Daniel, I think ID claims can be tested and they crumble spectacularly when tested. I've tried to do that with Behe's mousetrap analogy for irreducible complexity and others have done it with his bacterial flagellum example of irreducible complexity. The falsity will be plain to everybody, by switching the example. If Behe had taken modern cars for explaining irreducible complexity and observed that, because they cannot work without an on-board computer, therefore no preceding cars without on-board computers can ever have existed, he'd been ridiculed even by young Earth creationists. Epistemologically ID is a simple non sequitur.

Simply ID is not science because asks for non-internal causes to explain science facts, it is like having an extra-card in the sleeve playing poker.

The same happens with Darwinian evolution as well with the classical circle if something is in a given way this means it was convenient to be that way (tautology, another kind of extra-card). I remember a recent article on PNAS in which the authors claimed that they had a model to explain the folding times of proteins 'till the length of 100 residues' after that length 'the proteins folding in physiological times were such good folders ' because they wer selected by evolution', this is not science, this is an extra card, the reality is 'we still cannot explain the chemico-physical principles that allow for physiologic folding times' stop, asking evolution to magically solve problems inhbhits any serious science (and this happens continuously).

The mixing of phylosophycal and scientific themes still confuses the field, I'm Roman Catholic and as such I have no problem with evolution (Since Thomas the Aquinas the separation of different planes was very clear and pope Pius XII clearly stated darwinism does not pose any problem to Faith) but this is not the same for other Religions, moreover some atheistic groups used darwinism as a religion and so and so...

The critiques which I have read basically say that it is simply a very sophisticated form of the old "God of the gaps" argument. One encounters an aspect of an organism that is very complex, and one says, "the only way to account for this is God."

Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box is critiqued first because he released his findings for the public without seeking peer review, and then it is critiqued because numerous researchers find that his notion of "irreducible complexity" may not in fact be irreducible. The idea is that certain mechanisms (e.g. the bacterium flagellum) could not exist as a transitional form and would have to be purposely designed, inasmuch as none of its separate parts is of any evolutionary value when considered alone. Which is to say that the whole "mechanism" only makes sense as a functioning adaptation to the organism's needs.

Contrary to popular perception, neither Behe nor Dembski, the two best known proponents of the movement, are opposed to the notion of common descent. Their claim is essentially that there is an intelligence guiding evolution. Personally I think that the epistemological issue that most scientists have with the notion is that it is, by its claims, unable to be tested scientifically. It is neither falsifiable (no test can be conceived which might prove it false) nor is it repeatable, therefore it is not within the domain of science. As the late Stephen Jay Gould, and numerous other well respected scientists have pointed out, these sorts of claims are not able to be adjudicated by the techniques and practices which the sciences have at their disposal. The introduction of another element beside pure scientific data and reasoning is necessary if one is going to reach conclusions such as those which Behe and Dembski have made, or their opposite (e.g. the "no God" sort of claims which Dawkins et. al. have made).

Epistomologically, intelligent design does not qualify as a "theory of knowledge" because it does not contribute to knowledge at all. When intelligent designers say "I know", what they mean is "I believe". When scientists say "I know", what they mean is "I think". "I believe" and "I think" are very different things epistomologically. Belief does not equate to thinking, because it does not add knowledge. Conversely, thinking has the very real and useful property of adding to knowledge.

intelligent design arguments are always ...hogwash. The few exceptions to this general rule have been refuted. Therefore they do not require an epistemological analysis, however you can perform one, if you wish to do so.

Whenever you deal with intelligent design you will waste your time.

In Western philosophy of science, we tend to see the birth of contemporary scientific method in Descartes (and afterwards all the others: Bacon, Popper, and so on). In doing so, we apply a Cartesian method to modern science: study, then question, then test, then analyse, then conclude. Whenever a scientific article follows these steps, it is usually cited very much (a Science that stands the test of time).

Descartes, in his "Discourse on the Method", started by denying everything (even his own Self), and constructed thenceforth, in order to conclude (i) if he Is (if he exists), and thence everything else.

I think Descartes was right: doubt everything not proven true, and test everything else. If this line of thought is true, then I think we should apply a Cartesian approach to the concept of intelligent design. Let us consider it not to be true, and see if it survives as the logical explanation to evolution. In the interest of disclosure, I do not think it to be true, but, nevertheless, I do not oppose it to be tested.

But how should we test it? Empiricaly thinkinging - we see some fossil transition, e.g. between land mammals and cetacean. Through the continuun we know by date, how test that this changes happened by intelligent design or not? Is not a matter of being in favor or against testing it, is a matter of not being testable at all, besides the lack of scientific evidence of the designer, that should be the first thing to be tested to make a case.

