Quintessence of Dust on Behe's _Edge of Evolution_

Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box was an important book. Behe, a practicing scientist, proposed that some cellular mechanisms are too complex to have been brought about by unassisted natural selection. This book was the most important scientific work put forth by the Intelligent Design movement. Since publication, Behe's claims have been mostly, or entirely refuted -- there are reasonable explanations for each of his examples, involving only natural selection.

Quintessence of Dust has posted a few times on Michael Behe's more recent The Edge of Evolution, and he hasn't been very kind to Behe. He claims that Behe's science has been sloppy, at best. However, QofD, in his most recent post, proposes that Behe's hypothesis, namely that not only natural selection, but some occasional intelligent intervention, in the historical development of organisms, is a legitimate one, and can be tests. QofD outlines how such testing might be done. It would be a major research undertaking. Laboratory research, that is. QofD's author, in fact, offers to help in such a project.

Although QofD's analysis concludes that The Edge of Evolution does put forth a legitimate hypothesis, he says that Behe has scarcely touched on it in the book.

Thanks for reading.