behe says, only of intelligent design. Coming from a practicing biologist. . . this proposition is close to heretical."-- "The New York Times Book Review, "A persuasive book. It will speak to the layman and perhaps even to professional evolutionists as well, if they are able to suspend for a little while their own judgment about origins, the ultimate black box." -- The Washington Times, "[Behe] is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known." -- H. Allen Orr in The New Yorker, Peter Van InwagenProfessor of Philosophy, Notre Dame UniversityThis book will do much to correct the common misapprehension that anyone who questions the Darwinian theory of evolution must be a "young earth creationist" whose motivation is to preserve the literal truth of the stories told in the first three books of Genesis against the encroachments of science and reason. If Darwinians respond to this important book by ignoring it, misrepresenting it, or ridiculing it, that will be evidence in favor of the widespread suspicion that Darwinism today functions more as an ideology than as a scientific theory. If they can successfully answer Behe's arguments, that will be important evidence in favor of Darwinism., "Overthrows Darwin at the end of the twentieth century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning." -- George Gilder in National Review, "An argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. . . . No one can propose to defend Darwin without meeting the challenges set out in this superbly written and compelling book."-- David Berlinski, author ofA Tour of the Calculus, "A persuasive book. It will speak to the layman and perhaps even to professional evolutionists as well, if they are able to suspend for a little while their own judgment about origins, the ultimate black box."--The Washington Times, "An argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. . . . No one can propose to defend Darwin without meeting the challenges set out in this superbly written and compelling book."-- David Berlinski, author of A Tour of the Calculus, "[Behe] is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known."-- H. Allen Orr in The New Yorker, "An argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. . . . No one can propose to defend Darwin without meeting the challenges set out in this superbly written and compelling book." -- David Berlinski, author of A Tour of the Calculus, "[Behe] is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known."-- H. Allen Orr inThe New Yorker, "A persuasive book. It will speak to the layman and perhaps even to professional evolutionists as well, if they are able to suspend for a little while their own judgment about origins, the ultimate black box."-- The Washington Times, "When examined with the powerful tools of modern biology, but not with its modern prejudices, life on a biochemical level can be a product, Behe says, only of intelligent design. Coming from a practicing biologist. . . this proposition is close to heretical." -- The New York Times Book Review, "Overthrows Darwin at the end of the twentieth century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning."-- George Gilder inNational Review, "When examined with the powerful tools of modern biology, but not with its modern prejudices, life on a biochemical level can be a product, Behe says, only of intelligent design. Coming from a practicing biologist. . . this proposition is close to heretical."--The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A long-awaited re-issue of the classic book that launched the theory of Intelligent Design, fully updated with a new afterword by the author., Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the Intelligent Design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. Today, with the movement stronger than ever, Michael J. Behe updates the book with an important new Afterword on the state of the debate. --Time Naming Darwin's Black Box to the National Review's list of the 100 most important nonfiction works of the twentieth century, George Gilder wrote that it "overthrows Darwin at the end of the twentieth century in the same way that quantum theory overthrew Newton at the beginning." Discussing the book in The New Yorker in May 2005, H. Allen Orr said of Behe, "he is the most prominent of the small circle of scientists working on intelligent design, and his arguments are by far the best known." From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key text in the Intelligent Design movement--the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it, or not. For this edition, Behe has written a major new Afterword tracing the state of the debate in the decade since it began. It is his first major new statement on the subject and will be welcomed by the thousands who wish to continue this intense debate., The groundbreaking, "seminal work" ( Time ) on intelligent design that dares to ask, was Darwin wrong? In 1996, Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the intelligent design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text--the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it. In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever., Virtually all serious scientists accept the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution. While the fight for its acceptance has been a long and difficult one, after a century of struggle among the cognoscenti the battle is over. Biologists are now confident that their remaining questions, such as how life on Earth began, or how the Cambrian explosion could have produced so many new species in such a short time, will be found to have Darwinian answers. They, like most of the rest of us, accept Darwin's theory to be true. But should we? What would happen if we found something that radically challenged the now-accepted wisdom? In "Darwin's Black Box, " Michael Behe argues that evidence of evolution's limits has been right under our noses -- but it is so small that we have only recently been able to see it. The field of biochemistry, begun when Watson and Crick discovered the double-helical shape of DNA, has unlocked the secrets of the cell. There, biochemists have unexpectedly discovered a world of Lilliputian complexity. As Behe engagingly demonstrates, using the examples of vision, bloodclotting, cellular transport, and more, the biochemical world comprises an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there must have been a series of mutations, each of which produced its own working machine, that led to the complexity we can now see. The more complex and interdependent each machine's parts are shown to be, the harder it is to envision Darwin's gradualistic paths, Behe surveys the professional science literature and shows that it is completely silent on the subject, stymied by the elegance of the foundation oflife. Could it be that there is some greater force at work? Michael Behe is not a creationist. He believes in the scientific method, and he does not look to religious dogma for answers to these questions. But he argues persuasively that biochemical machines must have been "designed" -- either by God, or by some other higher intelligence. For decades science has been frustrated, trying to reconcile the astonishing discoveries of modern biochemistry to a nineteenth-century theory that cannot accommodate them. With the publication of "Darwin's Black Box, " it is time for scientists to allow themselves to consider exciting new possibilities, and for the rest of us to watch closely., The groundbreaking, "seminal work" (Time) on intelligent design that dares to ask, was Darwin wrong? In 1996, Darwin's Black Box helped to launch the intelligent design movement: the argument that nature exhibits evidence of design, beyond Darwinian randomness. It sparked a national debate on evolution, which continues to intensify across the country. From one end of the spectrum to the other, Darwin's Black Box has established itself as the key intelligent design text -- the one argument that must be addressed in order to determine whether Darwinian evolution is sufficient to explain life as we know it. In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that the complexity discovered by microbiologists has dramatically increased since the book was first published. That complexity is a continuing challenge to Darwinism, and evolutionists have had no success at explaining it. Darwin's Black Box is more important today than ever., From within the highest ranks of the scientific community comes a startling new theory of creation that not only contradicts Darwinian orthodoxy but opens the door to theological arguments biologists have dismissed and ridiculed for more than a century.
