"But sequence comparisons simply can't account for the development of complex biochemical systems any more than Darwin's comparison of simple and complex eyes told him how vision worked"
About this Quote
Behe’s line is engineered to do two things at once: downgrade a dominant method in modern biology (sequence comparison) and borrow Darwin’s prestige while implying Darwin didn’t really solve the problem either. The rhetorical move is classic: concede the fame, deny the payoff. By pairing “simply can’t account” with an analogy to Darwin’s eyes, Behe frames evolutionary explanation as a kind of category error - as if tracing similarities is just stamp-collecting, not a mechanism.
The subtext is less about eyes than about authority. Behe isn’t arguing that sequence comparisons are useless; he’s arguing they are insufficient for what matters most: the origin of “complex biochemical systems,” his home turf in the intelligent design debate. That phrase is doing heavy lifting. “Complex” primes the reader to expect a missing piece; “biochemical systems” shifts the battleground from fossils and morphology to molecular machinery, where intuition tends to say “someone built this.”
Context matters: Behe’s broader project (especially in Darwin’s Black Box) is to position evolutionary biology as good at explaining small tweaks but fundamentally thin on the step-by-step assembly of multi-part systems. Invoking Darwin’s “simple to complex eye” comparison is strategic, because Darwin famously used it as a plausibility argument: show gradations, and the path doesn’t look impossible. Behe flips that: plausibility is not a blueprint. The line works by exploiting a real tension in science communication - evidence of relatedness versus narratives of construction - and turning that gap into doubt about the whole enterprise.
The subtext is less about eyes than about authority. Behe isn’t arguing that sequence comparisons are useless; he’s arguing they are insufficient for what matters most: the origin of “complex biochemical systems,” his home turf in the intelligent design debate. That phrase is doing heavy lifting. “Complex” primes the reader to expect a missing piece; “biochemical systems” shifts the battleground from fossils and morphology to molecular machinery, where intuition tends to say “someone built this.”
Context matters: Behe’s broader project (especially in Darwin’s Black Box) is to position evolutionary biology as good at explaining small tweaks but fundamentally thin on the step-by-step assembly of multi-part systems. Invoking Darwin’s “simple to complex eye” comparison is strategic, because Darwin famously used it as a plausibility argument: show gradations, and the path doesn’t look impossible. Behe flips that: plausibility is not a blueprint. The line works by exploiting a real tension in science communication - evidence of relatedness versus narratives of construction - and turning that gap into doubt about the whole enterprise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|
More Quotes by Michael
Add to List
