Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution 12th Printing Edition

by Michael J. Behe (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0684834931

ISBN-10: 0684834936

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Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
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Virtually all serious scientists accept the truth of Darwin's theory of evolution. While the fight for its acceptance has been a long and difficult one, after a century of struggle among the cognoscenti the battle is over. Biologists are now confident that their remaining questions, such as how life on Earth began, or how the Cambrian explosion could have produced so many new species in such a short time, will be found to have Darwinian answers. They, like most of the rest of us, accept Darwin's theory to be true. But should we? What would happen if we found something that radically challenged the now-accepted wisdom? In Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe argues that evidence of evolution's limits has been right under our noses -- but it is so small that we have only recently been able to see it. The field of biochemistry, begun when Watson and Crick discovered the double-helical shape of DNA, has unlocked the secrets of the cell. There, biochemists have unexpectedly discovered a world of Lilliputian complexity. As Belie engagingly demonstrates, using the examples of vision, bloodclotting, cellular transport, and more, the biochemical world comprises an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there must have been a series of mutations, each of which produced its own working machine, that led to the complexity we can now see. The more complex and interdependent each machine's parts are shown to be, the harder it is to envision Darwin's gradualistic paths, Behe surveys the professional science literature and shows that it is completely silent on the subject, stymied by the elegance of the foundation of life. Could it be that there is some greater force at work? Michael Behe is not a creationist. He believes in the scientific method, and he does not look to religious dogma for answers to these questions. But he argues persuasively that biochemical machines must have been designed -- either by God, or by some other higher intelligence. For decades science has been frustrated, trying to reconcile the astonishing discoveries of modern biochemistry to a nineteenth-century theory that cannot accommodate them. With the publication of Darwin's Black Box, it is time for scientists to allow themselves to consider exciting new possibilities, and for the rest of us to watch closely.

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Editorial Reviews

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James A. Shapira National Review [A] valuable critique of an all-too-often unchallenged orthodoxy. -- Review

About the Author

Michael J. Behe is Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Michael Behe is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; 12th Printing edition (March 20, 1998)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 307 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0684834936
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0684834931
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.58 x 0.79 x 8.42 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,580,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #272 in Organic Evolution
- #1,526 in Biochemistry (Books)
- #6,755 in Biology & Life Sciences (Books)

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Johnny Rodriguez

It isn't 1859 any more!

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2019

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This is a grand and well-written tome of scholarship. He looks at evolution looking at, among other factors, how complex and detailed each cell in The Human Body is. This requires design and not happenstance!

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M. H. Melmed

To know what we don't know!

Reviewed in the United States on April 4, 2019

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A must read for any intelligent understanding of the origins of life on earth

3 people found this helpful

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Cashew Son

You DON'T have to be a Creationist to enjoy the book

Reviewed in the United States on December 17, 1999

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This is a bold and thoughtful book that takes the debate over evolution down to a whole new level.
For the most part the battle has been fought over general biological functions or parts (ie. breathing or lungs), but Behe points out that all these systems depend in turn on smaller, more complex, sub-systems which are even more difficult to account for - from a Darwinist perspective - because they are irrecducible.
Evolutionists will not like the fact that Behe (an evolutionist himself) not only points out the total inadequacy of Darwinism at the molecular level, but explains it in a way that the laity can understand.
Some Creationists will not like the fact that Behe holds open the possibility that biological design at one level does not necessarily mean that unguided evolution could not have occurred at a different level (though Paleontology is not his field).
I would highly recommend this book, along with Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis" as two excellent examples of honest inquiry into modern scientific dogma. Let's hope that the dialogue over this issue becomes more open-minded!

19 people found this helpful

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Kendal Brian Hunter

Black Box or Pandora's Box?

