{"id":2229,"date":"2016-08-06T14:11:30","date_gmt":"2016-08-06T21:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/?p=2229"},"modified":"2021-05-23T08:24:18","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T15:24:18","slug":"design-beauty-and-order-in-nature-cannot-be-explained-by-darwinism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/design-beauty-and-order-in-nature-cannot-be-explained-by-darwinism\/","title":{"rendered":"Design, Beauty, and Order in Nature Cannot be Explained by Darwinism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2230\" src=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Flower_Design_Biology-Baroque_01_350x301.jpg\" alt=\"Design, Beauty, and Order in Nature Cannot be Explained by Darwinism\" width=\"350\" height=\"301\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Flower_Design_Biology-Baroque_01_350x301.jpg 350w, https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Flower_Design_Biology-Baroque_01_350x301-300x258.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/>by Chris Banescu \u2013<br \/>\nThe &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2aXgu9I\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Biology of the Baroque<\/a>&#8221; documentary explores the amazing patterns, order, and beauty in biology that go beyond what can be explained by Darwinian evolution. In the video, geneticist Michael Denton, author of &#8220;Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis&#8221; (2016), explains that there are patterns &#8220;in the natural world for which you can\u2019t imagine what function it served. And that\u2019s a fantastically serious challenge to Darwinism.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Denton began wondering about the standard Darwinian explanation of nature while studying the red blood cell to complete his Ph.D. at King\u2019s College in London. He came across many features in biology that did not seem to possess any particular survival benefit. Denton started to realize just how much order in biology was actually non-adaptive. He began to see life more as a piece of baroque artwork than as a purely functional machine.<\/p>\n<p>Transcript from the Biology of the Baroque video (embedded below): <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Ornate mathematical patterns, lavish design, exquisite detail. Nature surpasses even the most talented artists in her extravagant beauty, richness, and deep order. Her forms are marked by an overabundance that cannot be reduced to mere utility. But can such order and beauty be explained by Darwinian evolution? And if it can\u2019t, what does that mean for our understanding of nature? <!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"simplePullQuote right\"><p>Nature surpasses even the most talented artists in her extravagant beauty, richness, and deep order.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Opulent architecture. Intricate fugues and symphonies. Dramatic art. The Baroque era spanning the 17th century and half of the 18th century was so characterized by florid excess that the word came to be synonymous with extravagance. Pure functionality faded to the background and layers of gratuitous beauty and stunningly detailed design defined music, art, and architecture. The great architects of the period didn\u2019t just build with their sights focused on function. The designers of Versailles or St Paul\u2019s Cathedral were aiming to create something beautiful, something sublime. <\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FothcJW-Quo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The opposite approach is to create structures that are purely functional with no emphasis on beauty or taste. The German Bauhaus movement and its modernist architecture is one example. Industrial design is another. So is life under &#8220;Darwinian&#8221; evolution.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Darwinism is at its core a profoundly functional mechanism. Natural selection ruthlessly eliminates from the gene pool any organism whose structures aren\u2019t useful for survival and reproduction. If a new structure is to be passed on to offspring, according to strict Darwinian theory, it must serve some new adaptive function. That is, it must be useful for survival. In the Darwinian view, beauty is at best an unintended side product, a mere whim of sexual selection. Nothing need be decorative. Everything has a specific use or it is discarded.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Under Darwinism nature is strictly utilitarian. For more than a century, biology has been understood in these terms. But what if this way of looking at life has blinded us to the true nature of biology? What if there are other factors at play?<\/p>\n<div class=\"simplePullQuote right\"><p>Denton began to realize just how much order in biology was actually non-adaptive<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Geneticist Michael Denton began to wonder about the standard Darwinian explanation of nature while studying the red blood cell for his Ph.D. at King\u2019s College in London. As he came across features in biology that did not seem to possess any particular survival benefit, Denton began to realize just how much order in biology was actually non-adaptive. He started seeing life more as a piece of baroque artwork than as a purely functional machine.