Intelligent Design and the unseen

Some Christians who accept the mainstream science view of the origin of the species (evolution), in a fair-minded and an admirably conciliatory way, throw a bone to the Intelligent Design movement’s pursuits by allowing that some good may come of having the consensus view challenged, acting as a good exercise routine for the theory of evolution. “After all, we wouldn’t know how the bacterial flagellum evolved if scientists hadn’t studied it for the purpose of debunking the claim of irreducible complexity attached to that particular trait.” Now, as I intimated above, I appreciate this even-handed and humble approach of people we disagree with. But something has always bothered me about this and now recently, in my own private study of economics, of all things, I put my finger on it. Bear with me: what I’m about to say is not at all an arcane or esoteric dissertation on economics. It’s all rather rudimentary reasoning, actually.

The broken window fallacy as originally articulated by Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850), here translated from the original French:

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact, that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation—”It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?”

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it c/o\s/t six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier’s trade—that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs—I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, “Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.”

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way which this accident has prevented.

This opposition of “seen” vs. “unseen” c/o\s/t\s, a variation on the law of unintended consequences, has long been argued by Austrian economists as a good example of why Keynes’s philosophy may appear helpful but in the end be less helpful than the free market. From Wikipedia:

Bastiat, Hazlitt, and others equated the glazier with special interests, and the little boy with government. Special interests request money from the government (in the form of subsidies, grants, etc.), and the government then forces the taxpayer to provide the funds. The recipients certainly do benefit, so the government action is often regarded by the people as benefitting everyone. But the people are failing to consider the hidden c/o\s/t\s: the taxpayers are now poorer by exactly that much money. The food, clothing or other items they might have purchased with that money will now not be purchased—but since there is no way to count “non-purchases,” this is a hidden c/o\s/t, sometimes called opportunity c/o\s/t. Bastiat referred to this in his essay as “what is not seen”. Because the c/o\s/t\s are hidden, there is an illusion that the benefits c/o\s/t\ nothing. Hazlitt summarized the principle by saying, “Everything we get, outside the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for.” Robert A. Heinlein popularized a summarization/acronym of the concept called “TANSTAAFL” (There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch).

Common examples of special interest groups practicing the broken window fallacy might be:

Arguments for public works projects as a way to reduce unemployment

Arguments for increasing the number of government employees, in order to provide employment

Arguments for protectionist measures such as tariffs, subsidies and/or other regulations in order to protect local industries

Theaters, etc., supporting arts subsidies, in order to provide employment for artists and on the grounds that while people go to the theater or to a concert they also go to restaurants, etc., and stimulate the economy

[Steve's side note: does any of that remind you of current U.S. policy?]

Now, what the heck does this have to do with Intelligent Design?

It seems to me that the Intelligent Design movement does not offer much to scientific inquiry beyond giving scientists a chance to mend/install a few windows.

At the very best, ID advocates may direct everyone’s attention to a window or two here and there that have been left unaddressed due to focusing on other lines of scientific inquiry; maybe the windows need a good washing. Indeed, it’s an especially ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone at least a little good.

But even under this scenario, the law of unintended consequences (misallocated resources, specifically the attention of scientists) cannot be missed: was there really such a burning need to discover exactly how the bacterial flagellum was able to appear without “specific complexity”? Right now? No doubt, this question would have been addressed eventually. And if ID had heretofore shown a propensity for pointing out glaring holes in evolutionary theory, it would likely be truly necessary to pull the scientists off their own projects to address each of the IDists’ claims. But their track record is horrible. So when scientists hear that the ID crowd has made another claim about some particular trait or genetic sequence, the scientists have no reason to drop whatever productive inquiry they were engaging in and allow critics who aren’t particularly credible to dictate their research agenda for them. To paraphrase Bastiat, “In short, he would have employed his research skills in some way which this accident has prevented.” What could scientists have been discovering and clarifying if they had not been devoting as much time as they have to answering the so-far groundless challenges of the ID movement and justifying methodological naturalism to skeptical Christian scientists?

It strikes me that the ID folks are saying, “You’ve got broken windows!” and scientists are saying, “Broken? We haven’t installed the glass yet! Give us a chance to get the roof on, the walls finished, etc.”

What do you think, fellow supporters of evolutionary theory? I could be way off here. How else might the ID movement be a boon to serious scientific inquiry?

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View Comments Posted by Steve on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 11:55 pm.

Filed under Economics, Evolution/origins, Science, Austrian, Economics, evolution, intelligent design, Science.

