Darwin's Black Box

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Darwin's theory of evolution is the reigning idea in the scientific community. But is it true? What would happen if we found something that radically challenged the now-accepted wisdom? In Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe argues that evidence of evolution's limits has been right under our noses - but it is so small that we have only recently been able to see it. The field of biochemistry, begun when Watson and Crick discovered the double-helical shape of DNA, has unlocked the secrets of the cell. There, biochemists have unexpectedly discovered a world of Lilliputian complexity. As Behe engagingly demonstrates, using the examples of vision, bloodclotting, cellular transport, and more, the biochemical world comprises an arsenal of chemical machines, made up of finely calibrated, interdependent parts. For Darwinian evolution to be true, there must have been a series of mutations, each of which produced its own working machine, that led to the complexity we can now see. The more complex and interdependent each machine's parts are shown to be, the harder it is to envision Darwin's gradualistic paths. Behe surveys the professional science literature and shows that it is completely silent on the subject, stymied by the elegance of the foundation of life. Could it be that there is some greater force at work?

Behe believes in the scientific method, and he does not turn to religion to answers to these questions. He argues persuasively that biochemical machines must have been designed - either by God, or by some other higher intelligence. For decades science has been frustrated, trying to reconcile the astonishing discoveries of modern biochemistry to a nineteenth-century theory that cannot accommodate them. With the publication of Darwin's Black Box, it is time for scientists to allow themselves to consider exciting new possibilities, and for the rest of us to watch closely.

This is possibly the most significant book ever written to disprove Darwinism. It has stumped the greatest evolutionary minds of our day by meeting Darwin's main challenge head on and establishing a new science called irreducible complexity.

"Mike Behe...makes an overwhelming case against Darwin on the biochemical level. No one has done this before. It is an argument of great originality, elegance, and intellectual power. For readers who have been persuaded that biologists have long since demonstrated the validity of Darwinian theory, [Behe's] observations are apt to be a source of astonishment" - David Berlinski, Author of A Tour of the Calculus

"[Behe's] talent for lively exposition...charmingly convey[s] a sense of biochemistry's hidden beauty" - James Shreeve, The New York Times Book Review

"A well-written and thoughtful statement of the biochemical challenge" - Will St. John, Detroit Free Press

"[A] valuable critique of an all-too-often unchallenged orthodoxy" - James A. Shapira, National Review

Paperback, 307 pages