WEBVTT 00:33.280 --> 00:38.400 In 1993, Professor Philip Johnson of the University of California at Berkeley 00:39.180 --> 00:43.500 invited a group of scientists and philosophers to a small beach town on the 00:43.500 --> 00:44.900 central coast of California. 00:46.060 --> 00:50.560 They came from major academic centers, including Cambridge, Munich, and the 00:50.560 --> 00:56.960 University of Chicago, to question an idea that had dominated science for 150 years. 00:58.400 --> 01:02.220 I think Pajaro Dunes represented a turning point for many of us. 01:03.120 --> 01:06.300 Individually, we all had questions about evolutionary theory. 01:06.580 --> 01:10.160 But when we came together, each person brought something of their own to the 01:10.160 --> 01:10.500 table. 01:10.780 --> 01:15.120 And suddenly, we all had a glimpse of a new way of looking at life that none of us 01:15.120 --> 01:16.920 had individually seen before. 01:18.940 --> 01:22.720 I would have to say that this was an intense period of time in my life. 01:22.760 --> 01:28.020 It just seemed that there was something here much more intellectually satisfying 01:28.020 --> 01:32.420 than the view that I had held up until this time. 01:34.880 --> 01:39.700 Looking back on it now, I think that gave me the motivation to actually look at the 01:39.700 --> 01:42.180 evidence and just see where I thought it pointed. 01:45.460 --> 01:49.260 I realized that this was bigger than any one person or discipline. 01:49.540 --> 01:53.500 And this was the beginning of a community of scientists who were now willing to face 01:53.500 --> 01:55.700 the fundamental mystery of life's origin. 02:35.820 --> 02:38.820 I sometimes wonder why anybody talks about anything else. 02:39.140 --> 02:41.800 Because this is the most interesting topic there is. 02:42.040 --> 02:42.900 Where did we come from? 02:43.100 --> 02:44.020 How did we get here? 02:44.140 --> 02:45.400 What brought us into existence? 02:45.940 --> 02:48.640 What is our relationship to reality as a whole? 02:50.120 --> 02:54.840 You look at the incredible diversity and complexity of life and inevitably the 02:54.840 --> 02:57.720 question arises, what brought all this into existence? 02:58.320 --> 03:00.680 Was it simply chance and necessity? 03:00.920 --> 03:02.320 Undirected natural forces? 03:02.320 --> 03:05.320 Or is there something else going on? 03:06.020 --> 03:08.940 Is there a purpose, a plan, a design? 03:09.240 --> 03:11.620 A design due to an intelligent cause? 03:12.160 --> 03:14.240 I think that is the fundamental question. 03:20.480 --> 03:25.520 The scientists who came to Pajaro Dunes set out to re-examine the mystery of 03:25.520 --> 03:26.240 life's origin. 03:27.260 --> 03:31.680 For each had significant doubts about widely held evolutionary ideas. 03:31.680 --> 03:38.240 Among them, biochemist Michael Behe questioned how natural processes could 03:38.240 --> 03:41.760 have assembled the intricate structures found within living cells. 03:43.580 --> 03:49.040 Dean Kenyon was an evolutionary biologist who no longer thought that chemistry alone 03:49.040 --> 03:51.380 could account for the origin of life on Earth. 03:53.440 --> 03:58.380 And Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson and William Dembski were seeking a new approach. 03:58.380 --> 04:03.140 One that could explain the origin of the genetic information encoded in living 04:03.140 --> 04:03.760 organisms. 04:05.900 --> 04:10.860 These scientists and philosophers began to formulate an alternative to the central 04:10.860 --> 04:12.380 theory of modern biology. 04:13.240 --> 04:16.340 A theory born in the mind of a British naturalist. 04:17.120 --> 04:19.120 His name was Charles Darwin. 04:25.090 --> 04:31.810 In 1831, Darwin, then 22 years old, set sail on a five-year survey expedition 04:31.810 --> 04:32.950 for the British Empire. 04:38.780 --> 04:43.420 He journeyed from England on the HMS Beagle, traveling around the southern tip 04:43.420 --> 04:47.920 of South America, then north toward a chain of volcanic islands in the Pacific 04:47.920 --> 04:49.560 called the Galapagos. 04:58.510 --> 05:03.710 On this desolate archipelago, 600 miles off the western coast of Ecuador, 05:04.570 --> 05:08.870 Charles Darwin encountered an extraordinary array of birds, reptiles and 05:08.870 --> 05:12.070 mammals, the likes of which he had never seen before. 05:16.340 --> 05:21.420 For more than a month, Darwin studied plant and animal life, took extensive 05:21.420 --> 05:23.500 notes and collected specimens. 05:24.960 --> 05:27.660 Then he left, never to return. 05:30.600 --> 05:35.480 Twenty-five years passed as he developed a theory about how the diverse forms of life 05:35.480 --> 05:36.560 on Earth had originated. 05:37.320 --> 05:42.840 In 1859, Darwin published a book titled On the Origin of Species. 05:43.560 --> 05:48.780 Its impact on science, and ultimately all of western culture, was dramatic. 05:50.980 --> 05:55.600 Darwin argued that all life was the product of purely undirected natural 05:55.600 --> 05:56.200 forces. 05:57.020 --> 06:01.840 Time, chance, and a process he called natural selection. 06:02.880 --> 06:07.560 For 2,500 years before Darwin, most prominent scientists and 06:07.560 --> 06:13.260 philosophers, people such as Plato, or Newton, or Kepler, viewed the world as 06:13.260 --> 06:15.600 the product of some kind of design or plan. 06:16.360 --> 06:20.440 But a fundamental shift occurs with Darwin's idea of natural selection, 06:20.900 --> 06:24.360 and a real change in scientific philosophy is set in motion. 06:26.640 --> 06:30.340 Darwin was not the first scientist to propose a theory of evolution, 06:30.340 --> 06:35.960 but he was the first to offer a plausible naturalistic mechanism that could produce 06:35.960 --> 06:38.820 biological change over long periods of time. 06:40.480 --> 06:45.640 To understand how natural selection works, consider the finch populations Darwin 06:45.640 --> 06:47.420 encountered on the Galapagos Islands. 06:50.380 --> 06:56.400 Thirteen species of finches inhabit the Galapagos Islands, and they vary subtly in 06:56.400 --> 06:59.320 terms of their body size and shape of the beak. 06:59.320 --> 07:04.460 Darwin returned to England with nine different species of these birds. 07:07.120 --> 07:11.620 According to contemporary Darwinian theory, differences in the sizes and 07:11.620 --> 07:15.620 shapes of the birds' beaks are the direct result of natural selection. 07:18.950 --> 07:22.820 One example often cited involves species of seed-eating finches. 07:31.100 --> 07:35.520 Following seasons of heavy rain, small soft seeds are plentiful throughout 07:35.520 --> 07:36.140 the islands. 07:36.980 --> 07:39.580 Birds with short beaks can easily gather food. 07:42.020 --> 07:46.820 However, during periods of drought, the only seeds available are encased in 07:46.820 --> 07:50.740 hard, tough shells that remain on the ground from the previous year. 07:51.700 --> 07:56.800 In these circumstances, only birds with longer, sharper beaks can crack the shells 07:56.800 --> 07:57.800 and eat the seeds. 07:58.920 --> 08:03.880 Those birds with the longer beaks survive because they can reach the food source, 08:04.060 --> 08:05.160 whereas other birds cannot. 08:05.860 --> 08:10.240 That long beak, then, confers what biologists now call a functional 08:10.240 --> 08:11.000 advantage. 08:12.520 --> 08:16.120 The finches with smaller beaks, unfortunately, die out from starvation 08:16.120 --> 08:18.760 because they cannot reach that food source. 08:19.500 --> 08:23.820 If the drought conditions continue, the environment causes a change in the 08:23.820 --> 08:26.080 features of the finch population as a whole. 08:26.080 --> 08:32.260 Over time, the long beaks are passed on to succeeding generations because those beaks 08:32.260 --> 08:34.180 enable the birds to survive. 08:35.380 --> 08:38.280 Natural selection was a powerful idea. 08:38.980 --> 08:42.940 Physical variations that proved advantageous would be inherited by 08:42.940 --> 08:44.120 succeeding generations. 08:45.060 --> 08:50.280 Through this process, populations would be altered, and over time, fundamentally 08:50.280 --> 08:54.960 different organisms would arise without any form of intelligent guidance. 08:57.760 --> 09:03.020 Darwin wanted to explain everything in the history of life in terms of undesigned, 09:03.420 --> 09:05.220 unintelligent natural processes. 09:06.000 --> 09:10.920 And when he looked for an explanation, what he found was that a process he could 09:10.920 --> 09:14.480 observe in domestic populations also operates in the wild. 09:15.540 --> 09:18.980 Now, Darwin himself was very familiar with domestic breeding. 09:19.120 --> 09:20.840 He himself studied pigeon breeding. 09:21.600 --> 09:25.040 And he knew that for centuries, human breeders had been able to make 09:25.040 --> 09:29.080 dramatic changes in populations by selecting only certain individuals to 09:29.080 --> 09:29.440 breed. 