Steve

Due to a preposterous amount of spam on this post, I am closing comments. If you have anything interesting to say, just comment on my "About" page and I'll move it here.
RBH

Doug Moody wrote
All we are doing when we study evolution is DESCRIBE what has already happened.
Hm? As Tonto said to the Lone Ranger when the Apaches came over the hill, "What do you mean 'we,' white man?" That's the creationist 'cosmic oddity shop' model of science -- a mere collection of facts. As AMW noted, evolution is a process, not a thing. It's what occurs when a population of imperfect replicators with heritable variation are in an environment with at least one limiting resource.

And as AMW noted, the research that illuminated the evolution of the bacterial flagellum grew out of work on how bacteria inject some really toxic stuff into our cells, sometimes killing us. Understanding how a such a structure evolved is relevant to understanding how to keep it from killing us. Google "evolutionary medicine" for more. The theory of evolution is a predictive theory with practical applications, not merely a description of the past. Research on the evolutionary origins of the bacterial structures related to the flagellum was going on well before it became the poster child for the ID movement for reasons not at all associated with broken windows or uninformed critics sniping from the sidelines.
Doug Moody

Steve,
I thnk you misunderstood what I meant by saying the economy is an "illusion". Even a magicians illusion is "real", in the sense that it exists. But an illusion seems like something that it isn't. That's what I meant. Sure, there IS an economy, and yes, it is a process. Its just that it appears to be something else than what it really is. The economists, therefore, are describing their own take on the illusion. To the degree they operate on true premises, their conclusions might be correct. You have pointed out one school of thought (the Austrian one) and this school probably is better at describing the illusion better than others.
the reason I call it an illusion is because it (the economical processes) are built on falsehoods, and even though the economy operates, the DESCRIPTIONS of HOW it works are false. That's because the audience (the world) are all operating on false assumptions and they are seeing what they want to see and are trying to game the economy an dmake it perform in ways it cannot. When they are in compliance with (almost sovereign) laws of economics, they prosper.
I suppose a separate discussion could be started about whether the laws themselves are valid (meaning righteous and in sync with what God would do) I think personally they are not in sync, and they are designed to function within a broken world. In that respect, we have to examine the economy as something that is pathologically broken, and needs fixing.
Alphonsus

This is really an interesting question, and one that I have pondered myself upon occasion. I think that there is no doubt that there is much to be said for your reasoning. What could Richard Dawkins, for example, be expending his considerable intellect on if he weren't 'wasting' his time battling creationist claptrap.

But then, the question as posed is postulated from the standpoint of a unrealistic world. In the real world, children WILL break windows. It is simply a reality of life. No amount of debating will make a difference. Similarly, people ARE creationists, and they ARE trying to push it through into classrooms. Even discounting the huxters (and there are many), there are many sincere people who think it IS a legitimate counter-view to natural selection, and want it taught. No amount of arguing will change this fact. So, could scientists be spending their time doing better things? Probably they could in an ideal world. Our world is not ideal, and they are spending their time doing what needs to be done to make it more ideal, whatever direction that takes them. Right now, if it takes them in the direction of fighting the teaching of ignorance in the classroom, then it is ultimately the best use of their time, for few things can be more important.

In other words, the question is meaningless because of the reality we live in.

As to public policy, this is a different argument entirely. Our political leaders are trying to do their best to save the economy. If their "best" is based on poor economic theory, then we will suffer. It might be possible to argue that the current situation is different because what is being done forestalls a cascading economic collapse that could lead to a far worse situation than what we already have, and would thus in the long run would end up benefiting no one. That is a debate for a different forum, however.

<abbr>Alphonsus´s last blog post..Truth, God, and the Sun Rise: Karl Popper</abbr>
AMW

I wouldn't say the question is meaningless. One philosophy says the broken window is a net benefit. Applied to the origins question that would mean that we should actually subsidize ICR and AIG, because of all the educating it encourages scientists to do.

As for forestalling an economic cascade, that's exactly what you can argue. But I'm a skeptic all the same.
AMW

Ah, the seen and the unseen. That takes me back.

A couple of points.

