Blue Collar Scientist

I owe a small debt of gratitude to Martha Knox for pointing something out that I had not realized: that “irreducible complexity” would be found in organisms was a prediction of evolutionary biology made by a Nobel prizewinning geneticist in 1918 - and not the “discovery” of intelligent design creationists in 1996.

If you already know what irreducible complexity is, feel free to skip ahead to the triple-asterisks. Otherwise, settle in and I’ll explain.

“Irreducible complexity” is the pseudoscientific claim that some biological systems are too complex to have evolved from more primitive, less complete predecessors. It was originated as an argument against evolution, or at least popularized for this purpose, by Michael Behe in 1996. He defined an irreducibly complex system as one “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning”¹. In other words, the creationist claim is that any biological part which cannot be broken down into smaller parts and still remain useful (a) cannot have evolved, and (b) therefore must have been created by an intelligent designer - presumably god, or space aliens².

Behe gives several examples of biological “parts” that he claims are too complex to have evolved but his work in this field is deeply ignorant, and every example he has put forth has been blown apart by a massive amount of research by real scientists. This was demonstrated, perhaps most dramatically, at the Dover trial, which at one point turned into a massive review of the research in the fields Behe has made his claims. His work did not stand up to scrutiny well - in fact, Behe couldn’t even convince a conservative judge appointed by George W. Bush that he wasn’t full of baloney. Wikipedia has a decent summary of Behe’s humiliations at that trial, so there’s no real reason to go over his failures here.

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Anyway, it turns out that all this is in some ways a moot issue. Behe and his minions consider the appearance of “irreducible complexity” in organisms to be really good evidence against evolution. But it isn’t.

It is actually evidence supporting evolution, as was explained in a research paper ninety years ago.

In 1918, Hermann Muller published a paper about his pioneering work with fruit flies. It was called by the appealing title “Genetic Variability, Twin Hybrids, and Constant Hybrids, in a Case of Balanced Lethal Factors.” Muller’s paper is available online [pdf], and it contains a description of irreducible complexity, along with an explanation of how it comes about through the simplest of evolutionary means. It amounts to a prediction that “irreducible complexity” will actually be found in organisms, and it begins on page 42 of the pdf file (which is the same as page 463 of the original journal):

Most present-day animals are the result of a long process of evolution, in which at least thousands of mutations must have taken place. Each new mutant in turn must have derived its survival value from the effect which it produced upon the “reaction system” that had been brought into being by the many previously formed factors in cooperation; thus a complicated machine was gradually built up whose effective working was dependent upon the interlocking action of very numerous different elementary parts or factors, and many of the characters and factors which, when new, were originally merely an asset finally became necessary because other necessary characters and factors had subsequently become changed so as to be dependent on the former.

Now, what exactly is he saying here? It is a lot simpler than it sounds. Genes mutate, and when they do, they can change in such a way that they become absolutely dependent upon their interaction with some other gene to fulfill their function. If those genes interact to make a particular piece of anatomy, and you take one of those interacting genes away, you will have a non-functioning, pointless biological structure as a result of this dependence.

That looks to me to be what Behe defines as irreducible complexity, all laid out in a very accessible way in a well known paper, by a very famous Nobel prizewinning researcher, who did this fundamental work in evolution seventy-eight years before Behe published his book.

It is simply bizarre to consider that, convinced he had found irreducible complexity in real organisms, Behe somehow thought that finding it soundly refuted the prediction of evolutionary theory that it would be found!

1. Darwin’s Black Box, page 9 [↩]
2. Space aliens are seriously entertained as creators of life by some intelligent design creationists. Other intelligent design creationists will not admit to believing that the intelligent designer is a god, but also won’t admit they believe in space aliens. So I’m just going to stick with the two candidates that I know of - god and space aliens. <shrug> [↩]