Productive Evolution: On Reconciling Evolution with Intelligent Design

A doctrine of intelligent design through evolution is not going to find many friends. It is destined to encounter opposition on all sides. Among scientists the backlog of evolution will have little patience for intelligent design. Among religiousists, many who form intelligent design have their doubts about evolution. In the general public’s mind there is a diametrical opposition between evolution and intelligent design: one excludes the other. This book will argue that this view of the matter is not correct, and that in actuality one can regard evolution itself as a pathway to intelligent design. We would do well to go beyond The Origin of Species and―taking as our guide such works as W. Wentworth Thomson’s On Growth and Form acknowledging that evolutionary adaptation can result in solutions of a sort that intelligence could readily ratify. Accordingly, what the present book seeks is a naturalization of Intelligent Design that sees such design as itself the result of natural and evolutionary processes.

Nicholas Rescher, distinguished university professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, is currently chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science.