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Explores the question of whether or not concepts and principles involving supernatural intelligent design can occupy any legitimate place within science.
Although the scientific illegitimacy of supernatural design is typically asserted with enormous confidence and vigor, there has been surprisingly little actual work on such key foundational issues as even what design is and on specific criteria for assessing its legitimacy, or lack, as a scientific concept. However, intelligent supernatural design is again surfacing in discussions both of anthropic principles and of certain types of biological complexity. This book develops a definition of design, explicates the more specific concept of supernatural design, defends a general criterion for scientific legitimacy, and argues that in some cases the concept of intelligent supernatural design can meet the relevant requirements for scientific legitimacy.
"I found it remarkable—as a skeptic of both design arguments and their relevance to science—that I have come away from this book less of a skeptic than I was. I like the fact that Ratzsch's modern philosophical exploration of the full potential range of design arguments provides a firm and convincing taxonomy of the logical possibilities. This exercise clears the waters of many naive treatments pro and con, and provides a basis for raising substantially the intellectual level of the inevitable debate." — John Suppe, Princeton University
"It is a bold, innovative venture into a cutting-edge field of philosophy of science—design theory. It makes an original contribution to this nascent field." — William L Craig, Biola University
Preface
Introduction
I DESIGN BASICS
1. Design Preliminaries
2. Science and Finite Design
II SUPERNATURAL DESIGN
3. Supernatural Design: Preliminary Basics
4. Identifying Supernatural Design: Primary Marks
5. Identifying Supernatural Design: Secondary Marks
6. Designs in Nature
III BOUNDARIES OF SCIENTIFIC LEGITIMACY
7. Beyond the Empirical
8. The Legitimacy Criterion
IV THE PERMISSIBILITY QUESTION
9. Cases for Impermissibility
10. Legitimacy
11. Are There Any Payoffs?
12. Conclusion
Appendix
Dembski's Design Inference
Notes
Bibliography
Index