09:30.040 --> 09:33.360 Darwin really suggested that this same process operates in the wild. 09:33.620 --> 09:38.260 For Charles Darwin, natural selection explained the appearance of design without 09:38.260 --> 09:39.020 a designer. 09:39.880 --> 09:44.360 There was no longer any need to invoke an intelligent cause for the complexity of 09:44.360 --> 09:44.680 life. 09:45.560 --> 09:50.160 In effect, natural selection became a kind of designer substitute. 09:52.560 --> 09:57.260 Today, Darwinism is generally assumed throughout science and the academic world. 09:57.720 --> 10:02.120 Yet, despite its wide acceptance, a growing number of scientists and 10:02.120 --> 10:07.760 scholars, including those who met at Pajaro Dunes, now challenge key aspects of 10:07.760 --> 10:08.740 Darwinian theory. 10:10.460 --> 10:14.880 When we came together at Pajaro Dunes, we certainly didn't agree on everything. 10:15.120 --> 10:20.160 But we did share a real dissatisfaction with the mechanism of natural selection 10:20.160 --> 10:23.040 and the role that it was playing in biological explanation. 10:24.120 --> 10:28.580 Natural selection is a real process, and it works well for explaining certain 10:28.580 --> 10:30.520 limited kinds of variation. 10:31.000 --> 10:32.160 Small-scale change. 10:32.220 --> 10:34.260 We have lots of examples of that, in fact. 10:34.860 --> 10:39.240 Where it doesn't work well is explaining what Darwin thought it could, namely, 10:39.600 --> 10:41.480 the real complexity of life. 10:42.040 --> 10:44.880 We have the finch beak, and then you've got the finch itself. 10:44.880 --> 10:50.660 A minor change in the structure of the beak versus the origin of the organism 10:50.660 --> 10:51.320 itself. 10:51.540 --> 10:53.960 These are different scales of phenomena. 10:54.140 --> 10:55.840 These are different kinds of problems. 10:56.400 --> 11:00.000 And the important problem for biology is to understand where natural selection 11:00.000 --> 11:03.760 works and where it doesn't, and why there's a difference. 11:04.920 --> 11:08.880 Evidence is very powerful, and all of us have the sense that if we let that 11:08.880 --> 11:13.160 evidence speak for itself, that it would lead us in a very different direction, 11:13.160 --> 11:18.560 away from natural selection, and towards a different conclusion about the origin and 11:18.560 --> 11:19.760 nature of life on Earth. 11:31.460 --> 11:38.120 Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations. 11:38.800 --> 11:43.740 She can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, 11:44.100 --> 11:45.760 though slow steps. 11:51.960 --> 11:57.140 It's really interesting to notice that the more we know about life and the more we 11:57.140 --> 12:02.020 know about biology, the more problems Darwinism has and the more design becomes 12:02.020 --> 12:02.580 apparent. 12:06.060 --> 12:08.880 Since 1988, Dr. Michael B. 12:09.060 --> 12:14.460 has investigated complex biological systems that seem to defy explanation by 12:14.460 --> 12:15.260 natural selection. 12:16.560 --> 12:21.420 For the longest time, I believe that Darwinian evolution explains what we saw 12:21.420 --> 12:27.600 in biology, not because I saw how it could actually explain it, but because I was 12:27.600 --> 12:28.820 told that it did explain it. 12:29.000 --> 12:32.060 In schools, I was taught Darwinian biology. 12:33.160 --> 12:37.480 And through college and graduate school, I was in an atmosphere which just assumed 12:37.480 --> 12:40.480 that Darwinian evolution explained biology. 12:40.680 --> 12:42.920 And again, I didn't have any reason to doubt it. 12:43.480 --> 12:48.880 It wasn't until about 10 years or more ago that I read a book called Evolution, 12:49.020 --> 12:54.940 A Theory, and Crisis by a geneticist by the name of Michael Denton, an Australian. 12:55.760 --> 13:02.420 And he put forward a lot of scientific arguments against Darwinian theory that I 13:02.420 --> 13:03.740 had never heard before. 13:04.300 --> 13:07.500 And the arguments seemed pretty convincing. 13:08.560 --> 13:14.220 And at that point, I started to get a bit angry because I thought I was being led 13:14.220 --> 13:15.320 down the primrose path. 13:15.420 --> 13:20.100 Here were a number of very good arguments and I had gone through a doctoral program 13:20.100 --> 13:25.200 in biochemistry, became a faculty member, and I had never even heard of these 13:25.200 --> 13:25.540 things. 13:26.700 --> 13:31.120 And so from that point on, I became very interested in the question of evolution 13:31.120 --> 13:38.060 and since have decided that Darwinian processes are not the whole explanation 13:38.060 --> 13:38.620 for life. 13:41.040 --> 13:46.300 Michael Behe's skepticism derived in large measure from what modern biology has 13:46.300 --> 13:49.880 revealed about life's most fundamental unit, the cell. 13:51.000 --> 13:55.800 In the 19th century, when Darwin was alive, scientists thought that the basis 13:55.800 --> 14:01.780 of life, the cell, was some simple glob of protoplasm, like a little piece of jello 14:01.780 --> 14:04.800 or something that was not hard to explain at all. 14:05.600 --> 14:09.720 This perception didn't really change too much until the early 1950s. 14:09.880 --> 14:14.320 But in the last half century, our knowledge of the cell has just exploded. 14:20.700 --> 14:27.160 Today, powerful technologies reveal elaborate microscopic worlds, worlds so 14:27.160 --> 14:32.360 small that a thimble full of cultured liquid can contain more than 4 billion 14:32.360 --> 14:37.260 single-cell bacteria, each packed with circuits, assembly instructions, 14:37.780 --> 14:42.540 and miniature machines, the complexity of which Charles Darwin could never have 14:42.540 --> 14:42.940 imagined. 14:43.740 --> 14:50.520 At the very basis of life, where molecules and cells run the show, we've discovered 14:50.520 --> 14:53.740 machines, literally molecular machines. 14:54.680 --> 14:59.300 There are little molecular trucks that carry supplies from one end of the cell to 14:59.300 --> 14:59.660 the other. 15:00.160 --> 15:04.760 There are machines which capture the energy from sunlight and turn it into 15:04.760 --> 15:05.680 usable energy. 15:06.880 --> 15:11.660 There are as many molecular machines in the human body as there are functions that 15:11.660 --> 15:12.920 the body has to do. 15:12.920 --> 15:18.520 So if you think about hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, 15:19.560 --> 15:25.580 blood clotting, respiratory action, the immune response, all of those require 15:25.580 --> 15:26.860 a host of machines. 15:27.700 --> 15:31.540 When we look at these machines, we ask ourselves, where do they come from? 15:31.900 --> 15:38.000 And the standard answer, Darwinian evolution, is very inadequate in my view. 15:38.980 --> 15:42.100 In speaking on the topic of scientific naturalism... 15:42.100 --> 15:47.340 During the early 1990s, at a series of academic conferences, Behe first shared 15:47.340 --> 15:51.820 his doubts about the ability of natural selection to construct complex molecular 15:51.820 --> 15:52.400 machines. 15:53.500 --> 15:56.660 One machine particularly attracted his attention. 15:57.500 --> 16:01.920 I remember the first time I looked in a biochemistry textbook and I saw a drawing 16:01.920 --> 16:07.400 of something called a bacterial flagellum with all of its parts in all of its glory. 16:07.400 --> 16:13.220 It had a propeller and a hook region and the drive shaft and the motor and so on. 16:13.960 --> 16:16.580 I looked at that and I said, that's an outboard motor. 16:16.980 --> 16:18.160 That's designed. 16:18.560 --> 16:21.340 That's no chance assemblage of parts. 16:23.180 --> 16:25.260 Behe's reaction was not surprising. 16:25.800 --> 16:30.080 For the molecular motors that drive bacteria through liquid each depend upon a 16:30.080 --> 16:32.760 system of intricately arranged mechanical parts. 16:33.620 --> 16:38.900 These parts come into focus when portions of a cell are magnified 50,000 times. 16:41.780 --> 16:46.620 Biochemists have used electron micrographs like this one to identify the parts and 16:46.620 --> 16:49.080 three-dimensional structure of the flagellar motor. 16:55.350 --> 17:00.430 In the process, they have revealed a marvel of engineering on a miniaturized 17:00.430 --> 17:00.910 scale. 17:02.030 --> 17:07.450 Howard Berg at Harvard has labeled it the most efficient machine in the universe. 17:08.890 --> 17:15.790 These machines, some of them are running at 100,000 RPMs and are hardwired into a 17:15.790 --> 17:20.730 signal transduction or sensory mechanism so that it's getting feedback from the 17:20.730 --> 17:21.170 environment. 17:22.290 --> 17:25.570 And even though they're spinning that fast, they can stop on a dime. 17:25.570 --> 17:30.610 It only takes a quarter turn for them to stop and shift directions and start 17:30.610 --> 17:33.510 spinning 100,000 RPM in the other direction. 