In his article Design: what scientific difference could it make? Del Ratzsch reminds us of several things. First, in an echo of Van Till, he notes that the processes that make up a the formation of a phenomenon would be identical whether it was designed or not. Concerning the existence of an object such as a bulldozer, he states:
Whatever processes operated in the bulldozer, whatever principles its functioning exhibited--all would be exactly as manifest in the chance bulldozer as in the actually designed bulldozer, and anything that was there to be learned in the one would be there to be learned in the other. Beyond issues of mere artisan existence, whether the bulldozer is designed seems completely irrelevant on these specific counts.
The second thing is that, if we accept a design model of existence (and I do), examinations of the natural world amount to "reverse engineering." He suggests that this perspective is what fueled the motivations behind much of the scientific enterprise in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Read the whole thing.
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