Poundcake - Shop now
FREE Returns
Ships from
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Ships from
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Sold by
Amazon.com
Payment
Secure transaction
Your transaction is secure
We work hard to protect your security and privacy. Our payment security system encrypts your information during transmission. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. Learn more
Kindle app logo image

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

QR code to download the Kindle App

Follow the authors

Something went wrong. Please try your request again later.

The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities Hardcover – November 16, 2023


Purchase options and add-ons

A landmark of the intelligent design movement, The Design Inference revolutionized our understanding of how we detect intelligent causation. Originally published twenty-five years ago, it has now been revised and expanded into a second edition that greatly sharpens its exploration of design inferences. This new edition tackles questions about design left unanswered by David Hume and Charles Darwin, navigating the intricate nexus of chance, probability, and design, and thereby offering a novel lens for understanding the world. Using modern concepts of probability and information, it exposes the inadequacy of undirected causes in scientific inquiry. It lays out how we infer design via events that are both improbable and specified. Amid controversial applications to biology, it makes a compelling case for intelligent design, challenging the prevalent neo-Darwinian evolutionary narrative. Dembski and Ewert have written a groundbreaking work that doesn't merely comment on contemporary scientific discourse but fundamentally transforms it.

The%20Amazon%20Book%20Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Well argued and eminently readable... I don't see how any open-minded scientist can ignore this important book."- Sergiu Klainerman, Higgins Professor of Mathematics, Princeton University, member of the National Academy of Sciences

"Clearly written, rigorous, and intellectually compelling. A work of genuine genius."- Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, author of Signature in the Cell, Darwin's Doubt, and Return of the God Hypothesis

"A compelling refutation of the neo-Darwinian narrative; it will be a gamechanger in the discourse on whether or not life has been designed." - Muzaffar Iqbal, Founder-President of the Center for Islamic Sciences, past Director of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences

"Prepare to be dazzled. This new edition of The Design Inference is a tour de force of thinking and explaining-a veritable feast. If you are serious about understanding fundamental reality, evidence, and reasoning, read this book."- Gale Pooley, Associate Professor of Business Management, Brigham Young University-Hawaii, co-author of Superabundance

"In this superb new edition of The Design Inference, Dembski and Ewert set design science on a solid scientific foundation and provide scientists with the opportunity to test their theories for and against design using objective quantitative methods."-Michael Egnor, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Renaissance School of Medicine, Stony Brook University

"The second edition of The Design Inference makes a compelling case that the 'design' in nature is real and can be scientifically inferred. As they show, the specified complexity of the information contained in DNA and RNA... cannot plausibly be attributed to unguided natural processes; logically and causally, it requires an intelligent designer."- Timothy P. Jackson, the Bishop Mack B. and Rose Stokes Professor of Theological Ethics, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

"This second, and expanded, edition benefits greatly from the significant advances in understanding the design inference over the last twenty-five years... The Design Inference shows how meaningful events can be, and indeed are, recognized using a simple criterion: specified complexity. In this second edition, Dembski and Ewert carefully explain this criterion, showing how it... extends the reach of science." - Fred Skiff, the Harriet B. and Harold S. Brady Chair in Laser Physics, University of Iowa

"This book is another important step along the way to validating intelligent design as a mainstream and scientifically robust alternative to Charles Darwin's nineteenth-century philosophy of natural selection."- Andrew Ruys, Professor of Biomedical Engineering (Retired), University of Sydney

"A pleasure to read... [and] worthy of attention and respect."- Christopher P. Grant, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Brigham Young University

"In this second edition of The Design Inference, Dembski and Ewert present a formidable probabilistic and information-theoretic method for determining whether design, rather than chance, was the cause of an observed event."- Terry Rickard, PhD, Engineering Physics, University of California, San Diego

"I highly recommend you give this book a serious read."- James P. Keener, Distinguished Professor of Mathematics, University of Utah

About the Author

An influential mathematician and philosopher, William A. Dembski is a founding Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He earned doctorates at the University of Illinois at Chicago in philosophy and the University of Chicago in mathematics. The author or editor of over twenty-five books, he has published in the peer-reviewed philosophy, biology, mathematics, and engineering literature.