17:35.130 --> 17:39.710 And just like outboard motors on motorboats, it has a large number of parts 17:39.710 --> 17:42.050 which are necessary for the motor to work. 17:43.410 --> 17:47.390 The bacterial flagellum, two gears, forward and reverse, water-cooled, 17:47.650 --> 17:48.990 proton motive force. 17:49.170 --> 17:53.530 It has a stator, it has a rotor, it has a U-joint, it has a drive shaft, 17:53.610 --> 17:54.470 it has a propeller. 17:54.470 --> 17:58.650 And they function as these parts of machines. 17:59.010 --> 18:01.350 It's not convenient that we give them these names. 18:01.870 --> 18:03.490 That's truly their function. 18:04.350 --> 18:09.210 Since its discovery, scientists have tried to understand how a rotary motor could 18:09.210 --> 18:11.150 have arisen through natural selection. 18:11.850 --> 18:15.710 As yet, they have failed to offer any detailed Darwinian explanation. 18:20.390 --> 18:26.530 To see why, we must understand a feature of molecular machines known as irreducible 18:26.530 --> 18:27.210 complexity. 18:29.010 --> 18:33.450 Irreducible complexity was coined by Mike Behe in describing these molecular 18:33.450 --> 18:33.990 machines. 18:34.530 --> 18:39.450 Basically, what it says is that you have multi-component parts to any given 18:39.450 --> 18:43.430 organelle or system in a cell, all of which are necessary for function. 18:44.390 --> 18:48.230 That is, if you remove one part, you lose function of that system. 18:50.690 --> 18:56.350 The idea of irreducible complexity can be illustrated by a familiar non-biological 18:56.350 --> 18:57.010 machine. 18:57.450 --> 18:58.430 A mousetrap. 18:59.710 --> 19:02.690 The trap is composed of five basic pieces. 19:03.170 --> 19:04.950 A catch to hold the bait. 19:06.090 --> 19:07.190 A strong spring. 19:08.130 --> 19:10.470 A thin bent rod called the hammer. 19:11.270 --> 19:14.030 A holding bar to secure the hammer in place. 19:14.850 --> 19:18.030 And a platform upon which the entire system is mounted. 19:18.030 --> 19:24.030 If any one of these parts is missing or defective, the mechanism will not work. 19:25.170 --> 19:31.650 All components of this irreducibly complex system must be present simultaneously for 19:31.650 --> 19:33.190 the machine to perform its function. 19:33.930 --> 19:34.610 Catching mice. 19:38.330 --> 19:42.910 Irreducible complexity also applies to biological machines, including the 19:42.910 --> 19:44.290 bacterial flagellar motor. 19:45.310 --> 19:49.990 All told, there are about 40 different protein parts which are necessary for this 19:49.990 --> 19:51.030 machine to work. 19:51.830 --> 19:57.630 And if any of those parts are missing, then either you get a flagellum that 19:57.630 --> 20:01.090 doesn't work because it's missing the hook or it's missing the drive shaft or 20:01.090 --> 20:05.150 whatever, or it doesn't even get built within the cell. 20:05.150 --> 20:12.490 In evolutionary terms, you have to be able to explain how you can build this system 20:12.490 --> 20:18.150 gradually when there's no function until you have all those parts in place. 20:22.850 --> 20:28.290 The irreducible complexity of molecular machines poses a severe challenge to the 20:28.290 --> 20:29.850 power of natural selection. 20:31.670 --> 20:38.090 According to Darwin's theory, even very complex biological structures like an eye, 20:38.490 --> 20:43.950 an ear or a heart can be built gradually over time in small incremental steps. 20:45.890 --> 20:51.350 Yet, as Darwin made clear, natural selection can only succeed if these random 20:51.350 --> 20:56.770 genetic changes provide some advantage to the evolving organism in its struggle for 20:56.770 --> 20:57.190 survival. 20:59.990 --> 21:05.430 As I have attempted to show, it is not necessary to suppose that the 21:05.430 --> 21:11.110 modifications are all simultaneous if they were extremely slight and gradual. 21:12.410 --> 21:18.550 Natural selection is scrutinizing the slightest variations, rejecting those that 21:18.550 --> 21:22.830 are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good. 21:24.790 --> 21:29.250 But could Darwin's small, favorable variations have produced a bacterial 21:29.250 --> 21:29.850 flagellum? 21:30.590 --> 21:32.470 Some scientists doubt the possibility. 21:33.630 --> 21:38.330 How could something new like a bacterial flagellar motor and all the components 21:38.330 --> 21:43.490 that go with it, how could it develop out of a population of bacteria that don't 21:43.490 --> 21:44.690 have that system? 21:45.310 --> 21:50.170 When each change, according to Darwin's theory, has to provide some kind of 21:50.170 --> 21:50.610 advantage. 21:53.110 --> 21:56.750 Imagine such a scenario early in the Earth's history. 21:57.770 --> 22:03.290 An evolving bacterium somehow develops a tail and perhaps even the pieces necessary 22:03.290 --> 22:05.170 to attach it to the cell wall. 22:07.130 --> 22:12.490 Yet, without a complete motor assembly, this innovation would provide no advantage 22:12.490 --> 22:13.210 to the cell. 22:14.210 --> 22:19.530 Instead, the tail would lie immobile and useless, invisible to natural selection, 22:20.030 --> 22:24.150 which by definition can only favor changes that aid survival. 22:25.970 --> 22:28.950 The logic of natural selection is very demanding. 22:29.630 --> 22:33.990 Unless the flagellum mechanism is completely assembled and actually works, 22:34.590 --> 22:37.090 natural selection simply cannot preserve it. 22:37.250 --> 22:39.390 It cannot be passed on to the next generation. 22:39.390 --> 22:45.730 The important thing to realize about natural selection is it selects only for a 22:45.730 --> 22:46.590 functional advantage. 22:47.490 --> 22:51.390 In most cases, natural selection actually eliminates things, things that have no 22:51.390 --> 22:54.230 function or that have a function that harms the organism. 22:54.430 --> 22:58.750 So, if you had a bacterium with a tail that didn't function as a flagellum, 22:59.130 --> 23:01.330 chances are natural selection would eliminate it. 23:01.330 --> 23:06.970 But the only way you can select for a flagellum is if you have a flagellum that 23:06.970 --> 23:11.250 works, and that means you have to have all the pieces of the motor in place to begin 23:11.250 --> 23:11.550 with. 23:12.310 --> 23:16.050 So, natural selection can't get you the bacterial flagellum. 23:16.130 --> 23:19.070 It can only work after the flagellum is there and operating. 23:22.290 --> 23:28.150 In 1996, Michael Behe published a book titled Darwin's Black Box. 23:29.050 --> 23:33.750 In it, he argued that natural selection, Darwin's designer substitute, could not 23:33.750 --> 23:38.350 explain the origin of the bacterial flagellum or any other irreducibly complex 23:38.350 --> 23:39.550 biological system. 23:41.630 --> 23:46.210 Instead, Behe concluded that the integrated complexity of these systems 23:46.210 --> 23:48.290 pointed to intelligent design. 23:50.410 --> 23:53.630 Darwin's Black Box created immediate controversy. 23:54.350 --> 23:58.750 Over 75 publications, including some of the world's leading newspapers and 23:58.750 --> 24:00.570 scientific journals, reviewed the book. 24:02.030 --> 24:08.030 Some scientists praised Behe's work, while others dismissed it as unscientific 24:08.030 --> 24:10.050 and religiously motivated. 24:11.910 --> 24:16.350 Behe's critics also insisted that he had underestimated the power of natural 24:16.350 --> 24:16.850 selection. 24:16.850 --> 24:21.650 They argued that the flagellar motor could have been constructed from parts used to 24:21.650 --> 24:25.910 build simpler molecular machines, like this needle-nose cellular pump. 24:27.150 --> 24:31.510 If the components of the pump already existed, they could have been preserved by 24:31.510 --> 24:34.970 natural selection even before the bacterial motor arose. 24:35.550 --> 24:37.730 This theory is called co-option. 24:37.730 --> 24:43.430 It's essentially saying that evolution or natural selection at some point was able 24:43.430 --> 24:48.710 to borrow components of one molecular machine and build a new machine with some 24:48.710 --> 24:49.510 of these components. 24:50.750 --> 24:54.630 Scott Minnick has studied the flagellar motor for nearly 20 years. 24:55.330 --> 24:58.370 His research has led him to challenge the co-option argument. 24:59.210 --> 25:04.230 With a bacterial flagellum, you're talking about a machine that's got 40 structural 25:04.230 --> 25:04.730 parts. 25:05.210 --> 25:09.770 Yes, we find 10 of them are involved in another molecular machine, but the other 25:09.770 --> 25:10.890 30 are unique. 25:11.270 --> 25:12.790 So where are you going to borrow them from? 25:13.270 --> 25:18.370 Eventually, you're going to have to account for the function of every single 25:18.370 --> 25:20.610 part as originally having some other purpose. 25:20.850 --> 25:24.910 So you can only follow that argument so far until you run into the problem of 25:24.910 --> 25:27.370 you're borrowing parts from nothing. 