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2002

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This is quite the book! It analyzes the cellular biochemistry as an evidence for the intelligent design of the cell. So this book is bound to create many sparks.
I am not a biochemist, nor is my training in the hard sciences. My background is in history and political science, so I am inept at commenting on the science and the data Dr. Behe musters. I can just review the book as a layman for laymen. C. S. Lewis said, "It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than their master can. When you took the problem to a master, as we all remember, he was very likely what you understood already, to add a great deal of information which you didn't want and say nothing at all about the thing that was puzzling you." (Reflections on the Psalms, ch. 1) Moreover, Thomas Jefferson said, "State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules." (Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787) Dr. Behe is re-examining those "artificial rules" of science.
This book comes in three parts. The first two chapters contain a concise overview of what he is talking about. I found that the first chapters are a book in their own right and provides a perfect overview. He introduces the idea of "irreducible complexity," and his now-famous mousetrap analogy.
The second section deals with the data. Dr. Behe warns "So, as a writer who wants people to read my work, I face a dilemma: people hate to read details, yet the story of the impact of biochemistry on evolutionary theory rests solely on the details." (p. xii) He therefore sets apart the technical text with a small box. He suggests that we skim the section just to get a feel of the ultra-complexities involved in the biochemical processes.
He takes five case studies: cellular cilia and flagella; the blood clotting process; protein production; the immune system; and AMP production. I confess that these sections lost me, even with the semi-familiar diagrams. Basically, the cell isn't homogeneous blob of protoplasm, but is more along the lines of a complex machine along the lines of the space shuttle or an aircraft carrier. However, unlike the carrier, which can operate without paint, all of the screws or elevators, inside the cell each piece of sub-cellular machinery is necessary for the cell to function.
The problem then is for the two theories of evolution, either gradualism or punctuated equilibrium, to account for how this machine got together in the first place. No one has been able to do this.
In the third part of the book, Dr. Behe takes a step back, and does a more philosophical analysis of the implications of the data. He begins with a study of the literature, specifically the "Journal of Molecular Evolution," and "Proceedings of the National Academy of Science," several books, and two college textbooks, and points out that evolution is presented but never explained.
He asserts that "No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institutes of Health, no member of the National Academy of Science, no Nobel prize winner-no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or vision, or blood-clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have developed in a Darwinian fashion. But here we are. Plants and animals are here. The complex systems are here. All things are here somehow: if not in a Darwinian fashion, then how?" (p. 187)
Behe says that the evidence points to intelligent design for the cell. He asserts, "The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself-not from sacred books or sectarian belief." (193) To his credit, this is where he stops. I believe that you cannot go from the order in the cell to the Russian Orthodox practice of triple baptism. In some ways, this section is a bit disappointing since if you grant that there is an intelligent designer, the then who or what is he/she/it? For what purpose were cells, and therefore `we" were created? We cannot solve these problems from the data, but this is the Pandora's box that he has opened when he broke the seal on Darwin's black box.
He handles several objections to the idea of intelligent design, that we should not attach any specific theological dogma to the idea. He also refutes several questions, such as the panda's thumb and the blind spot on the retina, plus the issue of vestigial organs. He pitches softball answers to these questions, primarily since they are gross anatomy questions and not biochemical questions.
He brings up, but does not elaborate on the historical aspect of Evolution, which is up my academic alley. Historical data differs from scientific data. For example, I cannot scientifically prove that the Continental Congress ever happened, since it was a singular historic event. We infer from the diaries, journals, letters, newspapers, and documents such as the Declaration of Independence to prove it. But I cannot reconstruct the event here and now. Evolution is also an historical event, so we have to follow historical methods to discover what exactly happened. Paleontology is not a science, but is a branch of history. It fits somewhere between archeology and cosmology.
The last chapter discusses the philosophy of science and the a priori assumption that excludes supernatural explanations for the phenomenon. The problem is that they are trying to avoid a "God of the gaps," which is to say that anything that cannot be explained will always be explained by God's handiwork. The problem is that a "science of the spaces" ensues. It is the same problem but uses different mortar to fill the spaces in the bricks of data. The question is no longer science, but one of philosophy.
Behe has quite a quill. No mumbo jumbo. Easy read!

15 people found this helpful

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J. head

Probablity v.s. man's intuition

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2003

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This book pits the incomphrehensiblity of the human mind to
grasp large numbers of chances over billions of years and form conclusions about whether the complexity of life on this planet is the result of a grand and intelligent design or the result of molecules bonding together randomly until a viable solution is found. It stems from the fact that as the Author mentions, in the case of blood clotting to close a simple skin wound involves 268 different chemical processes to turn on and off at the proper time. The Author's point is that it is too much to believe that in the eons leading up to the development of life that countless life forms bled to death because they had perhaps one, two, or 267 of the processes developed by random, but not neccessarily the correct 268 processes needed. The Author then points out that if all of the critical life processes needed hundreds of processes with numerous complex biochemicals what are the chances of life developing without adhering to a grand plan, Example, If the life form that developed the perfect blood clotting process did not develop a correct digestive or reproduction system then that blood clotting
process was all for naught. The large numbers involved cripple our ability to obtain a gut feeling for the probablities. After all if the sun was to not shine one day every 100,000 years, the people that experienced it would consider it a miracle, eventhough it may have happened 45,000 times since the earth had formed. This book will force you to think.
Did life spring from tidal pools of biochemical soups where an almost infinite number of chances over billions of years actually succeeded, or is there a push, a plan of Life for this planet.

7 people found this helpful

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T. Sechler

Hard reading, good message

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2002

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Behe is obviously a competent scientist, and he does a good job describing some very complicated procedures. I do not have the biochemical background to read all of the science, but his analogies proved helpful.

Ultimately, he does a good job showing that gradual evolution of complex interdependent systems seems impossible to contemplate, and therefore the best explanation is intelligent design of these systems. I also appreciated his review of the current research (or lack there of) in these areas. He adequately proves that no one really has any idea what the mechanism of evolution is or was. This is the original reason that I reject evolution, and I still have not found any reasonable mechanism to explain it.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

awz1

Irreducible complexity of the machines of life

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 9, 2017

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Behe produces some compelling arguments which go against the orthodox darwinian theory of evolution. Even today (2017), many, if not all of his arguments are still valid.

2 people found this helpful

Monica Bee

Challenging the accepted

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 27, 2018

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If the work does nothing other than illustrate that our understanding is limited, it has achieved enough to be a significant contribution to that understanding.

Jimenez

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 26, 2018

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A read for everyone. Great condition

Steamer

An honest response to the evidence

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 8, 2019

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Very readable, well researched, an impressive and convincing work.

Dave

Essential Reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 24, 2019

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For anyone interested in truth you must read this.

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Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution 12th Printing Edition

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