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Contest: Who invented the phrase intelligent design?

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 [Contest now closed for judging.]

Astronomer Fred Hoyle and biologist J.B.S. Haldane have both been credited with it — both midcentury and both atheists.

It may be impossible to tell. As a friend offers, it may well have popped up in the early 19th century, but “buried in obscure, low circulation professional journals of the time or perhaps in private letters.”

The term was definitely in use in the 19th century. Charles Darwin uses it in an 1861 letter, in response to something John Herschel wrote. See this also from The Modern Review (1882). See also this article from Nature (1881).

Then there is Oxford’s F. Schiller who wrote in 1897, “it will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.” (Contemporary Review, June 1897)

The term seems to have meant something to authors and readers back then.

Modern design theory is an outgrowth of information theory applied to the explosion of biochemistry so, as expressed and explored today, it dates from the post-Word War II era. Jonathan Witt, in “The Origin of Intelligent Design: A brief history of the scientific theory of intelligent design” (Evolution News, undated), notes,

In By Design, a history of the current design controversy, journalist Larry Witham traces the roots of the contemporary intelligent design movement in biology to the 1950s and ’60s, and the movement itself to the 1970s.5
Biochemists were unraveling the secret of DNA and discovering that it was part of an elaborate information processing system that included nanotechnology of unparalleled sophistication. One of the first intellectuals to describe the significance of these discoveries was chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, who in 1967 argued that “machines are irreducible to physics and chemistry” and that “mechanistic structures of living beings appear to be likewise irreducible.”

Critics of the theory of intelligent design often assert that it is simply a re-packaged version of creationism, and that it began after the Supreme Court struck down the teaching of creationism in Edwards v. Aguillard in 1987. In reality, the idea of intelligent design reaches back to Socrates and Plato, and the term “intelligent design” as an alternative to blind evolution was used as early as 1897.

Okay, contest: We will send a free copy of Nature of Nature: Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science to the first reader who can located a use of the term prior to 1861. And any subsequent reader who can locate an even earlier use.