25:28.370 --> 25:33.650 But even if you concede that you have all the parts necessary to build one of these 25:33.650 --> 25:35.890 machines, that's only part of the problem. 25:36.630 --> 25:40.690 Maybe even more complex, I think more complex, is the assembly instructions. 25:40.870 --> 25:46.950 That is never addressed by opponents of the irreducible complexity argument. 25:48.510 --> 25:53.510 Studies of the bacterial motor have indeed revealed an even deeper level of 25:53.510 --> 25:53.990 complexity. 25:54.590 --> 25:59.670 For its construction not only requires specific parts, but also a precise 25:59.670 --> 26:00.970 sequence of assembly. 26:01.690 --> 26:03.990 You've got to make things at the right time. 26:04.130 --> 26:06.150 You've got to make the right number of components. 26:06.370 --> 26:09.070 You've got to assemble them in a sequential manner. 26:09.490 --> 26:13.850 You've got to be able to tell if you've assembled it properly so that you don't 26:13.850 --> 26:16.750 waste energy building a structure that's not going to be functional. 26:19.390 --> 26:23.670 Building a molecular machine has been compared to the construction of a house 26:23.670 --> 26:27.530 where workers follow a detailed blueprint and plan for assembly. 26:28.510 --> 26:33.250 The foundation of a house is poured before the walls are erected. 26:33.970 --> 26:38.110 Plumbing and electrical fixtures are installed prior to enclosing the walls of 26:38.110 --> 26:38.590 the structure. 26:39.790 --> 26:42.630 Windows must be hung before siding is applied. 26:43.370 --> 26:47.510 And shingles are attached only after plywood sheets are nailed to the rafters. 26:50.690 --> 26:53.890 So it is with the construction of a flagellar motor. 26:55.730 --> 26:58.670 You build this structure from the inside out. 26:59.610 --> 27:05.070 You are counting the number of components in a ring structure or the stator. 27:05.070 --> 27:09.130 And once that's assembled, there's feedback that says, okay, no more of that 27:09.130 --> 27:10.090 component now. 27:10.610 --> 27:11.430 A rod is added. 27:12.190 --> 27:13.030 A ring is added. 27:13.410 --> 27:14.410 Another rod is added. 27:15.110 --> 27:15.910 U-joints added. 27:16.410 --> 27:23.070 Once the U-joints add a certain size and a certain degree of bend, about a quarter 27:23.070 --> 27:24.990 turn, that's shut off. 27:25.150 --> 27:28.550 And then you start adding components for the propeller. 27:29.130 --> 27:34.030 These are all made in a precise sequence, just like you would build a building. 27:35.070 --> 27:39.870 To build a motor correctly requires a complex system of machines that coordinate 27:39.870 --> 27:41.770 the timing of the assembly instructions. 27:42.730 --> 27:45.950 But how could natural selection construct such a system? 27:46.790 --> 27:49.290 The co-option argument doesn't explain this. 27:49.430 --> 27:53.550 You see, in order to construct that flagellar mechanism, or tens of thousands 27:53.550 --> 27:58.750 of other such mechanisms in the cell, you require other machines to regulate the 27:58.750 --> 27:59.970 assembly of these structures. 27:59.970 --> 28:04.250 And those machines themselves require machines for their assembly. 28:04.590 --> 28:08.710 If even one of these pieces is missing or put in the wrong place, your motor isn't 28:08.710 --> 28:09.390 going to work. 28:10.050 --> 28:16.150 So this apparatus to assemble the flagellar motor is itself irreducibly 28:16.150 --> 28:16.730 complex. 28:17.710 --> 28:21.770 In fact, what we have here is irreducible complexity all the way down. 28:22.850 --> 28:25.970 We know a lot about the bacterial flagella. 28:26.530 --> 28:29.130 We still have a lot to learn, but we know a lot about it. 28:29.130 --> 28:37.590 And there's no explanation for how this complex molecular machine was ever 28:37.590 --> 28:40.970 produced by a Darwinian mechanism. 28:42.850 --> 28:48.530 150 years ago, scientists did not know about irreducibly complex molecular 28:48.530 --> 28:49.090 machines. 28:50.130 --> 28:54.270 Yet Charles Darwin anticipated the difficulty that systems such as these 28:54.270 --> 28:55.670 could pose to his theory. 28:56.730 --> 29:02.910 If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not 29:02.910 --> 29:08.330 possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, 29:09.050 --> 29:11.970 my theory would absolutely break down. 29:34.800 --> 29:37.460 There are really two big questions in biology. 29:38.020 --> 29:42.740 How do you get new living forms with new structures like wings and eyes from life 29:42.740 --> 29:43.780 that already exists? 29:43.780 --> 29:47.960 And secondly, how did life originate on Earth in the first place? 29:49.060 --> 29:52.780 Now, of course, we know that Darwin spent most of his life formulating an answer to 29:52.780 --> 29:54.280 the first of these two questions. 30:01.670 --> 30:06.390 Charles Darwin compared the history of life on Earth to a great branching tree. 30:10.630 --> 30:14.130 The base of the tree represented the very first living cell. 30:14.650 --> 30:19.670 And the branches were new and more complex life forms that had evolved over time from 30:19.670 --> 30:21.110 the first primitive organism. 30:22.510 --> 30:26.630 Darwin was trying to explain how the branches on the tree of life originated. 30:27.350 --> 30:31.090 He was trying to show how natural selection could have modified existing 30:31.090 --> 30:36.050 organisms to produce the great diversity of plant and animal life that fills the 30:36.050 --> 30:36.650 Earth today. 30:37.750 --> 30:41.970 But when it came to the base of the tree, which represented the origin of the first 30:41.970 --> 30:45.710 life, the first living cell, Darwin had very little to say. 30:45.710 --> 30:49.910 In fact, in the origin of species, he didn't even address the question of how 30:49.910 --> 30:52.510 life might have originated from non-living matter. 30:54.710 --> 30:59.270 The only glimpses we have of Darwin's opinions on the subject appear in a letter 30:59.270 --> 31:01.530 he wrote to a colleague named Joseph Hooker. 31:08.500 --> 31:14.220 Regarding the first production of a living organism, if, and oh what a big if, 31:14.700 --> 31:20.040 we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and 31:20.040 --> 31:25.920 phosphoric salts, light heat and electricity present, that a protein 31:25.920 --> 31:31.800 compound was chemically formed, ready to undergo still more complex 31:31.800 --> 31:37.400 changes, at the present, such matter would be instantly devoured. 31:37.880 --> 31:41.200 But this may not have been the case before living creatures were formed. 31:43.600 --> 31:48.400 During the final years of his life, Darwin did little to develop his idea that 31:48.400 --> 31:52.960 a primitive cell might have emerged from simple chemicals in the primordial waters 31:52.960 --> 31:54.140 of the early Earth. 31:55.140 --> 32:00.280 But later in the 1920s and 30s, a Russian scientist named Alexander Oparin 32:00.280 --> 32:03.940 formulated a detailed theory about how this could have happened. 32:04.400 --> 32:06.460 It was called chemical evolution. 32:08.620 --> 32:13.240 Oparin thought that he could explain the origin of the first life using Darwinian 32:13.240 --> 32:13.760 principles. 32:14.740 --> 32:19.960 He envisioned simple chemicals combining and recombining to form larger molecules, 32:20.240 --> 32:23.820 and then these larger molecules organizing themselves, with the help of chance 32:23.820 --> 32:28.160 variations and natural selection, into the first primitive living cell. 32:32.400 --> 32:36.860 Over the next three decades, many scientists worked to develop and refine 32:36.860 --> 32:41.160 these ideas, as they pondered the questions both Oparin and Darwin had 32:41.160 --> 32:41.680 raised. 32:42.440 --> 32:45.040 How could life have evolved from simple chemicals? 32:47.960 --> 32:49.620 One man thought he knew. 32:51.420 --> 32:55.700 The problem of biological origins, for a very long time, I would say, 32:55.780 --> 32:59.620 has been of real deep interest to me, just because of the scale of the problem, 32:59.800 --> 33:00.780 the importance of it. 33:00.900 --> 33:01.940 Where did we come from? 33:02.660 --> 33:03.720 Why are we here? 33:04.020 --> 33:09.760 All that kind of question, probed from the point of view of natural science. 33:11.480 --> 33:16.200 During the late 1960s and throughout the 70s and early 80s, Dean Kenyon was one of 33:16.200 --> 33:18.400 the leading chemical evolutionary theorists in the world. 33:18.400 --> 33:22.500 And like others in his field, he was trying to explain how life on Earth began 33:22.500 --> 33:24.320 through a purely natural process. 