Math is hard!
The New Yorker has a damning piece by Allen Orr on Intelligent Design. It’s also extraordinarily late, of course: Wired devoted a cover to the subject in October of 2004. Orr’s most interesting insight is that the mathematical critique of evolutionary biology by William A. Dembski (pictured) is really very shaky. This matters because Dembski (who is probably the most famous proponent of I.D) represents himself as a hard mathematician correcting the soft science of biologists. Orr writes,
Despite all the attention, Dembski’s mathematical claims about design and Darwin are almost entirely beside the point.
By contrast, modern evolutionary biology has a very robust mathematical foundation. Why isn’t this better known to the general public? Again, from Orr:
Evolutionary biology actually features an extraordinarily sophisticated body of mathematical theory, a fact not widely known because neither of evolution’s great popularizers—Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould—did much math.
Technorati tag: intelligent design
Keep Reading
Most Popular
A quick guide to the most important AI law you’ve never heard of
The European Union is planning new legislation aimed at curbing the worst harms associated with artificial intelligence.
It will soon be easy for self-driving cars to hide in plain sight. We shouldn’t let them.
If they ever hit our roads for real, other drivers need to know exactly what they are.
Crypto is weathering a bitter storm. Some still hold on for dear life.
When a cryptocurrency’s value is theoretical, what happens if people quit believing?
Artificial intelligence is creating a new colonial world order
An MIT Technology Review series investigates how AI is enriching a powerful few by dispossessing communities that have been dispossessed before.
Stay connected
Illustration by Rose WongGet the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.