Try to test the hypothesis that the Cappella Sistina frescos were painted by a human being, well, we go on with the classical statistical stuff: we take 1000 human beings (some of them will be painters, but we want to keep our mind open and not the whole sample is made by painters) and we ask them to start painting a building of the same volumetic characteristics of Sistine Chapel, none is able to do that ! Wow we disproved the human origin of Sistine Chapel frescos and start to think of an alien invasion in the XVI century with aliens incredibly good in painting large surfaces...mmmh, going to the original documents a lot of them speak about '..invasions from the north..' 'Lanzichenecchi ???' what a strange word, some say that was the Italian name of Charles V emeperor but who knows, they are coming to Italy in the same period of the frescos...

That is to say that historical facts are unique and are by definition outside the realm of empirical testing, the facts we have at hand is that the forms of life changed during the time and they cahnged in a very strange and wild way (Cambrian explosion, keeoing alive very old phyla..) on the other hand we cannot know how from inorganic world a cell coud come to life (Miller experiments are silly games with aminoacids see here for a good explanation of the problem: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pro.747/abstract).

So pure neodarwinism does not work: too much epistatsis, too many constraints from the physical world...but there are no dinosaurs around so change happened, too terrible to admit we still do not know how this did happen ???

Clearly Religion is a completely different aspect, since the IV century Christians were favourable to evolution (see St. Basil the Great speeches about Genesis) so no problem, the simple fact the world has a mirable order is, for the believer (like me), a great joy of the heart because reminds me of our Father in the sky, but science is another game, just because we are in the Nature but in avery peculiar position we can try and give a rapid look at the Father's plans, but being honest and fair and using the well known and useful science tools....

Daniel, I think ID claims can be tested and they crumble spectacularly when tested. I've tried to do that with Behe's mousetrap analogy for irreducible complexity and others have done it with his bacterial flagellum example of irreducible complexity. The falsity will be plain to everybody, by switching the example. If Behe had taken modern cars for explaining irreducible complexity and observed that, because they cannot work without an on-board computer, therefore no preceding cars without on-board computers can ever have existed, he'd been ridiculed even by young Earth creationists. Epistemologically ID is a simple non sequitur.

Dear Joachim,

the point of complexity and the need of thinking of still unknown 'optimality principles' with a major importance that simple natural selection is in any case an open question that needs a deep rethinking of the pure neodarwinian model that is frankly not fit for even aproaching biological systems organization see for example:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pro.747/full

and in general all the elaboration of Stuart Kauffmann, it is in any case important to start with new ideas without giving for granted a general theoretical framework like the neodarwinian one that does not give satisfactory answers to modern biology. This new framework must dare to take into consideration systems complexity putting it well inside the actual experimental data:

http://www.la-press.com/a-novel-multi-scale-modeling-approach-to-infer-whole-genome-divergence-article-a3417

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437111006789

Indeed, testing Intelligent Design is not a trivial task. However, as in a Cartesian approach, we begin with the facts and propose hypotheses to answer these questions. ID seems to have evolved as an actualization on Creationism, when the latter was confronted by modern science. Still, as is the case with any scientific process, the burden of testing the hypothesis will always fall with those who propose it initially.

Christopher Hitchens, when confronted with ID, would state that in order to believe in a guided design, we would have to believe in laws of physics which can be bent, or distorted. This would suit the designer, but would make for a very unstable Universe! This is the same case as with miracles (but with baby steps). We can either believe in a Science that is constructed upon principles that have been tested over and over again or we can believe that a designer controls the laws of the Universe. I, personally, cannot see an overlap between a logically constructed Universe and a Mystically constructed one.

Dear Alessandro,

I read the papers you suggest out of interest. I have to confess that I do not see a clear link between the ideas they present and your conclusion that neodarwinism is not fit for approaching the complexity of life (which is relatively out of the initial question posted here). Surely, evolutionary studies do not claim to understand all aspect of the complexity of life, but I would really be interested in explanations as to why these three points would lead you to think neo-darwinism is to be replaced with another body of theory?

- We cannot artificially create cells and complexe proteins solely by randomly assembling components. Assembly needs to be hierarchically organised.

- Phenotypic variation presents sets of relatively discontinuous patterns of differentiations, while genotypic variation show a fluid/continuous one.

- Multi scale ordination analyses may help summarize the complexity of genome differentiation.

That being said, I think that all these are dwelving into the exciting questions on the mechaniscs of differentiation among organisms, which will lead to yet other extensions of the theory of biological evolution.

I apologize to everybody as I think I may be drifting out of the subject originally posted by Rodolfo. Personally I still wonder why would the idea that an occult force shapes evolution would change anything to the science we do as scientists. Intelligent design, unless attempting to rehabilitate biblical stories literally, does not make any predictions on the mechanisms and dyamic of evolution. Hence my current position would be that it is irrelevant to scientific practice.