33:25.880 --> 33:30.880 In 1969, Kenyon co-authored an important book on the origin of life. 33:31.840 --> 33:39.000 Gary Steinman and myself thought that if we were to pull together all of the lines 33:39.000 --> 33:45.880 of empirical evidence that had accumulated by the mid to late 60s in one continuous 33:45.880 --> 33:53.140 argument, we were very enthusiastic about the possibilities for explaining the 33:53.140 --> 33:55.640 origin of the main life-building elements. 33:57.040 --> 34:00.900 Despite his optimism, Kenyon faced a significant problem. 34:02.100 --> 34:06.980 To explain how life began, he first had to account for the origin of the essential 34:06.980 --> 34:12.280 building blocks of every cell that has existed on Earth, large complex molecules 34:12.280 --> 34:13.820 called proteins. 34:15.420 --> 34:19.640 Proteins have a wide range of function in the cell, everything from structural 34:19.640 --> 34:25.900 requirements in terms of scaffolding of the cell, the cytoskeleton, to enzymes, 34:26.160 --> 34:31.620 where they're actually processing molecules to harvest energy or to build 34:31.620 --> 34:32.860 components of the cell. 34:33.580 --> 34:38.500 Proteins do pretty much all of the jobs inside of the cell, except for storing 34:38.500 --> 34:39.600 genetic information. 34:39.600 --> 34:41.780 That's left to the DNA, the RNA. 34:42.180 --> 34:46.120 But all the day-to-day jobs, cleaning up the cell, making energy, it's all 34:46.120 --> 34:46.580 proteins. 34:48.980 --> 34:53.340 Kenyon knew that proteins would have been as important to the first life as they are 34:53.340 --> 34:54.660 to living cells today. 34:55.580 --> 34:58.400 He also recognized the complexity of their construction. 34:59.940 --> 35:04.220 By the 1960s, scientists had determined that even simple cells are made of 35:04.220 --> 35:08.500 thousands of different types of proteins, and the function of these molecules 35:08.500 --> 35:11.900 derives from their highly complex three-dimensional shapes. 35:14.120 --> 35:18.740 The irregular shapes of some proteins allow them to catalyze or trigger chemical 35:18.740 --> 35:23.680 reactions because of the hand-and-glove fit that they have with other molecules in 35:23.680 --> 35:24.120 the cell. 35:25.380 --> 35:30.280 While other protein molecules form interlocking structural components. 35:31.240 --> 35:37.200 The individual parts of a bacterial motor, like this ring structure, are each made of 35:37.200 --> 35:42.060 either a single protein molecule or an assembly of proteins fitted together into 35:42.060 --> 35:43.080 a specific shape. 35:45.320 --> 35:50.940 These proteins are, in turn, made of smaller chemical units called amino acids 35:50.940 --> 35:53.100 that are linked together in long chains. 35:54.120 --> 36:01.160 There is a very great degree of intricacy of architecture down in the cell units in 36:01.160 --> 36:03.560 these protein-forming amino acids. 36:04.900 --> 36:09.740 In nature, 20 different types of amino acids are used to construct protein 36:09.740 --> 36:10.340 chains. 36:11.260 --> 36:15.020 Biologists have compared them to the 26 letters of the English alphabet. 36:15.940 --> 36:19.260 Alphabetic letters can be arranged in a huge number of possible combinations. 36:20.500 --> 36:23.860 And it's the sequential arrangement of the letters that determines whether you have 36:23.860 --> 36:25.840 meaningful words and sentences. 36:26.420 --> 36:30.500 If the letters are arranged correctly, you'll get meaningful text. 36:30.800 --> 36:33.760 But if they're not arranged correctly, you'll get gibberish. 36:34.220 --> 36:37.780 And the same principle applies for amino acids and proteins. 36:39.400 --> 36:45.000 There are at least 30,000 distinct types of proteins, each made of a different 36:45.000 --> 36:47.460 combination of the same 20 amino acids. 36:48.200 --> 36:52.480 They are arranged, like letters, to form chains, often hundreds of units 36:52.480 --> 36:52.920 long. 36:53.860 --> 36:58.180 If the amino acids are sequenced correctly, then the chain will fold into a 36:58.180 --> 36:59.140 functioning protein. 37:00.900 --> 37:07.120 Proteins are arranged with their amino acids in such a way that the amino acids 37:07.120 --> 37:14.100 collapse on each other into an architecture that is pre-programmed by the 37:14.100 --> 37:15.460 order of the amino acids. 37:16.180 --> 37:21.220 It folds into a certain structure, and that structure can do a certain 37:21.220 --> 37:21.720 function. 37:21.720 --> 37:27.560 So all proteins in the cell have a certain three-dimensional pattern that's based on 37:27.560 --> 37:30.460 the arrangement of amino acids in the chain. 37:32.680 --> 37:34.720 This arrangement is critical. 37:35.760 --> 37:40.400 For if the amino acids are incorrectly sequenced, a useless chain forms, 37:40.680 --> 37:44.580 and instead of folding into a protein, it will be destroyed in the cell. 37:46.260 --> 37:50.820 Proteins, like written languages or computer codes, have a high degree of 37:50.820 --> 37:51.580 specificity. 37:52.180 --> 37:56.120 The function of the whole depends upon the precise arrangement of the individual 37:56.120 --> 37:56.660 parts. 37:57.920 --> 38:02.340 But what produces the precise sequencing of amino acids that gives rise to the 38:02.340 --> 38:04.460 specific shapes and functions of proteins? 38:06.260 --> 38:12.020 During the 1950s and 60s, discoveries about protein structure forced biologists 38:12.020 --> 38:13.440 to confront this mystery. 38:14.580 --> 38:17.140 Dean Kenyon believed he could solve it. 38:18.260 --> 38:23.540 In his book Biochemical Predestination, Kenyon and his co-author Gary Steinman 38:23.540 --> 38:25.800 proposed an intriguing theory. 38:26.980 --> 38:31.460 Kenyon wrote, Life might have been biochemically predestined by the 38:31.460 --> 38:35.600 properties of attraction that exist between its chemical parts, particularly 38:35.600 --> 38:37.560 between amino acids in proteins. 38:38.720 --> 38:43.180 At the time that Biochemical Predestination came out, I and my 38:43.180 --> 38:49.660 co-author were totally convinced that we had the scientific explanation for 38:49.660 --> 38:50.180 origins. 38:51.460 --> 38:55.140 Kenyon proposed that the chemical properties of the amino acids caused them 38:55.140 --> 38:58.780 to be attracted to each other, forming the long chains that became the 38:58.780 --> 39:02.240 first proteins, the most important components in the living cell. 39:02.880 --> 39:06.720 And this meant that life was effectively inevitable, predestined by nothing more 39:06.720 --> 39:07.360 than chemistry. 39:08.640 --> 39:14.920 Many scientists embraced Kenyon's ideas, and over the next 20 years, Biochemical 39:14.920 --> 39:19.880 Predestination became a best-selling text on the theory of chemical evolution. 39:20.920 --> 39:26.020 Yet five years after the book's publication, Kenyon quietly began to doubt 39:26.020 --> 39:28.440 the plausibility of his own theory. 39:29.560 --> 39:34.240 It was during that whole period of time that my doubts about certain aspects of 39:34.240 --> 39:36.920 the evolutionary account became apparent. 39:37.560 --> 39:42.960 I remember one coming into contact with a powerful counter-argument given to me by 39:42.960 --> 39:47.380 one of my students, and I could not refute that counter-argument. 39:48.760 --> 39:52.520 Kenyon was challenged to explain how the first proteins could have been assembled 39:52.520 --> 39:54.620 without the help of genetic instructions. 39:56.000 --> 40:01.280 In living cells today, chains of amino acids are not formed directly by forces of 40:01.280 --> 40:05.200 attraction between their parts, the scenario Kenyon envisioned on the 40:05.200 --> 40:05.820 early Earth. 40:07.560 --> 40:12.400 Instead, another large molecule within the cell stores instructions for sequencing 40:12.400 --> 40:13.860 the amino acids in proteins. 40:14.660 --> 40:16.200 It is called DNA. 40:17.160 --> 40:21.860 Initially, Kenyon believed that proteins could have formed directly from amino 40:21.860 --> 40:25.040 acids, without any DNA assembly instructions. 40:26.060 --> 40:28.900 And that's why so many scientists were excited about his theory. 40:28.900 --> 40:32.780 But the more he and others learned about the properties of amino acids and 40:32.780 --> 40:37.940 proteins, the more he began to doubt that proteins could self-assemble without DNA. 40:40.780 --> 40:45.700 In DNA, Kenyon encountered a molecule with a property he could not explain through 40:45.700 --> 40:46.600 natural processes. 40:47.600 --> 40:52.580 For locked securely within its double helix structure is a wealth of information 40:52.580 --> 40:57.260 in the form of precisely sequenced chemicals that scientists represent with 40:57.260 --> 41:00.200 the letters A, C, T and G. 41:01.460 --> 41:06.200 In a written language, information is communicated by a precise arrangement of 41:06.200 --> 41:06.540 letters. 