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Denton explains]<\/em> \u201cNon-adaptive order is seen in something like a maple leaf or leaf forms where you have extraordinary complex and beautiful patterns for which you can\u2019t imagine what function that pattern, specific function that pattern serves. So that\u2019s what non-adaptive order is. It\u2019s a pattern in the natural world for which you can\u2019t imagine what function it served. And that\u2019s a fantastically serious challenge to Darwinism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"width:130px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"8\" marginheight=\"0\" align=\"left\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ss&#038;ref=as_ss_li_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=orthodoxnet-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=1936599325&#038;asins=1936599325&#038;linkId=426ae191a056091153ca030a0ddbf176&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Imagine stepping outside on a sunny summer\u2019s day. All around you are different kinds of trees each displaying beautiful order in their differently shaped leaves. But for Darwinian evolution to explain the shape of these leaves, or any structure in a living organism, there ought to be some reason why that specific shape caused one to live and another to die in a given environment. Yet there appears to be no functional reason why there are so many different leaf shapes. Much like Baroque architecture, these shapes seem extra, perhaps even decorative. They\u2019re not needed to survive. They are simply beautiful.<\/p>\n<p><em>[Denton states]<\/em> \u201cIt\u2019s okay if it\u2019s just a maple leaf. You can perhaps pass over the maple leaf. But if non-adaptive order, like the maple leaf, permeates the biological world, and if a lot of the taxa-defining novelties seem to be non-adaptive, you now have a nightmarish scenario. When the fundamental assumption of Darwinism is that all the novelties in nature are adaptive, suddenly [it] looks very insecure.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Example of non-adaptive order fill the world of botany and plant life.<\/p>\n<div class=\"simplePullQuote right\"><p>if you can\u2019t show that it\u2019s adaptive, then you can\u2019t give a Darwinian explanation for it<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em>[Denton explains]<\/em> \u201cYou can look at the beautiful concentric pattern underlying angiosperm flowers, that\u2019s all flowers belong[ing] to the group called angiosperms. The basic plan of the flower is concentric circles . You have an outer circle of sepals, then you have an inner circle of petals, then you have stamens and you have the carpel in the middle. All flowers are built on this beautiful concentric plan. But what organism was that concentric plan adaptive in? What function did that pattern of gene expression originally serve? It\u2019s exceedingly difficult to give an adaptive framework to explain that particular pattern. And if you can\u2019t show that it\u2019s adaptive, then you can\u2019t give, you can\u2019t give a Darwinian explanation for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The abstract patterns underlying organic structures may be easier to recognize in plant life but examples abound in the animal world as well. Many structures that seem primarily functional have at their base underlying plans that are not particular to certain environments. Oftentimes these take the form of numeric patterns or constraints. Many of the characteristics that divide the different taxa from each other, the characteristics that are used to define the branches on the tree of life, seem to be abstract, and non-adaptive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Biology_Baroque_Design_04_1000x590.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Biology_Baroque_Design_04_1000x590.jpg\" alt=\"Design, Beauty, and Order in Nature Cannot be Explained by Darwinism\" width=\"1000\" height=\"590\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3019\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Biology_Baroque_Design_04_1000x590.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Biology_Baroque_Design_04_1000x590-300x177.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Biology_Baroque_Design_04_1000x590-768x453.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Chris Banescu \u2013 The &#8220;Biology of the Baroque&#8221; documentary explores the amazing patterns, order, and beauty in biology that go beyond what can be explained by Darwinian evolution. In the video, geneticist Michael Denton, author of &#8220;Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis&#8221; (2016), explains that there are patterns &#8220;in the natural world for which &#8230; <a title=\"Design, Beauty, and Order in Nature Cannot be Explained by Darwinism\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/design-beauty-and-order-in-nature-cannot-be-explained-by-darwinism\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Design, Beauty, and Order in Nature Cannot be Explained by Darwinism\">[read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,4,37,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beauty","category-intelligent-design","category-science","category-videos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxnet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}