Michael J. Behe
The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism.
Free Press, 320 pages, $28
Nothing in modern biology, which is willy-nilly evolutionary biology, rules out supernatural intervention in the processes of life. But neither is there any scientific evidence for it, although, in principle, evidence might emerge. (Not, I hasten to acknowledge, that science and religion appeal to the same canons of justification.) Despite many defeats, including a disastrous trial of the Dover, Pennsylvania school district, the Intelligent Design (I.D.) movement, which insists that scientific evidence does exist for such supernatural interventions, continues to gain worldwide support. This has little to do with the substance of the target—misnamed “Darwinism.” (It is misnamed because the disciplines of evolution have advanced far beyond Darwin and Wallace of 150 years ago.) The success of I.D. has had nearly—but not quite—everything to do with funding, public relations, a deluge of words, and politics.
As to “not quite everything”: Whether or not they are good science, a few I.D.arguments are within the relevant scientific area. But to date there has been just one working biologist offering them: Professor Michael J. Behe, a biochemist of Lehigh University. His publisher pitches Dr. Behe’s new book as “a masterwork of science and logic … a revelation and a bombshell”—this presumably in the field of evolution. Writers of the dust-cover endorsements include, however, no evolutionists. Instead they are a chemist, a psychiatrist, a writer of anti-evolution texts, and