41:07.520 --> 41:11.980 In the same way, the instructions necessary to assemble amino acids into 41:11.980 --> 41:17.040 proteins are conveyed by the sequences of chemicals arranged along the spine of the 41:17.040 --> 41:17.360 DNA. 41:18.320 --> 41:23.600 This chemical code has been called the language of life, and it is the most 41:23.600 --> 41:28.060 densely packed and elaborately detailed assembly of information in the known 41:28.060 --> 41:28.560 universe. 41:29.900 --> 41:33.120 Like other scientists working on the origin of life, Kenyon realized he had two 41:33.120 --> 41:33.620 choices. 41:33.620 --> 41:38.580 Either he had to explain where these genetic assembly instructions came from, 41:39.140 --> 41:43.840 or he had to explain how proteins could have arisen directly from amino acids 41:43.840 --> 41:46.960 without DNA in the primordial oceans. 41:47.540 --> 41:49.920 And in the end, he realized he could do neither. 41:59.440 --> 42:05.200 It's an enormous problem how you could get together in one tiny submicroscopic volume 42:05.200 --> 42:10.120 of the primitive ocean all of the hundreds of different molecular components you 42:10.120 --> 42:14.440 would need in order for a self-replicating cycle to be established. 42:14.440 --> 42:21.040 And so my doubts about whether amino acids could order themselves into meaningful 42:21.040 --> 42:26.560 biological sequences on their own without pre-existing genetic material being 42:26.560 --> 42:31.200 present just reached, I guess for me, the intellectual breaking point sometime 42:31.200 --> 42:34.260 near the end of the decade of the 70s. 42:35.640 --> 42:40.820 As Kenyon re-evaluated his theory, new biochemical discoveries further 42:40.820 --> 42:44.840 weakened his conviction that amino acids could have organized themselves into 42:44.840 --> 42:45.320 proteins. 42:45.940 --> 42:51.920 The more I conducted my own studies, including a period of time at NASA Ames 42:51.920 --> 42:57.240 Research Center, the more it became apparent that there were multiple 42:57.240 --> 43:00.460 difficulties with the chemical evolution account. 43:00.460 --> 43:07.520 And further experimental work showed that amino acids do not have the ability to 43:07.520 --> 43:11.460 order themselves into any biologically meaningful sequences. 43:13.620 --> 43:18.280 Faced with mounting difficulties in his own theory and a growing body of 43:18.280 --> 43:23.620 scientific data about the importance of DNA, Kenyon was forced to confront the 43:23.620 --> 43:26.420 absolute necessity of genetic information. 43:27.580 --> 43:32.820 The more I thought about the alternative that was being presented in the criticism 43:32.820 --> 43:38.280 and the enormous problem that all of us who worked on this field had neglected to 43:38.280 --> 43:43.740 address, the problem of the origin of genetic information itself, then I really 43:43.740 --> 43:49.420 had to reassess my whole position regarding origins. 43:50.120 --> 43:56.400 For Dean Kenyon, a new question became the focus of his search for life's origin. 43:57.240 --> 44:00.820 What was the source of the biological information in DNA? 44:01.940 --> 44:08.800 If one could get at the origin of the messages, the encoded messages within the 44:08.800 --> 44:14.280 living machinery, then you would really be on to something far more intellectually 44:14.280 --> 44:18.200 satisfying than this chemical evolution theory. 44:22.100 --> 44:26.240 Yet Kenyon realized that he faced a narrowing set of options. 44:27.300 --> 44:31.700 By the 1970s, most researchers had rejected the idea that the information 44:31.700 --> 44:35.700 necessary to build the first cell originated by chance alone. 44:41.290 --> 44:46.530 To understand why, consider the difficulty of generating just two lines of 44:46.530 --> 44:50.790 Shakespeare's play Hamlet by dropping Scrabble letters onto a tabletop. 44:53.310 --> 44:57.950 Then consider that the specific genetic instructions required to build the 44:57.950 --> 45:03.710 proteins in even the simplest one-celled organism would fill hundreds of pages of 45:03.710 --> 45:04.410 printed text. 45:06.950 --> 45:12.030 Of course, serious origin of life biologists did not believe that life had 45:12.030 --> 45:13.330 arisen by chance alone. 45:14.010 --> 45:17.850 Instead, they envisioned natural selection acting on random variations among 45:17.850 --> 45:19.830 chemicals to produce the first life. 45:19.830 --> 45:22.150 But there was a problem with this proposal. 45:23.750 --> 45:28.370 By definition, natural selection could not have functioned before the existence of 45:28.370 --> 45:29.450 the first living cell. 45:30.970 --> 45:35.310 For it can only act upon organisms capable of replicating themselves. 45:36.190 --> 45:40.450 Cells equipped with DNA that pass on their genetic changes to future generations. 45:43.600 --> 45:46.700 Without DNA, there is no self-replication. 45:47.400 --> 45:50.400 But without self-replication, there is no natural selection. 45:51.300 --> 45:56.200 So you can't use natural selection to explain the origin of DNA without assuming 45:56.200 --> 45:58.640 the existence of the very thing you are trying to explain. 46:01.770 --> 46:07.770 Chance, natural selection and his own theory of self-organization had all failed 46:07.770 --> 46:10.270 to explain the origin of genetic information. 46:11.370 --> 46:13.650 Now Kenyon saw only one alternative. 46:14.850 --> 46:20.050 We have not the slightest chance of a chemical evolutionary origin for even the 46:20.050 --> 46:21.930 simplest of cells. 46:22.950 --> 46:29.250 So the concept of the intelligent design of life was immensely attractive to me and 46:29.250 --> 46:30.570 made a great deal of sense. 46:30.810 --> 46:36.130 As it very closely matched the multiple discoveries in molecular biology. 46:38.090 --> 46:42.870 In the years since Kenyon's rejection of chemical evolution, science has revealed 46:42.870 --> 46:47.250 the details of an entire system of information processing that bears the 46:47.250 --> 46:49.210 hallmarks of intelligent design. 46:55.970 --> 47:00.850 With computer animation, we can enter the cell to view this remarkable system at 47:00.850 --> 47:01.150 work. 47:12.150 --> 47:17.090 After entering the heart of the cell, we see the tightly wound strands of DNA, 47:17.670 --> 47:22.210 storehouses for the instructions necessary to build every protein in an organism. 47:28.960 --> 47:34.200 In a process known as transcription, a molecular machine first unwinds a 47:34.200 --> 47:39.240 section of the DNA helix to expose the genetic instructions needed to assemble a 47:39.240 --> 47:40.620 specific protein molecule. 47:44.020 --> 47:48.280 Another machine then copies these instructions to form a molecule known as 47:48.280 --> 47:49.340 messenger RNA. 47:56.620 --> 48:01.340 When transcription is complete, the slender RNA strand carries the genetic 48:01.340 --> 48:03.500 information through the nuclear pore complex. 48:04.380 --> 48:07.900 The gatekeeper for traffic in and out of the cell nucleus. 48:17.580 --> 48:23.240 The messenger RNA strand is directed to a two-part molecular factory called a 48:23.240 --> 48:23.860 ribosome. 48:24.700 --> 48:29.020 After attaching itself securely, the process of translation begins. 48:37.440 --> 48:42.880 Inside the ribosome, a molecular assembly line builds a specifically sequenced chain 48:42.880 --> 48:43.800 of amino acids. 48:44.720 --> 48:49.060 These amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and then linked 48:49.060 --> 48:51.540 into chains often hundreds of units long. 48:52.380 --> 48:55.920 Their sequential arrangement determines the type of protein manufactured. 49:09.020 --> 49:13.320 When the chain is finished, it is moved from the ribosome to a barrel-shaped 49:13.320 --> 49:17.040 machine that helps fold it into the precise shape critical to its function. 49:39.820 --> 49:44.780 After the chain is folded into a protein, it is then released and shepherded by 49:44.780 --> 49:48.220 another molecular machine to the exact location where it is needed. 49:49.120 --> 49:56.900 This is absolutely mind-boggling to perceive at this scale of size such a 49:56.900 --> 50:05.080 finely tuned apparatus, a device that bears the marks of intelligent design and 50:05.080 --> 50:05.620 manufacture. 50:06.620 --> 50:13.740 And we have the details of an immensely complex molecular realm of genetic 50:13.740 --> 50:15.100 information processing. 50:16.300 --> 50:22.100 And it's exactly this new realm of molecular genetics where we see the most 50:22.100 --> 50:25.300 compelling evidence of design on the Earth. 50:50.900 --> 50:56.740 When I look at molecular machines, or the incredibly complex process by which 50:56.740 --> 51:02.000 cells divide, I want to ask, is it possible that these things had an 51:02.000 --> 51:06.720 intelligence behind them, that there was a plan or a purpose to this structure? 51:08.560 --> 51:11.860 Science ought to be a search for the truth about the world. 