A way to tell that one is gaining the upper hand in a long-running debate is when one’s adversaries begin to police their own language so as not to be unintentionally associated with you. I have noticed this dynamic playing out over the last decade among members of the biological establishment, and I offer here three (almost hilarious) examples suggesting that, indeed, intelligent design may be gaining the upper hand.
“Carefully Selected”
Ten years ago, origin of life researcher Nita Sahai was giving a lecture on her work at Case Western Reserve University. Her lecture was titled “The Origins of Life: From Geochemistry to Biochemistry.” Many readers here are probably familiar with this. But to refresh our memories, there is a place in the lecture where Sahai is describing the difficulty with laboratory research on abiogenesis because the various elements that have to come together to form life need to be intelligently designed. The second she spoke the phrase “intelligently designed,” a sheepish grin came over her face and she said, “No, not intelligently designed.” After a brief pause, an audience member called out the phrase, “carefully selected.” With an expression of relief, Sahai endorsed this alternative and went on to explain how the elements that form life have to be carefully selected in the lab.
To her credit, Sahai recognizes that the elements that form life cannot just be thrown together at random. But is saying that these elements must be carefully selected really any different from saying that laboratory experiments developed to model abiogenesis have to be intelligently designed? Sahai’s Freudian slip speaks volumes. There is little semantic difference between the terms “intelligently designed” and “carefully selected,” and the former is clearly what Sahai wanted to say. But to maintain credibility with her scientific audience, she simply could not use a term (even though she did!) that might identify her as sympathetic to ID. Her sheepish grin at accidentally saying what she was thinking says it all. A decade ago, ID proponents were already taking control of the language of the debate.
Avoiding Complexity
A couple of years later, Jan Spitzer published a paper in the Journal of Molecular Evolution (2017) titled “Emergence of Life on Earth: A Physiochemical Jigsaw Puzzle.” In his conclusion Spitzer wrote:
Since the subject of cellular emergence of life is unusually complicated (we avoid the term “complex” because of its association with “biocomplexity” or “irreducible complexity”), it is unlikely that any overall theory of life’s nature, emergence, and evolution can be fully formulated, quantified, and experimentally investigated.
Now Spitzer could easily have just omitted the parenthetical sentence. But doing so might have led readers to wonder why he used the word “complicated” when most would have expected him to say “complex.” To his credit, Spitzer is transparent here. But what does it say that he feels he cannot use a common word like “complex” because he is afraid of being associated in the minds of some readers with those dreaded proponents of ID? The fear of association is palpable. But fear comes from a place of weakness, not strength.
Giving the Game Away
Most recently, I have been reading through the papers collected by MIT Press and published in 2023 in the anthology Evolution “On Purpose.” Of course, the scare quotes give the game away. All the papers in this anthology argue against a reductionist gene-centered Darwinian view of evolution and demonstrate that purposeful behavior at the level of molecules up to whole organisms plays a major role in evolution. But to be scientifically respectable, MIT Press cannot allow itself to be seen as endorsing a full-throated teleological view of evolution, so on go the scare quotes. Purpose is only apparent, not real, even though the individual papers argue that it is real.
This takes a humorous turn in a paper by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg titled “From Teleonomy to Mentally Driven Goal-Directed Behavior: Evolutionary Considerations.” Jablonka and Ginsburg argue that some organisms engage in goal-directed behavior based on subjectively experienced feelings (passions or aversions), and that this explains the origin of consciousness.
But in a footnote they write:
We use “teleological” adjectivally here and elsewhere to refer to any goal-directed behavior: teleonomic, driven by feelings, and driven by planned calculation (human design), and to the evolutionary transitions to modes of being characterized by such behaviors. We avoid the noun teleology which, as [Peter] Corning points out, is typically associated with extrinsic (godly) design. [Emphases in the original.]
So the adjective is fine but its associated noun must be avoided due to potential associations that would undermine methodological naturalism. This is hair-splitting taken to an absurd level. The adjectival form of a noun derives its meaning from its associated noun. If the noun “teleology” is associated with extrinsic design, so must the adjective “teleological.” So every time Jablonka and Ginsburg employ the adjective “teleological,” they are in fact bringing extrinsic design into evolutionary theory despite the grammatical gymnastics they perform to try and avoid this.
The underlying dynamic here is one of fear — fear of being associated with a movement one cannot easily dispel through evidence and argument but that one must disassociate from to maintain credibility in the scientific establishment. But, once again, fear is a sign of weakness. And in the examples above, by policing their language, biologists actually are giving tacit approval to the idea that ID is, in fact, gaining the upper hand.