Let's study ID: the requirements of design (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, January 24, 2022, 16:16 (823 days ago) @ David Turell

Taken from the ID site Uncommon Descent, an engineer's view:

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/nathan-lents-argues-that-the-human-eye-r...

"Lents’ argument reveals the common severe failing of most biologists in that they have no actual experience in designing anything, but still make grand pronouncements as if they knew everything there is to know about it. His argument ignores the inherent and basic nature of any very complex and intricate mechanism (in this case the human eye). Any engineer knows that such a mechanism inherently incorporates numerous design tradeoffs between different and conflicting requirements.

"The incredibly complex system of systems and subsystems of the human body inevitably and necessarily has a limited capacity to satisfy all the conflicting requirements simultaneously.

"Just like in a human-designed automobile there might be simultaneous ideal design requirements or goals say for all in the same machine to have high power and acceleration capacity, a high carrying capacity of one ton, total vehicle weight under 3600 pounds, and high reliability. And let’s say you also want a long range of 500 miles, the ability to park and fit in a standard parking slot, a high degree of complex but correspondingly inherently failure-prone automation making many functions and conveniences automatic, and last but not least, a retail price of less than $15,000.

"These requirements are fundamentally conflicting and will inevitably require tradeoffs and limitations in some of the requirement goals, based on carefully weighing the pros and cons in each case. That’s engineering, whether it’s automobiles or the immeasureably more complex human body.

"Hence what must be a certain inevitability due to many inherent factors including the performance limitations of biologically created materials and their availability and metabolic costs, of there being many failure modes in the human body, in particular disease. In such an intricate system of systems every design change to correct a flaw in performance inevitably affects numerous other subsystems, some adversely. It’s all a matter of many complex series of tradeoffs.

"Of course biologists don’t understand this – after all they aren’t engineers; but they still unwarrantedly assume expertise that can somehow overcome basic engineering principles.

"In other words they make untenable and ignorant assumptions about the capabilities of any designers, as if designers (whatever their nature) were unlimited by the way the physical world inherently works."

Comment: I've tried to explain the requirements a designer must consider, as I have designed several things, but as a non-engineer did not do it as well as this guy. New design is not a easy task when considering all the facts for future use. All design is for future use.