1. Let's distinguish between breaking windows and pointing out parts of the building where there are no windows. The former is wasteful; it eats up resources that could be better spent on other things. The latter may be helpful; it points out an area where resources could be well spent. When ID theorists claim that there are too many gaps in the fossil record, or that abiogenesis is too improbable to have occurred, or that Darwin himself admitted that the eye makes his theory ridiculous, they are breaking windows. That is, they are rehashing worn out arguments that have been made and refuted many times before, and this wastes the resources of the scientific establishment in having to explain it all over again. I honestly don't know if ID theorists actually point out missing windows. I believe your bacterial flagellum example is erroneous, and that the research that revealed the probable precursor to the bacterial flagellum was undertaken independently of any attempt to beat back Michael Behe's assault on orthodox evolutionary theory. Same with cillia and the blood clotting cascade. But I could be wrong on that point.

2. Doug, I think you have a kernel of truth, but you're overstating the case. I wouldn't say evolution is an illusion, but a process. As such, it's not an object we can hold in our our hands, or direct however we see fit. The same goes with an economy. The word "economy" is not nonsense, and it doesn't refer to an illusion. But as with "evolution," it doesn't refer to a physical object, either. It refers to a process, or rather an outrageously large set of interlinking processes that achieve a vast number of intelligent ends despite having no one intelligence orchestrating it all. The economy isn't something you can hold, or even see, although you can observe it in action. And it's certainly not something you can turn to your will. That's a fact that too many economists (and far too many politicians and regular citizens) forget.
Steve

AMW, I was aware while writing my post of the difference between breaking windows and pointing out broken windows, but avoided making the sorts of distinctions that you so helpfully did. I would maintain, however, that just as in the market, the prioritization of projects to be undertaken, no matter how valuable and eventually necessary any individual projects might be (such as mending actual broken windows), is best determined by those "on the ground" instead of by the less attuned influence of an external force. ID advocates would say that they are not an external force, but most working scientists would disagree.

Of course my main point was that the actual cost of ID distractions, whether it's simply pointing out as yet undeveloped aspects of the theory or rehashing long settled debates, is in large part unseen, and that this is another reason we shouldn't consider Intelligent Design to be just a harmless scientific side project.

As for the bacterial flagellum, I simply chose the most celebrated example and the one with which I am the most familiar; I am not familiar enough with the problem to know whether Behe's objections were already completely refuted before he actually made them, but I would be surprised to think that the data had been assembled before the impetus of Behe's well-publicized claim. I could be wrong.
AMW

My understanding, based on statements by Ken Miller, is that the flagellum is thought to come from the Type II (or III?) Secretor System; basically an injection pump used in some nasty bacteria. A paper making this claim came out right before the Dover trial, and the plaintiffs used it as evidence in that trial. But it sounds as though the research was originally intended to investigat the secretor system, and they started to see how similar it was to the flagellum. I don't think they read Behe, slapped their foreheads and started rummaging around for flagellar precursors.

As for the cillia and blood-clotting cascade, based on my reading of Miller's book Finding Darwin's God, there was already evidence of their evolution; Behe just didn't know about it.
Doug Moody

Well, what if the flagellum scientist never existed specifically because there was no demand for flagellum scientists? I mean, we are ALL what we are because there was some interest that COULD be developed.
In the middle ages, were people stupider than they are now? I don't think so. It's just that now there are infinitely more opportunities for most everyone to find their niche, and fill it with their niche talent. Had I been born in the middle ages, I probably would have been a blacksmith, and there would have been no discussion of evolution because the idea itself didn't even exist.
I am proposing that IDEAS are what drive the economy, not economists or even consumers. Any good marketer will tell you that the first rule of marketing is to make the potential customer dissatisfied with what he already has so that he will buy what he PERCEIVES he might need. That comes from an idea, not a reality.
The same thing can be said about evolution. It is just an idea, and that idea has spawned counter-ideas, and each spawning in turn produces even more branches to the tree, until people who were not on board see something tha tinterests them, and they even make whole careers out of it (like studying flagellum bacteria)!
Yes, that does drive the economy. But then, that makes the economy an artificial entity. As you said, it is only an illusion. Our economy OUGHT to be a simple by-product of people interacting with each other. But it has become much more than that. It has a life of its own, and it (the economy) is now an actual THING, which had life breathed into it by the study of ideas. Those ideas spawned a reality, and now we talk about the economy as though it is an actual, tangible thing which can be dissected and studied. It really can't because "the economy" doesn't really exist. It is an illusion. So too is "evolution" All we are doing when we study evolution is DESCRIBE what has already happened. But we have taken that description (an adjective) and turned it into a noun - just as we have many other artificial pursuits of human fancy. Then, those pursuits take on a Frankensteinish life of their own, and we end up having to figure out how to tame the monster we created.

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