Winston Ewert is a software engineer and intelligent design researcher. He received his PhD from Baylor University in electrical and computer engineering. He specializes in computer simulations of evolution, genomic design patterns, and information theory. A Google alum, he is a Senior Fellow of the Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Discovery Institute.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Discovery Institute
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 16, 2023
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ 2nd ed.
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 584 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1637120338
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1637120330
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.08 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.25 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,488,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

About the authors

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Review this product

Share your thoughts with other customers

Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2024
    I have 60+ books on science. This is the best book I have concerning the science-of-existence which has been objectively analyzed by way of the rigid tenants of mathematics. Sure, the math can be daunting, but Dr. Demski is a master of putting 'descriptive flesh' on a skeleton of numbers. Philosophical wrangling is put in its place (the back row, so to speak), and convincing calculations and conclusions stand proudly in the spotlight.
    7 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 29, 2024
    The book stands overshadowing all materialistic fabrications! The commited and hardend false teachers of evolution are now struggling to revise their Myths >>>> in their pathetic resistance to the clear evidence of Devine Genius in the macro and the sub-micro and physical devices used to make it all work and be self sustaining.
    6 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
    Extremely important book. The inclusion of conservation of information in this new edition is key, as it dismisses natural selection as a valid “probability amplifier“ and thus challenger to the design inference.
    6 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on January 21, 2024
    Compelling, much needed, well written, critical to understanding Intelligent Design book.
    6 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 5, 2023
    This is a must read!!!
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 30, 2023
    Excellent resource.
    4 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2024
    If you are into statistics and math probabilities you will like this.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2025
    I am a layman with an interest in evolution and intelligent design. I found this book to be compelling and well-written with enough laymen-level writing to allow me to get through the more technical parts without too much difficulty. This is an important book for those who want to understand the current state of the battle between Darwinists and ID proponents. I came away with a deeper appreciation for the meaning of the term "specified complexity" and the hurdles that Darwinists face in providing support for their theory. I look forward to their honest and principled rebuttals to what is written here. I also look forward to Dembski's next book on his theory of conservation of information. This book is well worth the time and effort it takes to work through it.

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English
  • Celio João Pires
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente livro! Recomendo!
    Reviewed in Brazil on March 6, 2024
    Trabalho fantástico! Dá o que pensar sobre nossas origens! Principalmente quando confrontamos as cosmovisões naturalista ateia x Design Inteligente teísta, sendo esta ultima a melhor inferência sobre os dados observados.
    Virei fã do autor.

    Celio João Pires
    Report
  • THE70000
    5.0 out of 5 stars Indeed - Scientific Progress
    Reviewed in Australia on January 30, 2024
    The authors of this book have produced a work greater than the sum of their contributions. I have learnt new ways to understand many statistical concepts, including randomness? This book has extended conventional statistical theory beyond pre-specification, also avoiding the possibility of false positives. It is pure genius to include specification, probabilistic resources, and inadvertently ‘hijack’ the term ‘specified complexity’. But there’s more, Bio-imperative irreducible complexity is at another level, and I am now even more sceptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Special pleading has no place in science, and this book has reinforced the misnomer of ‘Apparent Design’. Academy of Sciences are on notice, this 2nd edition progresses genuine scientific enquiry and certainly does not stymie the scientific enterprise.
  • FrancescoA
    3.0 out of 5 stars Hatte mir mehr erwartet
    Reviewed in Germany on July 20, 2024
    Wiederholende mathematischer Stoff.
  • Terry Rogers
    5.0 out of 5 stars Moves the narrative forward.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2023
    Excellent treatise that moves all the arguments forward. Okay Bill Dembski’s maths left me behind fairly early on, but you don’t need the maths to prove the arguments really. That’s something extra for the naysayers to chew on and try to disassemble. But the main arguments have enough weight to make the points even before we get to the theorems and algorithms. Loved the fact that I learned something new: the actuality of high density information packing in DNA was new information (page 367). I went back to the original paper on this. Utterly fascinating. And more study for Mr Dawkins et al to do.
    I also loved that fact that there is more to come in a further volume. And that the challenge was thrown out for others to work on specific areas of study and research, maybe for their dissertation. Get new, young, inbiased brains on this and see what realities they can find.
    This book is excellent in presentation of argument and in teaching the support knowledge and understanding to enhance appreciation for those arguments. You don’t have to read it cover to cover. The support sections stand alone. The discussion sections are highly readable, and the Epilogue well encompasses the current state-of-play and points to the future rise of ID understanding. Brilliant!