51:12.700 --> 51:15.660 Now, we shouldn't prejudge what might be true. 51:15.780 --> 51:19.580 We shouldn't say, I don't like that explanation, so I'm going to put it to one 51:19.580 --> 51:20.040 side. 51:20.380 --> 51:24.140 Rather, when we come to a puzzle in nature, we ought to bring to that puzzle 51:24.140 --> 51:27.140 every possible cause that might explain it. 51:27.660 --> 51:31.240 One of the problems I have with evolutionary theory is that it 51:31.240 --> 51:35.960 artificially rules out a kind of cause even before the evidence has a chance to 51:35.960 --> 51:36.300 speak. 51:36.940 --> 51:38.980 And the cause that's ruled out is intelligence. 51:39.880 --> 51:43.840 Since the late 19th century, since the time of Darwin, in fact, in part because 51:43.840 --> 51:47.800 of Darwin's writing in The Origin of Species, scientists came to accept a 51:47.800 --> 51:54.100 convention, a definition of science, that excluded the possibility of design as 51:54.100 --> 51:54.840 a scientific explanation. 51:54.840 --> 51:57.520 And that convention has a name. 51:57.640 --> 51:58.940 It's called methodological naturalism. 51:59.600 --> 52:03.180 And it just means that if you're going to be scientific, you must limit yourself to 52:03.180 --> 52:05.740 explanations that invoke only natural causes. 52:05.900 --> 52:07.700 You can't invoke intelligence as a cause. 52:08.440 --> 52:12.680 And yet, curiously, we make inferences to intelligence all the time. 52:12.780 --> 52:16.820 It's part of our ordinary reasoning to recognize the effects of intelligence. 52:18.100 --> 52:22.680 Consider, for example, these hieroglyphic messages carved upon the ruins of Egyptian 52:22.680 --> 52:23.260 monuments. 52:24.700 --> 52:29.100 No one would attribute the shapes and arrangements of these symbols to natural 52:29.100 --> 52:31.720 causes, like sandstorms or erosion. 52:32.760 --> 52:38.020 Instead, we recognize them as the work of ancient scribes, intelligent human agents. 52:40.920 --> 52:45.200 Similar reasoning leads us to conclude that the mysterious stone figures on the 52:45.200 --> 52:50.080 shores of Easter Island were not formed by the actions of wind and water over great 52:50.080 --> 52:51.020 periods of time. 52:52.320 --> 52:56.860 Nor do we presume that plants could grow into these familiar shapes without some 52:56.860 --> 52:58.250 manner of intelligent guidance. 52:59.780 --> 53:04.320 Of course, we make these inferences all the time, and we know they're correct. 53:04.720 --> 53:07.380 But the question is, on what basis do we make these inferences? 53:07.580 --> 53:10.150 What are the features that enable us to recognize intelligence? 53:11.740 --> 53:16.880 Recently, in a book titled The Design Inference, mathematician William Dembski 53:16.880 --> 53:20.680 has made an important breakthrough in understanding design reasoning. 53:21.440 --> 53:25.400 Dembski has identified the specific features of artifacts that cause us to 53:25.400 --> 53:27.620 recognize prior intelligent activity. 53:28.600 --> 53:33.420 I came to this by trying to look at how do we reason about design? 53:33.800 --> 53:37.920 What are the logical moves that we have to go through in order to come to a 53:37.920 --> 53:39.100 conclusion of design? 53:39.340 --> 53:44.040 So what I'm trying to do is to establish reliable, empirical, scientifically 53:44.040 --> 53:49.160 rigorous criteria for deciding whether something is in fact designed. 53:49.160 --> 53:53.200 So I was looking at the logic of it, and what I found was you need 53:53.200 --> 53:56.800 improbability and you need specification, the right sort of pattern, these objective 53:56.800 --> 53:57.420 patterns. 53:58.180 --> 54:02.140 According to Dembski, human beings correctly detect the activity of 54:02.140 --> 54:07.040 intelligence whenever they observe a highly improbable object or event that 54:07.040 --> 54:09.100 also matches a recognizable pattern. 54:10.360 --> 54:13.580 Just such a pattern is found in the Black Hills of South Dakota. 54:14.840 --> 54:18.260 If you travel through the West, you'll see lots of different shapes on 54:18.260 --> 54:19.000 mountainsides. 54:19.160 --> 54:21.000 Most of which mean nothing at all. 54:21.120 --> 54:23.640 They're just rocks strewn in various patterns. 54:23.880 --> 54:29.340 But what you don't see are the faces of Lincoln, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, 54:29.960 --> 54:32.100 and George Washington on mountainsides. 54:32.180 --> 54:34.160 The only place you see that is in South Dakota. 54:34.580 --> 54:37.540 And the reason it's there is because a sculptor, an eccentric sculptor, 54:37.840 --> 54:41.580 decided that he wanted to honor these presidents by spending the larger part of 54:41.580 --> 54:44.400 his life chiseling their faces in the side of that mountain. 54:45.480 --> 54:47.180 That pattern is improbable. 54:47.180 --> 54:51.780 A random hillside is also improbable, but a random hillside doesn't specify 54:51.780 --> 54:52.300 anything. 54:53.240 --> 54:56.700 We do know, though, that there were four guys who were presidents of the United 54:56.700 --> 54:59.580 States who had particular patterns with their faces. 55:00.120 --> 55:05.140 And those patterns on the mountainside in South Dakota match faces elsewhere. 55:06.060 --> 55:10.140 If I look up and see the faces, I immediately recognize that they match 55:10.140 --> 55:14.880 the faces of the four presidents that are known from money or portraits at the 55:14.880 --> 55:16.680 National Gallery or paintings in books. 55:16.940 --> 55:20.740 And so I realize when I look at Mount Rushmore, we have not only a highly 55:20.740 --> 55:25.320 improbable configuration of rock, but one which matches an independently 55:25.320 --> 55:28.300 given pattern that reliably indicates intelligence. 55:29.020 --> 55:33.860 So we have a small probability, specification, it's design. 55:39.670 --> 55:45.190 On a seashore, another improbable pattern etched into the earth illustrates how we 55:45.190 --> 55:46.090 detect design. 55:48.690 --> 55:52.890 No one would infer that this message was written by the movement of the tides. 55:53.950 --> 55:59.150 Instead, because of the characteristics of this pattern, we identify the words as the 55:59.150 --> 56:00.330 products of intelligence. 56:01.510 --> 56:06.190 That improbable arrangement also conforms to an independently given pattern, 56:06.590 --> 56:10.450 namely the shapes of the letters that we recognize from English alphabet and the 56:10.450 --> 56:13.030 words that we know from English vocabulary. 56:13.030 --> 56:16.970 And so it's the improbability of the arrangement, plus the fact that it 56:16.970 --> 56:21.110 conforms to an independently given pattern that triggers the awareness of design. 56:22.270 --> 56:26.690 This illustration suggests that William Dembski's criteria for design detection, 56:27.170 --> 56:32.050 small probability and specification, are essentially equivalent to information. 56:33.050 --> 56:37.670 The type of information present not only in pictures, written texts and numeric 56:37.670 --> 56:41.790 sequences, but also encoded in software and radio signals. 56:44.550 --> 56:50.030 The ability to detect information in electromagnetic transmissions has made 56:50.030 --> 56:52.370 possible a unique search for intelligence. 56:52.990 --> 56:58.390 For more than three decades, astronomers involved in SETI, the search for 56:58.390 --> 57:02.490 extraterrestrial intelligence, have monitored radio signals from outer 57:02.490 --> 57:05.630 space in an attempt to find information-rich patterns. 57:07.070 --> 57:13.190 Typically, radio telescopes receive either random noise or simple repetitive signals 57:13.190 --> 57:17.590 produced naturally by stars, galaxies and other celestial objects. 57:19.870 --> 57:24.750 But astronomers recognize that if they ever identified an information-bearing 57:24.750 --> 57:29.250 signal, it would confirm the existence of intelligent life beyond the Earth. 57:32.550 --> 57:37.350 Some have speculated that an extraterrestrial civilization might have 57:37.350 --> 57:41.570 attempted to communicate by transmitting messages in the universal language of 57:41.570 --> 57:46.110 mathematics, perhaps through a recognizable pattern like a series of 57:46.110 --> 57:46.910 prime numbers. 57:49.510 --> 57:51.210 You're not going to get that by chance. 57:51.290 --> 57:56.750 So you need complexity or improbability, lots of prime numbers, and you also need a 57:56.750 --> 57:57.110 pattern. 57:57.430 --> 57:58.930 And it has to be the right sort of pattern. 57:59.030 --> 58:00.490 It's not a pattern that you're imposing. 58:00.990 --> 58:03.290 It's a pattern that's there objectively. 58:05.130 --> 58:10.450 To date, SETI research has failed to detect any pattern or information that 58:10.450 --> 58:12.950 would indicate intelligence in a distant galaxy. 