Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
Book Review: Biochemistry as it isn't
Summary: 2 Stars
With 566 previous reviews (perhaps 565 more than the book merits), it might seem that there was little more to say. However, extremely few of the 566 reviewers have any expertise in biochemistry, a subject that Michael Behe mentions not only in the title but also throughout the book. He argues that his conclusions follow necessarily from the study of biochemistry, and he implies (without going so far as to perpetrate an outright lie by saying so in so many words) that anyone with a knowledge of biochemistry will agree. This is so far from the reality that even his own academic colleagues at Lehigh University find it necessary to post a warning on the departmental web site stating that his views are his alone. Far from what Behe pretends, nearly all biochemists consider that the studies of protein and gene sequences of the past 35 years have constituted one of the triumphs of the Darwinian view of evolution, providing a huge new body of data in support of natural selection. This does not make them right, of course: truth in science is not decided democratically, and overwhelmingly preponderant opinions sometimes turn out to be wrong.
Nonetheless, anyone adopting a minority position has two obligations: to acknowledge that it is, in fact, a minority position, and to offer very strong arguments that have some chance of convincing the majority. Behe doesn't bother with either of these. As he is writing primarily for non-biochemist readers he allows these readers to imagine that there is no significant opposition to his views, and as he has never tried to make his case before an audience of his peers he has not tried to deal with this opposition. Worse than that, he is content to attack Darwinian evolution without bothering to offer any kind of falsifiable hypothesis to replace it.
Perhaps the most serious fault in the book is the confusion that pervades it between studies of the origin of life and studies of evolution. Although Charles Darwin did have some suggestions to make about the origin of life it is not that that he is famous for: his reputation lies in the theory of natural selection, which is not concerned with the origin of life but with its subsequent evolution. It is perfectly possible to think that there remain serious difficulties in understanding how the first organisms came to exist but at the same time that natural selection offers an almost complete explanation of evolution. Indeed, that would be the position of most biologists: hardly anyone considers that the origin of life is well understood. In the book, however, the ideas of irreducible complexity are presented as if they were an argument against natural selection, when they are nothing of the kind. Insofar as they are worth bothering with at all, they draw attention to some of the points that a theory of the origin of life will need to explain.
In relation to the questions that most exercise creationists -- the degree of relationship between humans and apes -- irreducible complexity has no relevance whatsoever. All of the examples that Behe gives, such as blood clotting, operate exactly the same in chimpanzees and humans, and have precisely nothing to say about whether or when chimpanzees and humans had a common ancestor. The biochemical evidence actually goes in the opposite direction from what creationists would like: 40 years ago virtually all palaeontologists thought that the separation between humans and African apes occurred about 30 million years ago, but now almost everyone agrees that it was very much more recent, and it is precisely the mountain of biochemical data that has brought about the change. In fact Behe tells us that he finds the idea of "common descent (that all organisms have a common ancestor) fairly convincing" -- a sentence that seems to have escaped the attention of creationist readers anxious to find a real scientist saying things they think are in support of their views.
With all this, why give the book two stars? The first is because one star is the least that Amazon allows, and the second is because although this book is dangerous and seriously misleading for non-specialists, it is also one that scientists, especially biochemists and molecular biologists, probably do need to make the effort to read, if only to know at first hand what the "scientific" case against evolution consists of.
Book Review: Black Box Thoughts
Summary: 5 Stars
A serioius scientific text, raising some serious scientific issues with the concepts of Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian theory at the large scale level. Very thought-provoking, at multiple levels.Book Review: Charming but Ultimately Unconvincing
Summary: 2 Stars
Behe's prose is engaging and enjoyable, but this attempt to refute the theory of evolution does not convince.
The basic thesis of Behe's book is that though the theory of evolution may explain the fossil record and the anatomies of living things, it cannot explain the microscopic functioning of, for example, vision, the bacterial flagellum, and the immune system (p. 22). Indeed, Behe argues that evolutionary biology has been completely silent on the subject of how a cell's molecular machinery has evolved: "No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institutes of Health, no member of the National Academy of Sciences. . . can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have developed in a Darwinian fashion" (p. 187. Compare pp. 179, 185).
On the basis of this alleged silence, Behe suggests a return to William Paley's famous "watchmaker" argument (aka the argument from design): if a microbiological structure is "irreducibly complex" (defined on p. 39), Behe says, it cannot have evolved, and so must have been the work of an Intelligent Designer.
Unfortunately, this house of cards is built on balderdash. Searches of PubMed and similar databases for terms like "evolution of rhodopsin" and "evolution of flagellum" turn up detailed discussions of the evolution of microscopic biological processes dating back to the 1970s, to say nothing of books like The Molecular Evolution of Life (1986).
This book also has an unfortunate tendency to misrepresent biology and what biologists say about it. On pages 26-30, for example, Behe quotes a number of biologists such as Lynn Margulis, John McDonald, and Jerry Coyne out of context to make it sound as if they think that the theory of evolution is inadequate or deeply problematic. He also refers to "punctuated equilibrium" as "a mechanism other than natural selection" when it is really no such thing (pp. 27-28).
In its misrepresentation of the current state of evolutionary biology, Behe's book is problematic. In its apparently deliberate misquotation of scientific authorities, it is deeply troubling. In its attempt to replace Charles Darwin's arguments with William Paley's, it is downright laughable.
Book Review: Compelling
Summary: 5 Stars
Makes a very compelling case for irreducible complexity and ultimately intelligent design. Agree or disagree with Behe, he puts forward a solid argument backed with solid data.Book Review: Completely Incompetent
Summary: 1 Stars
As a researcher in biochemistry, I can expertly state that this book is, for lack of a more focused term, bunk. The most extraordinary thing I learned reading this book was that such a plainly idiotic and mentally deficient man could receive tenure. His university must clearly regret that decision about as much as Germany regrets the Reich that occured after the second.