Editor’s note: We are delighted to welcome the new book by award-winning British engineer and designer Stuart Burgess, Ultimate Engineering: An Engineer Investigates the Biomechanics of the Human Body (Discovery Institute Press), with an excerpt from the Introduction.
Those of us who want to follow the evidence without any constraining ideological commitments to evolutionary theory can take courage from a steady trickle of brave individuals who have publicly broken with orthodox evolutionary belief — including internationally distinguished scientists such as German paleontologist Günter Bechly, Yale’s David Gelernter, and Dean Kenyon, a pioneer in the field of abiogenesis.
Support from distinguished scientists is hard to beat, but friends in other high places are nice, too. In 2000 I published a book, Hallmarks of Design, showing that intelligent design is supported by extensive scientific evidence. A copy was given to Prince Charles (now King Charles III), and to my amazement he wrote to tell me he liked the book. He also said he wanted to quote from its foreword (by biologist Alan Linton) in his Reith lecture, which would be broadcast to 90 million people. Permission, as you may have surmised, was readily granted. Here is the relevant passage from the lecture:
As Professor Alan Linton of Bristol University has written: “Evolution is a manmade theory to explain the origin and continuance of life on this planet without reference to a Creator.” It is because of our inability or refusal to accept the existence of a guiding hand that nature has come to be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience or as a nuisance to be evaded and manipulated, and in which anything that happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity.
After the speech, I told one of my university colleagues that I thought Prince Charles was very brave. The colleague replied, “No, he’s not brave. He cannot be demoted or fired!”
No Career Peril for Prince Charles
I partly agreed. While Darwin-dissenting scientists have been fired or hounded out of positions after coming out as skeptics of modern evolutionary theory, there was no danger of Prince Charles being sacked as Prince of Wales. However, the prince’s criticism of evolutionary theory did cause quite a stir in the national press in the UK, and he was raked over the coals by various scientists who insisted that he, a non-scientist, had no place questioning the assumptions of modern science. He certainly could have made things easier for himself by skipping the whole subject and restricting himself to ribbon cuttings and such. I, for one, was grateful and encouraged that he spoke up, highlighting what any objective investigation of the historical record makes abundantly clear, namely that a central motivation of evolutionary theory, from Darwin on, has been to rule God out of origins.
King Charles is not a scientist, but he recognizes that world view plays an outsized role in evolutionary science. And like a lot of people, many scientists included, he is convinced that an even-handed examination of the natural world reveals that a divine hand is behind the origin of nature. I was pleased that he seized on that passage from the foreword to Hallmarks of Design, because I am convinced that it is a grave mistake to restrict origins science to strictly materialistic causation. True science should be able to follow the evidence to the best explanation, not merely to the best materialistic explanation.
King Charles and Professor Alan Linton are not the only high-ranking people to surprise me with support for intelligent design. I have spoken with several senior biologists who have confided in me that they have serious doubts about macroevolution but would not dare to air them publicly for fear of damaging their careers. I will relay some very revealing conversations with these biologists in the second part of this book.
Biological Marvels of Engineering
If detailed arguments about origins are not your cup of tea, not to worry. The bulk of this book isn’t taken up with them. The focus instead is a series of extraordinary engineering feats found in the living world — in the human body especially — feats that anyone can appreciate regardless of world view commitments. The first five chapters explore the engineering genius evident in the foot, knee, wrist, fingers, and spine. Then we will move up to the head to examine even more sophisticated engineering marvels, including our hearing and vision. We also will look at skin, seemingly simple but in reality a marvel of design sophistication. Additionally, we will consider the biomechanics of birth, of muscles and tendons, and of three physiological systems unmatched by anything in the realm of human technology.
In the final few chapters we will dive deeper into a comparison of evolutionary theory and intelligent design. When we remove ideological constraints and social pressures, and simply follow the evidence, what do we find? Was the origin of these various biological marvels the work of Richard Dawkins’s “blind watchmaker,” unguided evolution, or was a seeing and designing mind involved? For me, studying the many examples of ultimate design reviewed in the pages that follow has been fascinating, and a great way to appreciate the awesome wonder of nature.
One aim of this book is to convey some of the fun and excitement of biomechanics research. Most of the examples I give are from my research in biomechanics, carried out at Bristol University and Cambridge University. That work has led to my publishing more than 200 scientific papers on the science of design, and the content of most of these has contributed to the arguments in this book. My hope is that even scientists fully committed to the evolutionary paradigm will find much of value in these explorations. My greater hope is that these explorations will encourage such individuals to consider the possibility that an unbending allegiance to evolutionary materialism has exhausted its usefulness as an explanatory tool.
All notes may be found in the published book.