58:14.510 --> 58:19.650 But in another universe, much closer to home, scientists have discovered a wealth 58:19.650 --> 58:23.290 of information within the nucleus of the living cell. 58:24.890 --> 58:30.130 DNA has a structure that is ideal for carrying information in the A's, 58:30.270 --> 58:35.790 T's, C's and G's, which is the basis of the double helix of DNA, is the potential 58:35.790 --> 58:38.170 for storing a tremendous amount of information. 58:39.110 --> 58:44.990 There is, in fact, no entity in the known universe that stores and processes more 58:44.990 --> 58:48.690 information, more efficiently, than the DNA molecule. 58:49.710 --> 58:54.510 A full complement of human DNA has three billion individual characters. 58:55.810 --> 59:00.550 Analysis of the DNA molecule's coding regions show that its chemical characters 59:00.550 --> 59:04.650 have a specific arrangement that allows them to convey detailed instructions or 59:04.650 --> 59:09.650 information, much like letters in a meaningful sentence or binary digits in a 59:09.650 --> 59:10.450 computer code. 59:11.890 --> 59:16.290 Bill Gates has said that DNA is like a computer program, only much more complex 59:16.290 --> 59:18.190 than any we've been able to devise. 59:18.750 --> 59:22.490 And if you reflect on that, even for a minute, it's a highly suggestive 59:22.490 --> 59:26.610 observation, because we know that Bill Gates does not employ wind and erosion or 59:26.610 --> 59:29.570 random number generators to generate his software. 59:29.750 --> 59:32.590 Instead, he employs intelligent engineers, software engineers. 59:33.110 --> 59:37.610 And so, everything we know in our experience suggests that information-rich 59:37.610 --> 59:40.490 systems arise from intelligent design. 59:41.210 --> 59:45.850 But what do we make of the fact that there is information in life, in every living 59:45.850 --> 59:47.410 cell of every living organism? 59:47.770 --> 59:49.090 That's the fundamental mystery. 59:49.270 --> 59:50.970 Where does that information come from? 59:52.470 --> 59:57.470 For the past 15 years, philosopher and scientist Stephen Meyer has worked to 59:57.470 --> 59:58.470 answer this question. 59:59.230 --> 01:00:02.670 Meyer has developed an argument to demonstrate that intelligent design 01:00:02.670 --> 01:00:07.170 provides the best explanation for the origin of information necessary to build 01:00:07.170 --> 01:00:08.670 the first living cell. 01:00:12.090 --> 01:00:16.950 It's part of our knowledge base that intelligent agents can produce 01:00:16.950 --> 01:00:18.690 information-rich systems. 01:00:18.690 --> 01:00:22.890 So, the argument is not based on what we don't know, but it's based on what we do 01:00:22.890 --> 01:00:24.990 know about the cause and effect structure of the world. 01:00:25.470 --> 01:00:30.250 We know at present there is no naturalistic explanation, no natural cause 01:00:30.250 --> 01:00:31.810 that produces information. 01:00:32.190 --> 01:00:35.730 Not natural selection, not self-organizational processes, 01:00:36.310 --> 01:00:37.550 not pure chance. 01:00:37.710 --> 01:00:42.050 But we do know of a cause which is capable of producing information, and that is 01:00:42.050 --> 01:00:42.550 intelligence. 01:00:43.170 --> 01:00:48.570 So, when people infer design from the presence of information and DNA, 01:00:48.690 --> 01:00:52.910 they're effectively making what's called in the historical sciences an inference to 01:00:52.910 --> 01:00:53.790 the best explanation. 01:00:54.430 --> 01:00:59.470 So, when we find an information-rich system in the cell, in the DNA molecule 01:00:59.470 --> 01:01:04.590 specifically, we can infer that an intelligence played a role in the origin 01:01:04.590 --> 01:01:08.570 of that system, even if we weren't there to observe the system coming into 01:01:08.570 --> 01:01:09.090 existence. 01:01:11.950 --> 01:01:16.650 Meyer's work on the origin of genetic information is now part of a comprehensive 01:01:16.650 --> 01:01:20.970 scientific case for design that grew out of a meeting of scientists and 01:01:20.970 --> 01:01:24.730 philosophers on the central coast of California in 1993. 01:01:26.510 --> 01:01:31.690 Their objective was to reassess an idea that had dominated biology for more than a 01:01:31.690 --> 01:01:31.990 century. 01:01:32.990 --> 01:01:37.690 In the process, they gave birth to a theory that has become known as 01:01:37.690 --> 01:01:38.930 intelligent design. 01:01:40.090 --> 01:01:45.950 To me, the great promise of design is it gives us a new tool and explanation that 01:01:45.950 --> 01:01:47.930 belongs in the toolkit of science. 01:01:48.110 --> 01:01:53.710 Intelligent causes are real, they leave evidence of their existence, and a healthy 01:01:53.710 --> 01:01:58.570 science is a science that seeks the truth and lets the evidence speak for itself. 01:01:58.810 --> 01:02:04.750 The argument for intelligent design is based on observation of the facts. 01:02:05.410 --> 01:02:08.030 Now, that's my definition of good science. 01:02:08.410 --> 01:02:10.090 It's observation of the facts. 01:02:10.390 --> 01:02:13.490 Now, when you observe the facts, as Michael Behe has done, what do you 01:02:13.490 --> 01:02:13.890 observe? 01:02:14.890 --> 01:02:18.850 You observe this incredible pattern of interrelated complexity. 01:02:19.970 --> 01:02:24.870 And the way we conclude intelligent design for the bacterial flagellum is the same 01:02:24.870 --> 01:02:27.250 way we conclude intelligent design for an outboard motor. 01:02:27.430 --> 01:02:30.990 When we see an outboard motor, we see the way the parts interact and so 01:02:30.990 --> 01:02:31.230 on. 01:02:31.310 --> 01:02:32.790 We know somebody made that. 01:02:33.490 --> 01:02:37.110 The reasoning is the same for biological machines. 01:02:37.450 --> 01:02:41.770 So, the idea of intelligent design is a completely scientific one. 01:02:42.070 --> 01:02:46.030 Certainly, it might have religious implications, but it does not depend on 01:02:46.030 --> 01:02:46.850 religious premises. 01:02:48.590 --> 01:02:53.890 When I look at the evidence objectively, without ruling out the possibility of 01:02:53.890 --> 01:02:58.750 design, design just leaps up as the most likely explanation. 01:02:59.450 --> 01:03:01.430 And that's why I believe that it's true. 01:03:01.950 --> 01:03:03.790 I think design is back on the table. 01:03:04.610 --> 01:03:08.810 We can't explain these systems by natural law. 01:03:09.190 --> 01:03:13.610 And if we're searching for truth, and they are in fact designed, 01:03:13.610 --> 01:03:18.010 if we have to be design engineers to understand them, then I say, what's the 01:03:18.010 --> 01:03:18.330 problem? 01:03:19.570 --> 01:03:21.050 You go where the data leads you. 01:03:21.890 --> 01:03:25.610 And the implications, yeah, they have profound metaphysical implications, 01:03:26.870 --> 01:03:28.330 but so be it. 01:03:29.910 --> 01:03:34.110 So, it's a powerful idea that the universe is rational and comprehensible, 01:03:35.070 --> 01:03:40.770 underwritten by a supreme intelligence that meant for this world to be understood 01:03:41.330 --> 01:03:45.850 is something that underwrites then the program of science, because then you can 01:03:45.850 --> 01:03:48.290 go out and look at the world and the world will make sense. 01:03:48.750 --> 01:03:52.050 If it's all just a chaotic assemblage, there's no reason to expect any 01:03:52.050 --> 01:03:53.230 rationality out there. 01:03:53.890 --> 01:03:58.470 But if it in fact is the product of a mind, then you can go out and science 01:03:58.470 --> 01:04:03.550 becomes this enormous, wonderful, puzzle-solving project in which you can 01:04:03.550 --> 01:04:08.390 expect to find rationality and beauty and comprehensibility right at the foundation 01:04:08.390 --> 01:04:08.930 of things. 01:04:11.600 --> 01:04:16.000 One hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin transformed science with 01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:17.460 his theory of natural selection. 01:04:18.960 --> 01:04:22.340 Today, that theory faces a formidable challenge. 01:04:24.120 --> 01:04:28.560 Intelligent design has sparked both discovery and intense debate over the 01:04:28.560 --> 01:04:29.860 origin of life on Earth. 01:04:30.580 --> 01:04:36.660 And for a growing number of scientists, it represents a paradigm, an idea with the 01:04:36.660 --> 01:04:41.480 power to, once again, redefine the foundations of scientific thought. 01:04:43.060 --> 01:04:47.140 During the 19th century, scientists believed that there were two fundamental 01:04:47.140 --> 01:04:49.420 entities, matter and energy. 01:04:50.120 --> 01:04:54.600 But as we enter the 21st century, there's a third fundamental entity that 01:04:54.600 --> 01:04:57.080 science has had to recognize, and that is information. 01:04:57.920 --> 01:05:02.520 And so as we encounter the biology of the information age, the suspicion is growing 01:05:02.520 --> 01:05:07.320 that what we're seeing in the DNA molecule is actually an artifact of mind, 01:05:08.000 --> 01:05:12.140 an artifact of intelligence, something that can only be explained by intelligent design.