Author’s note: This is Part Six in a series of conversations with Stuart Burgess, author of Ultimate Engineering: An Engineer Investigates the Biomechanics of the Human Body.
Q. You mentioned devolution in the context of problems with the human jaw and wisdom teeth. Returning to that point, as I read Lucy Hyde’s essay for The Conversation, I noticed that in several instances the University of Bristol anatomist says that earlier forms of a feature of the body worked well for our evolutionary ancestors, but subsequent “evolutionary tinkering” has rendered them far from perfect. She says evolution has left us vulnerable to medical problems which arise directly from inherited constraints.
The Darwinian paradigm holds that evolution favors traits that help the organism adapt and thrive. Ironically, it seems that, whether intentionally or not, Hyde is suggesting a kind of Darwin Devolves scenario, isn’t she?
A. You are correct. The theory of evolution has many contradictions. You can read one book on evolution that says evolution’s “brilliant at optimizing” and then another book will say it produces “just good enough” design. And then Nathan Lents’s book claims evolution produces “terrible” design.
On the one hand, you have thousands of engineers regarding biology as the gold standard of design and wanting to copy biology in order to produce better technology. This is why there are several journals of bioinspired design documenting hundreds of examples of engineers copying nature. On the other hand, you have evolutionists like Nathan Lents and Richard Dawkins claiming the human body is full of bad design from head to toe.
There is a reason why evolutionists focus on the human body as a prime example of bad design. There are something like 6,000 mammals in the world, and all but one are quadrupeds. Only one mammal is a biped who walks on two legs — the human being. Now, a biped musculoskeletal system is very different to that of a quadruped because of the major differences in the biomechanics of locomotion. And according to evolution, if you look at the Smithsonian timeline, humans evolved relatively rapidly from a quadruped. Therefore, evolution predicts humans should have a particularly bad musculoskeletal design, because huge changes would have had to happen over a relatively short period. This is one reason why Nathan Lents says the human body must be full of design errors.
Two Approaches Regarding Design of the Human Body
In my book, Ultimate Engineering, I start each chapter by explaining the two views of biology toward the part of the human body covered in that chapter. For example, in the case of human birth that we discussed earlier, researchers who actually study birth mechanics describe it as a brilliant design, whereas evolutionists claim it is a bad design.
They both can’t be right. Not only do I show that intelligent design proponents support the body being brilliantly designed, but I often quote non-ID scientists who say that the human body shows brilliant design, even though they are nominally evolutionary-believing scientists.
The number of academics who actually research the theory of evolution is very small. And they have to claim that biology is full of design errors because that is what evolution predicts.
The Wrong Lens
Notice how Lucy Hyde writes that “understanding anatomy through this evolutionary lens can also help us reframe how we see common medical problems.” But if the evolutionary lens is wrong, then your observations are also wrong and people are being misled.
The reason I highlight the disconnect between true science and evolutionary predictions is that I want to show how evolution is largely a historical science and not an observational science. And I want to explain that, unlike observational science, the predictions of historical science can be spectacularly wrong.
Q. She’s telling us something about herself and her motive, here, isn’t she?
A. Yes. In her section on the laryngeal nerve, she writes, “another clear argument against divine design is the recurrent laryngeal nerve.” Notice how she drops in her worldview: “another clear argument against divine design.” She didn’t need to mention divine design. But she throws it in, as if to say, “By the way, you shouldn’t believe in God because I’m showing you the fact of evolution, and I’m showing you this is an argument against divine design.” So she’s throwing in some theology in this argument, which shows she has a clear bias and hidden agenda in her thinking.
Evolutionary Assumptions: The Science Killer
Q. Picking up on the idea of poor academic rigor, you write that the evolutionary paradigm can have “debilitating effects” on science. What do you mean by that?
A. My specialty has been in human joints, like the knee joint, foot joints, and hand joints. When I looked at the knee joint, I started by expecting to find sophistication in the design. And when I looked at the knee in detail, I was amazed at the sophistication of the design. I could then produce some novel prosthetic knee joints and robotic knee joints inspired by copying features in these human joints. I did the same with the foot and the hand. Taking this design approach brought me several research grants, many research papers, and also several national design awards.
Had I read Nathan Lents’s books or been following the evolutionary paradigm, it would have stifled my research. Nathan Lents claims the foot is a sub-standard design and that engineers could do much better. He also claims the wrist is a very poor design and that engineers could do much better, i.e., if you’re an engineer, he is saying “don’t look at human joints because they will be worse than human technology.”
Q. Interestingly, he says engineers can do better, but so far engineers have not done better.
A. Exactly. Yes. I’ve written papers explaining that in detail. For example, I recently co-wrote a paper on an advanced prosthetic foot design explaining that engineers need to copy the human foot in order to make better prosthetics. Interestingly, Elon Musk was recently interviewed, explaining that he’s trying to get his engineers to copy the human hand to make better robotic hands. But Lents is suggesting the complete opposite in his book.
It’s a similar story with junk DNA, where scientists assumed, wrongly, that major parts of the genome were junk based on the evolutionary prediction of poor design.
As we see in Lucy Hyde’s essay, when you look through the lens of evolution, you start to make these incredible assumptions about human ancestry that send you down the completely wrong path. You build assumption on assumption, and you start saying things are facts when they’re just based on the predictions of the philosophical worldview of evolution.
Q. There’s an element of circular thinking going on there.
A. Yes, it’s full of circular thinking.