Book Review: No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence

Author: William A. Dembski
Spiritual Bias: Unknown
Origins Bias: ID Theorist
Rating: Top Shelf
Level: Advanced (Technical)

Comments: In this landmark book, Dembski explains in great detail why the specified complexity that we find in living organisms *must* be the result of intelligence. First, he uses the language of math and information theory to make the case that specified complexity or CSI (complex specified information) is a valid tool to use to discern intelligent agency. Then he points to the flagship for Intelligent Design Theory (IDT), the bacterial flagella, to provide an example case analysis implicating design. This book is written with both clarity and completeness. And in the end, there's no hesitation to declare that this is simply the best IDT book ever written. Expect this work to echo in the halls of the origins for many years to come.

Summary Quotes: "The central problem of biology is therefore not simply the origin of information but the origin of complex specified information. Paul Davies emphasized this point in his recent book The Fifth Miracle where he summarizes the current state of origin-of-life research: "Living organisms are mysterious not for their complexity per se, but for their tightly specified complexity." The problem of specified complexity has dogged origin-of-life research now for decades."

"The No Free Lunch theorems are essentially bookkeeping results. They keep track of how well evolutionary algorithms do at optimizing fitness functions over a phase space. The fundamental claim of these theorems is that when averaged across fitness functions, evolutionary algorithms cannot outperform blind search."

"The No Free Lunch theorems underscore the fundamental limits of the Darwinian mechanism. Up until their proof, it was thought that because the Darwinian mechanism could account for all of the biological complexity, evolutionary algorithms (i.e.their mathematical underpinnings) must be universal problem solvers. The No Free Lunch theorems show that evolutionary algorithms, apart from careful fine-tuning by a programmer, are no better than blind search and thus no better than pure chance. Consequently, these theorems cast doubt on the power of the Darwinian mechanism to account for all of biological complexity."