There have been several threads on front-loading lately so I thought I'd offer one from an engineering perspective. Front-loading is not a term used in engineering, but there is a correlate in planning for future designs.

Probably the first aspect of front-loading comes in under the category of architecture. Typically things like modularization, scalability, standardization, utilizing interfaces, and the like fall under this category. The purpose of architecting a solution is to plan for both the current design and future designs. If an architecture is poorly conceived at the onset of a design, the design may at some point find itself "in a box" where it can proceed no further and redesign is required. Also since most designs never remain static over their life, a good architecture provides for easy changes to improve design performance or add new features.

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Here's a thought experiment. Suppose there is an alternate universe where there is also a trial in Dover, PA. However, in this universe a few things are different.

In this universe this is how evolution is currently taught in high school biology classes:

Evolution means change over time. Observation suggests that life has evolved with some form of common descent. It also suggests that change occurs because of mutations in the genome where the environment has some effect on what gets passed on from one generation to the next.

Except for materials on fossils and genetics, that's it.

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Categorization seems to be an important cognitive mechanism. It enables us to deal with the complexities of life by putting things in buckets that represent what Wittgenstein called "family resemblances". Family resemblances have properties (albeit blurry) that provide a ready made way to relate to new cognitive input. Wittgenstein's family resemblances were, however, not isolationist. He recognized that they can overlap and interact with each other. [This has been confirmed by neuroscience explorations of neural networks] On the other hand, there also seems to be a human inclination to go beyond a family resemblance type of categorization to a more stark form, demarcation. Demarcation(from the dictionary): 1. The setting or marking of boundaries or limits. 2. A separation; a distinction: a line of demarcation between two rock strata. It's not hard to find examples of this: mind/body, science/non-science, science/religion, objective/subjective, synthetic/analytic, fact/value, theory/implications, etc.

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One of the first things you learn as a design engineer is that every design decision you make constrains those that follow. Every design has a set of constraints within which the design can occur. Space, power, temperature, pressure, chemical environment, cost, etc. are just a few of the possibilities.

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Over at the Christian Science Monitor, philosopher Alexander George offers an interesting oped concerning the intelligent design debate and what should and should not be taught in science classes. While he agrees with the verdict in the Dover case that ID should not be taught in science classes, he does so for different reasons than those most often touted by intelligent design critics, that ID is not science.

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Having participated in the ID/Evolution debate for some time now, I have often wondered about the psychological factors that have led to and are driving this controversy. No one can deny that there are strong personalities involved and that emotions and passions can be high. Are scientific controversies like that surrounding ID necessary? Must they eventually spill over into personal attacks, and the ad hominem and irrational arguments that we often see? Must individuals find themselves relegated to the quagmire of battle while the real work of scientific research may be neglected.

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The other day I was watching the wonderful movie about the bacterial flagellum put out by the Nanotechnology Researchers Network Center of Japan and as a machine designer I began to ponder what would be involved in designing such a wondrous machine. I've designed many machines over my career, and as I watched how this machine worked and is assembled, I was struck by the tremendous number of analyses and decisions that would have to be made to design it. Of course, in the back of my mind I'm asking is it possible that all the choices necessary for this device to work could have come about by chance or is a design inference unavoidable?

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Philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt has recently written a very interesting and popular book called On Bullshit. It's only 67 pages but perhaps it can provide some insight into a problem that Dilbert Cartoonist, Scott Adams laments about of the difficulty for the unbiased curious public to come to understand ID/Darwinist positions. He states:

I've been doing lots of reading on the subject, trying to gather comic fodder. I fully expected to validate my preconceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That's the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting. Allow me to set you straight. (Note: I'm not a believer in Intelligent Design, Creationism, Darwinism, free will, non-monetary compensation, or anything else I can't eat if I try hard enough.)

First of all, you'd be hard pressed to find a useful debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design, of the sort that you could use to form your own opinion. I can't find one, and I've looked. What you have instead is each side misrepresenting the other's position and then making a good argument for why the misrepresentation is wrong. (If you don't believe me, just watch the comments I get to this post.)

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Throughout history theistic adherents have stepped up to answer the criticisms lodged against their beliefs. To their credit they, for the most part, have done so because they take criticisms seriously whether they are internal or external criticisms. To do otherwise would relegate theistic belief to what many would find untenable, a fideism, a reliance on faith alone without regard to reason, philosophy, or science. Today is no different. Theists are finding an ever more ubiquitous challenge to their beliefs coming particularly from the scientific community. The charge of fideism remains as strong as ever.

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One of the strategies of ID critics seems to be an attempt to convince theists that a Darwinian form of evolution is fully compatible with their belief system. There are many examples of this in books and on the web: here, here, here, and particularly here. Now the focus of this blog is not normally on theology, but since theology is being used as an argument it bears a closer look. Is Darwinian evolution compatible with mainstream theism? Do the ID critics present a fair and complete argument for this supposed compatibility or is the case incomplete and possibly misleading? These are the questions I would like to pursue. First a bit on theism in general.

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