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Comments
In 1682 the term intelligent design was used by decorators at Versaille but it was referring to the combined use of draperies and tapestries in advance of King Louis' wedding to Françoise d'Aubigné. I'm kidding. This joke was inspired by the fact that years ago when I would google "intelligent design" many of the hits were interior decorating sites.Collin
April 5, 2012
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Axel, "Intelligent design" can be considered redundant but not really a tautology. Despite its redundancy, it is useful to use both words because the word "design" can have two meanings. One is a plan or purposeful organization. Another meaning is a pattern which can have unintelligent causes.Collin
April 5, 2012
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Today's Intelligent Design is a modified descendent of the ancient Greeks' arguments.Joe
April 5, 2012
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BartM, 44: 1750, and counting. Of course we are just seeing the phrase in this, not the context of meaning of the modern design theory movement, as SB has highlighted in what is now 46 above. In the 1700's and 1600's by far and away most who would have written on the subject would have been design thinkers. Newton in the General Scholium to Principia and in Opticks, Query 31 was not at all atypical. Such thought is documented all the way back to Plato, in The laws Bk X, 360 BC. KFkairosfocus
April 5, 2012
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Hi Jon: No mystery BartM is obviously probably a newbie on mod. KFkairosfocus
April 5, 2012
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PS cf post #41 Wossgoinon?Jon Garvey
April 5, 2012
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How strange. bartm's post about an 1823 ID mention wasn't there originally. Isn't that significant in a competition offering a prize for the first to find a quote before 1861? Note my post #8 congratulating Gregory on winning the prize. I'd hate to think UD was party to rewriting history - that's the job of Darwinists, isn't it? Explanation?Jon Garvey
April 5, 2012
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jcweaver @ 47: 1766 and counting. Of course the problem here is that the phrase may have a different emphasis and significance in a work of natural theology from what it has in the context of the modern design movement. The design inference proper is documented in Plato, The Laws Bk X to at least 360 BC, as a cosmological design inference. KFkairosfocus
April 2, 2012
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The farcical thing is that "intelligent design" is a tautology. Like the word, "plan", every "design", in our experience, predicates "intelligence" and "purpose". The latter essentially define the term, "design". If they did not, seemingly intelligible configurations, such as those we see all around us in nature, would be simply random patterns. Materialists, it would help enormously if you could learn the meaning of words, before pronouncing on matters, ipso facto, outside of your competence.Axel
April 2, 2012
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Joe asked me, "What does Intelligent Design have to do with the Bible?" A good question, but you'll have to follow those columns if you want to know my answer. No previews here. :-)Ted Davis
April 2, 2012
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If anyone wants a very early example of an author using the term "intelligent design" in the ID sense, they need look no further than "The Problem of Human Life," by A. Wilford Hall (1877 and subsequent printings). Hall uses the term many times, even in the table of contents (ditto for the term "theistic evolution"). His final chapter pits "intelligent design" vs evolution by natural selection throughout. ID for him necessarily entails "special miraculous creations," and this might not be exactly equivalent to ID in the modern sense, but it's certainly what many ID proponents seem to believe.Ted Davis
April 2, 2012
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The theme for the next few months will be “science and the Bible,” and ID will be one of the views I’ll be presenting.
Hi Ted, What does Intelligent Design have to do with the Bible? Yes the Bible was Intelligently Designed but if the Bible didn't exist, Intelligent Design still would.Joe
April 2, 2012
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As it happens, some time ago I did some digging about the history of certain terms that are common in the modern origins debate, including the term "intelligent design." I haven't yet published any of that information (either in print or on the web), but I will be using some of it (a very limited amount of it) in columns I have just started doing for BioLogos. I've done only a handful of things for them in the past; a regular column is really something new for me. The first one appeared last Tuesday: http://biologos.org/blog/introducing-ted-davis/ My second column comes out tomorrow. The theme for the next few months will be "science and the Bible," and ID will be one of the views I'll be presenting. I'd love to have a lot of participation from folks here; please take this as an invitation to join in. As for the term "intelligent design" being used in something like the sense in which it's used here at UD, a lot will depend on what you think ID actually is. For example, Nobel laureate Arthur Holly Compton used the term in 1940, as follows: "The chance of a world such as ours occurring without intelligent design becomes more and more remote as we learn of its wonders." In context, he was talking about the fine tuning of the cosmos (as we would call it today), so it's fair IMO to call this a reference to ID. At the same time, Compton did *not* see ID as an alternative to to evolution. He was fully convinced of human evolution. To the extent that ID is seen as an *alternative* to evolution, then, Compton was not talking about ID. In his view, design was an inference *from* science, not an explanation *within* science. When I took a similar view myself here some years ago, I was told in clear terms that ID requires "design" to be in the scientific toolbox. I won't try to sort this out more than I already have. If you want to read more about Compton's use of the term, and about his many other ideas and activities related to science and religion, read the 3-part article I published in the ASA Journal a few years ago. The section on "intelligent design" is in part 2: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2009/PSCF9-09Davis2.pdfTed Davis
April 2, 2012
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Jon: Point. Gkairosfocus
April 2, 2012
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"If ID is “Intellectual Delight” what is anti-ID?" I can help you there, too. According to ANE scholars, it's a mistransliteration of "ante Intel... De...", probably meaning the time before Enkidu brought intellectual delight down from heaven, together with the kingship and the recipe for Turkish Delight... oh, sorry, it's April 2nd now, isn't it?Jon Garvey