It is exactly as you said: an extension of the theory of biological evolution, but this extension, as aptly and fairly wrote by Charles Darwin 'if gradualism should be disconfirmed all my theory is disconfirmed' is completely outside neodarwinism synthesis. In other words there was evolution (no dinosaurs here around..) but not with the chance+selection mechanism, in my opinion we should look more in depth into the physical (non-linear emergence of structures ? Biological statistical mechanics ?) constraints shaping biological systems, but we must be aware this is something very different and not an extension of darwinism, it is a completely new idea of evolution.

The paper I inserted all redound around the idea of the need of explaining 'relations among elements' given this relation structure is incredibly fine tuned and complex, my idea is that we need something similar to the Mendeleev work in chemistry: a periodic table of elements each other linked by simple valence rules allowing for the bewildering multiplicity of let's say organic chemistry with thousands of new compounds coming out each year but all obeying the same 'construction rules', something like music (from where Periodic Table comes given Mendeleev and his colelague Borodin were both chemists and composers, the character of periodic table comes from the octave and the valences from the just intonations of tones)that is at the basis of 'what can be done' by subsequent relatively minor modulation inserted by natural selection (we are trying something similar with proteins).

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr3002356

But we are very very far from a periodic table (even if some strong graph invariants of protein contact networks start to emerge).

As for Rodolfo question, the accent on 'irreducible complexity' posed by ID has some points very interesting (by the way the explanation of biological complexity cannot be achieved by the darwininan random mutations + selection + isolation mechanism even at the most basic level of a single protein system) and some other frankly outside science , a God-of-the-gaps acting when laws of nature fail is not only a non-scientific explanation, but for me, a praticant Roman Catholic believer , a theological monstrum.

But going against ID provokes the stasis of biological insight (the famous phrase of Dobzhansky 'Nothing in biology makes sense outside the frame of evolution' is an anti-scientific statement, so why we should try and understand the chemico-physical principles of protein folding ? Why we should study the electromagnetic nature of nervous stimuli ? Why we should go into the mysteries of ear functioning ? It should be sufficient to say 'Why bother ?, if it is there it means is favourable..' Instead I'm convinced biology makes part of the material world and of nature, and biological matter is in any case matter, for sure we must greatly enlarge our ideas of physics but this is the fascinating part of the game.

I cannot understand the phrase by Ricardo stating 'I cannot see an overlap between a logically constructed Universe and a Mistically constructed one' Who does believ that Universe was 'mistically' (I suppose he intends voluntaristic and lawless) built ? The start of the John's Gospel identifies God with the 'Logos' i.e. with the supreme logic at the base of creation, basically we can do science because Universe has an high degree of order (it is a cosmos and not simply a chaos), in some sense modern science is a natural daughter of Judeo-Christian Faith in a rational Creator with whom we share the ratinal mind and attitude so that we can understand Nature (even being part of it) and to be both a part of Nature and a part of her Creator gives us the possibility to understand (a part, science will never end) Natural laws and principles.

But again we are very far to make really interact physical and biological work, even if something is happening:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6120/646.1.short?rss=1&ssource=mfr

I'm sorry , I missed after the phrase 'Going against ID,' the statement ' without considering the relevance of complexity point'

The argument of ID is like the "cause-effect" principle. It automatically comes to mind whenever there is "something" as "related to". This seems to be the automatic "activity of the mind." Maybe Kant is equally sensical when he said that the mind contribute to the understanding of the "reality" or "phenomenon" otherwise, there is "chaos".

For me it is simple. Intelligent design is based on the limitation of science to explain all links cause and effect in a given period of human civilization, and this "theory of divine intervention." Much greater range of the smaller scientific knowledge.

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Science is simply made to understand the links between facts, intelligent design replaces the gaps for something "fantastic", not by logical links, but for a bypass.

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You can replace this "divine intervention" for another fantastic figures, a "the cosmic power", "extraterrestrials", "the power of the collective will" or anything else. Not explaining anything, just filling gaps for something that is claimed by a lack of human capacity to understand it, we call it religion or another name, but certainly not science.

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We must separate science from religion, because one is collective and depends on proofs, the other is individual and depends only on faith, just seek to understand the science of religion or vice versa is simply looking for where there is no answer.

The problem with intelligent design is infinite regress: we start with one intelligent design, attribute it to a deeper and more basic one, from there to a still deeper and more radical one, and so on ad infinitum.

Another problem with intelligent design is a petitio principii, or putting the cart before the horse. We see the individual horses and we make an artificial construct to explain them.