The focus of this question (relationship between design and evolution,
as discussed in Klaus' message) is in intention. Some people insist
that design is always based on intention. If there is no intention,
there is no design, they say.
Personally, I disagree with this necessity of intention. There are many
designs that were produced by design processes where specific
intentions of some designer do not explain the outcome. I believe that
we miss the big picture and the true context of design if we do not
consider these processes as design processes.
When one holds this point of view, evolution is also a design process.
I see Dawkins' statement as a comment to the "intelligent design"
protagonists, who claim that evolution could not have produced the
designs attributed to it, which then implies that there must have been
an intelligent intentional designer who produced those designs, i.e.
God. According to what Dawkins says, he also seems to subscribe to the
view that design always requires intention. However, another way to say
what he seems to be telling the intelligent design community would be
that "intention comes later in the universe", and that evolution is
capable of designing without intention.
cheers, kari-hans
...
On 5.1.2005, at 08:32, Klaus Krippendorff wrote:
> [Dawkins:] "i believe, but cannot prove, that all life, all
> intelligence, all
> creativity and all "design" (his quotation marks) anywhere in the
> universe,
> is the direct or indirect product of darwinian natural selection. it
> follows that design comes later in the universe, after a period of
> darvinian
> evolution. design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot
> underlie
> the universe."
>
> note that he does not use the concept of causation. the
> producer-product
> relationship, which he invokes, is a explanatory structure that does
> not fit
> into causal explanations (which is why many scientists sold to causal
> explanations, physicists, for example, have little use for theories of
> evolution). to me the point of interest is that design cannot be
> explained
> by evolutionary processes either.
>
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