April 2, 2012
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"Cockney, yes, Bible-thumper, no." Sorry, kf - Cockney NO. Hoyle was as Yorkshire as they come. You're doing the equivalent of accusing a typical Bostonian of having a Bronx accent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CockneyJon Garvey
April 2, 2012
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I don't consider opponents of ID to be lions. No real lion spends all it's time just making noise.Mung
April 1, 2012
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Mung, we need you at UD for one of those Christian bites lion stories every now and then. KFkairosfocus
April 1, 2012
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Afternoon delight....Joe
April 1, 2012
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If ID is "Intellectual Delight" what is anti-ID? Thanks KF. Send me a ticket to the islands! ;)Mung
April 1, 2012
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Hi Bilbo I: Yup, Hoyle gets cited in the very first technical ID book. From a few years before, where he had been making a stir. I have somewhere a lecture at Caltech, so it is not just in London. And, as a card-carrying agnostic and associate of Wickramasinghe whose testimony in Arkansas -- as I recall from the time -- was used against Creation Science advocates, it would be a bit hard to call him a Bible-thumping Fundy redneck. Cockney, yes, Bible-thumper, no. And, this is a man who will be a Nobel-equivalent prize holder. The issue is that there are empirically tested, reliable signs of design. The problem is, they keep cropping up in cell based life forms, which the Evo Mat establishment is desperate that we do not see as designed. KFkairosfocus
April 1, 2012
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I discovered a reference from 1766 and I would love a free copy of 'The Nature of Nature'! "The marks of these perfections are so numerous, so clear, and so striking to every attentive observer, that it is just matter of wonder, that any who call themselves Philosophers, should exclude active, intelligent design from the universe, and ascribe the whole material world, with its various and astonishing phenomena, to blind chance and necessity." - "Reimarus's Defense of Natural Religion" in The Monthly Review or Literary Journal v. 34, 1766 p370. http://books.google.com/books?id=BdVgibLPn64C&pg=PA370&dq=%22Intelligent+design%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Abp4T_ChOoTHsQKUztn1Aw&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22Intelligent%20design%22&f=falsejcweaver
April 1, 2012
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The phrase "intelligent design" has been used in at least two different contexts: [a] the necessary first cause arrived at through philosophy that "most men know as God," and [b] the specific and scientifically measurable patterns found in nature that merely indicate the presence of a designing cause. Argument [a] has been around for centuries, but argument [b] is only decades old. That poses a problem since ID philosophy, often understood in terms of Aristotelian/Thomistic natural theology can, given its broader scope, provide powerful arguments for the existence of God, while ID's scientific paradigm, given its narrow scope, indicates only the presence of an intelligent agent. Put simply, the word meant something different in the year 1200 or the year 1800 than it means now. If we do not make this distinction, we open the door to the same kind of confusion that our critics seize on in their mindless attempt to discredit ID paradigms. ("So, Intelligent Design is "about God after all, isn't it. Just look at the history of that phrase.")StephenB
April 1, 2012
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Thanks, Kairofocus, for the link to TBO's discussion of Hoyle's idea of Intelligent Design of the first cells. I found a book in which Hoyle's Omni Lecture is printed (1982) and blogged on it (at Telicthoughts) here: Sir Fred Hoyle and the Origins of ID. Then Nick commented that he had a book from 1981, where Hoyle made the same argument. But I couldn't make a solid connection between Hoyle and the ID movement, until now. BTW, Nick is just upset that Hoyle used the phrase "intelligent design" first. This would mean that the modern usage of "intelligent design" is not religious in nature, which would mean that the entire mission of his life has been a mistake. And who would want to admit that?Bilbo I
April 1, 2012
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Found this from 1750: The Natural Philosophy of Albrecht von Haller - Page 53 Excerpt: "Beginning then with the assumption that God is the originator of all form and the giver of all life, he can view every created thing as evidence of God's will, of his power, or of his intelligent design."BartM
April 1, 2012
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Has anyone mentioned the reference in The Epic of Gilgamesh, tablet XVI? The tablet is damaged, so some scholars translate it as "Intellectual Delight", but let's give ID the benefit of the doubt. I can't transcribe it for you as the cuneiform fonts don't seem to get past your software. No, don't send me the book, either - I already have a copy.Jon Garvey
April 1, 2012
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Hi Gregory- "The Design Matrix" - Chapter 2 "The Explanatory Continuum" pages 19- 22 explain the approxiamtely 2500 years of debating teleology vs non-teleology. Teleologists was represented by Socrates, Plato, Diogenes and Aristotle. Non-teleologists was represented by Democritus, Leucippus of Elea and Epicurus of Samos. If you don't read the book "The Design Matrix" you can always just research those guys.Joe
April 1, 2012
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I guess it's too late now but I found a source and posted it yesterday morning but it never showed up. The publication is called "The Republican: Volume 8" – published 1823. The formatting and style of writing is hard for me to follow but it appears to be a response to a previous writer referenced as "I.G." and the context is a discussion of both cosmology and biological evolution.BartM
April 1, 2012
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OOPS: Forgot to link on intro to cosmological design theory.kairosfocus
April 1, 2012
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Gregory: Re your:
It doesn’t seem controversial that the IDM did not exist prior to the 1980s. Can we agree on this?
Kindly cf my remarks to Dr Matzke in 28 above:
as for whoever wants to make much of the 1980?s, should observe that DNA was elucidated in the 60?s to early 70?s. By 73, Orgel had identified the issue of specified complexity. If you bring in Polanyi, we are at 1968 was it. By 1979, Wicken was backing up Orgel. So, by the turn of the 80?s, there was a climate in and around OOL research, once the shine had come off Miller-Urey from 1953 on — notice how, very early in TMLO, the issues of earth atmosphere ang geophysics leading to pre biotic soups are addressed. The result is that prebiotic soup models are questionable. It is the same turn of the 80?s that saw H & R asking pointed questions and making serious argum=ents. Crick was dusting off panspermia. Give a few years to get a team together and a book written with publisher lined up and you are looking at 83 – 85. That is the precise window in which TMLO came out, and was FAVOURABLY reviewed. And, TMLO in effect is the first technical level ID book. It is not like Morris’ The Genesis Flood of 20 years before, which was a hydraulics engineer partnering with a theologian. We are looking at three PhD scientists, working on a technical problem — OOL — that lies at the intersection of their expertise, their technical expertise. Don’t forget, the big conclusion is to calculate chemical kinetics to chain relevant proteins and D/RNA strands. The results are that the reactions are hopelessly adverse. It is in that context that they review OOL models, and go on to their own conclusions, then discuss the related phil issues in an epilogue. In short, the exercises above are playing off the hermeneutics of suspicion and the rhetoric of smearing, with no good reason. In fact OOL is even more of a conundrum for materialists today than 25 years ago. It remains true that per uniformity anchored by known adequate cause, the best explanation for the functionally specific, complex organisation and info systems in the living cell is the only known source of FSCO/I: intelligence.
When it comes to your doubts about design thought in Ancient Greece, kindly cf the cite from Plato's The Laws, Bk X, 360 BC, in 8 above. It's not a case of scanty and dubious evidence that requires any great expertise to ferret out and parse with great subtlety of learning, the facts are there at length. Plato in The Laws Bk X is enough to ground all subsequent discourse, indeed Monod's Chance and Necessity at the turn of the 70's is a direct echo of the trichotomy of causal factors Plato discusses there. To get to the modern movement's analysis and the various forms of an explanatory filter model only requires familiarity with the concept of searching a space of configurations, accessible to anyone who gas studied phase space or state space or statistical thermodynamics. Search as a concept is abundantly accessible in an information age. Cutting to the chase scene, it is then easy enough to see that once we are beyond 500 bits of functionally specific complex info, the resources of he solar system will be hopelessly inadequate to get to isolated special zones required for coordinated complex function. So, the log reduced chi metric: Chi_500 = Ip*S - 500, bits beyond the solar system threshold can then show what is needed. Once something is specific to a separately describable zone, and has an info content beyond 500 bits, by reasonable methods of evaluating info content, we have good reason to infer that the solar system resources cannot credibly discover it. The challenge at that level is comparable to having a cubical hay stack 3 1/2 light days across, and taking a one straw sized sample at random. Even if our whole solar system out to Pluto were in it, with all but certainty, the random pick would be straw, as that is overwhelmingly typical. We do not need any precise probability metric, sampling theory is enough o tell us why a small sample of a large population will with overwhelming probability represent the dominant bulk of the population. Go to 1,000 bits and you even more dramatically swamp the Planck Time Quantum state resources of the observable cosmos. It takes no great genius to see that the only routinely observed credible explanation of such FSCO/I is intelligence, starting from say posts in this thread. None of this relies on a priori metaphysical commitments, this is simple analysis of what it takes to be likely to find things by blind chance and necessity. Intelligent search is far more efficient, if we want to talk in those terms. More properly, we routinely design very complex things, starting weith posts in this thread. So, we have every good reason to see that FSCO/I is an empirically reliable sign of design, a signature of design if you will. That's not hard to see, it is controversial only because it cuts across and exposes gaps that the entrenched evolutionary materialist establishment has long papered over. And if you suggest that there may be programming laws that more or less force the emergence of life in suitable zones, that would be the ultimate form of a fine tuning argument. We should recall that there are two related but distinct sides to modern design thought, and that the earlier one is the cosmological. The suggestion of life-forming laws points strongly to such cosmological design, even through multiverse speculations. TBO initiated technical work on the OOL side, which bridges the biological and cosmological sides of design theory. Denton's Evo, a Theory in Crisis of about 1985 -- all of this stuff is in the right window when we would naturally expect it, we do not need conspiracy theories -- addressed several biological evo issues, and the context of thought is what led to the emergence of a research programme across the 1990's. Indeed, that is the period of elaboration of the key concepts, complex specified information and irreducible complexity by Dembski and Behe. In short the design paradigm emerged from the 1950's on in cosmology as fine tuning emerged in a further context of the success of the big bang model of origins. An observed cosmos with a distinct point of origin some 13.7 BYA is a contingent being, which logically raises the question of its cause. When it turns out that the fabric of that cosmos seems fine tuned to facilitate C-chemistry, aqueous medium cell based life, that seriously raises the question of intelligent cause. (Cf my discussion here on the way we end up with H, He O, C as four of the most abundant elements, and how this sets the stage for biology.) Next, on discoveries of molecular biology from the 1950's to 70's, OOL became a challenge to explain the origin of a miniature chemical plant that self-replicates using code-based techniques suggested by von Neumann in his discussion of kinematic self replicators. That sort of intricate, information and code based design that uses ever so many key-lock fitting integrated components strongly suggests like causes to what we know set up petrochemical plants and information systems, intelligence. And indeed, there simply is no empirically warranted account of how such could come about by blind chance and mechanical necessity. So, no conspiracy needs to be resorted to to explain the origin of a design theory movement from the 1980's on. The time was ripe and there are abundant antecedents to not only the founding era of modern science but the founding era of philosophy. Why this is not commonplace is not want of evidence, but frankly, the evident "pruning" of discourse -- especially in textbooks at introductory level -- in ways that make it seem that evolutionary materialist scientism is the only viable way to do science. Hence outrageous cases like Coppedge. KFkairosfocus
April 1, 2012
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