Sir Fred Hoyle and the Origins of ID
by BilboOn January 12th, 1982, Sir Fred Hoyle delivered the Omni Lecture at the Royal Institution, London, entitled "Evolution from Space," which was later reprinted in a book by the same title, along with a couple of other papers. In it he discussed the overwhelming improbability of getting the enzymes needed for even the simplest form of life to function by chance. "The odds…" he concluded were about the same as throwing a "sequence of 50,000 sixes with unbiased dice." (p.10) A few years earlier, Hoyle had come to the conclusion that life on earth was the result of panspermia, and he goes on to present some of his evidence in the lecture.
Then he returns to the problem of how life originated:
"Once we see that life is cosmic it is sensible to suppose that intelligence is cosmic. Now problems of order, such as the sequences of amino acids in the chains which constitute the enzymes and other proteins, are precisely the problems that become easy once a directed intelligence enters the picture, as was recognised long ago by James Clerk Maxwell in his invention of what is known in physics as the Maxwell demon. The difference between an intelligent ordering, whether of words, fruit boxes, amino acids, or the Rubik cube, and merely random shufflings can be fantastically large, even as large as a number that would fill the whole volume of Shakespeare's plays with its zeros. So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design [my emphasis]. No other possibility I have been able to think of in pondering this issue over quite a long time seems to me to have anything like as high a possibility of being true." (27-28)
Sir Hoyle then speculates as to why our kind of life was designed:
"My friend Willy Fowler and I discovered almost three decades ago that the existence of carbonaceous life depends on the fine-tuning of two so-called energy levels, one in the carbon nucleus, the other in the oxygen nucleus. If either were shifted only minimally, the balance of carbon and oxygen on which life depends, would be destroyed, for the reason that carbon and oxygen would not then be synthesized in appropriate proportions inside stars….My opinion has always been that the fine-tuning…is an environmental property of physics which could be different at other places and other times within the universe." (p.28)
He then goes on to suggest that just as one day the fine-tuning may change, and we may have to design a different form of life, so previously a different form of life had to design us. But unlike "the God of Judaeo-Christian theology [who] is outside the Universe and is said to be superiour to it…the intelligence responsible for the creation of carbonaceous life in the present picture is within this universe and is subservient to it." (p.32)
Finally, Hoyle suggests that life was front-loaded for evolution:
"If at our present level of sophistication we were to attempt a new material representation of ourselves, doubtless we would try for a grandiose solution all in one shot, an explicit new creature complete in itself, like the Greek story of Pygmalion, or like novices with a computer who almost invariably get themselves into a tangle by attempting to write a large complex program all in one go. The practised expert on the other hand, builds a large complex computer program from many sub-units, subroutines as they are called. Microorganisms and genetic fragments are the subroutines of biology, existing throughout space in prodigious numbers, riding everywhere on the light pressure of the stars. Because the correct logical procedure is to build upwards from precisely formed subroutines, we on the Earth had to evolve from a seemingly elementary starting point." (p.34)
So here we have the atheist Fred Hoyle claiming that life was intelligently designed, several years before the Intelligent Desgin movement got off the ground. What's more, his lecture was cited in several books that were influential in the ID movement: Bradley, Olson, and Thaxton's Mystery of Life's Origins; Robert Shapiro's Origins;The Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth; and Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. It's difficult to believe that his views didn't have some influence on the ID movement. But as far as I know, no one in the ID movement has publicly credited him with much, if any influence. Still, I would guess that there was a connection. My hunch is that it would have gone something like this: After the defeat of the Creation Scientists in the courtrooms, Phillip Johnson's more moderate group realized that something less religious than Creationism was needed. Comparing their views to Hoyle's, it was clear that even though they differed on who the designer was, they agreed that life was intelligently designed. And so the movement was born.
But regardless of how or even if Hoyle's views had any direct influence on the ID movment, we can thank him for helping us to see that there is a conceptual difference between the intelligent design of life and creationism, and that the latter is a species of the former, not the other way around.
February 13th, 2007 at 7:35 pm |
Oops. How do I get it to do that thing where only part of it is on the front page, and then people can click to see the rest of the article?
Comment by Bilbo — February 13, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
February 13th, 2007 at 8:06 pm |
I have Hoyle's book "The Mathematics of Evolution" in which he demonstrates in several ways that it is mathematically impossible for RM+NS to explain the variety of life that we see around us. But despite having an undergraduate degree in math (well, that was many years ago) the math is too much for me. I agree that more attention should be paid to Hoyle's insights. What mathematicians among us can unpack this book for the rest of us?
Comment by endoplasmicMessenger — February 13, 2007 @ 8:06 pm
February 13th, 2007 at 8:45 pm |
A principle difference between a creation and an ID point of view is the authority cited by the two. In the case of the former the authority is God revealed through scriptures or some other source. In the case of the latter the authority is empirical evidence consistent with a design theory. Judge Jones was unable to make this distinction. His ruling in effect mandates a direction to the interpretation of empirical evidence even if that direction is inconsistent with the evidence itself.
Comment by Bradford — February 13, 2007 @ 8:45 pm
February 13th, 2007 at 9:23 pm |
Hey, great first blog! I just noticed that in Hoyle, you seem to have someone who fused both biological and cosmological ID.
Comment by MikeGene — February 13, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 1:00 am |
No canard like an old canard, eh?
In an interview in Scientific American a couple of years before he died, Hoyle noted that he never doubted evolution. His point was that he thought it would take about a billion years more than the 2.5 billion years people thought available on Earth, so he argued that life probably evolved from non-living matter somewhere else, and was planted on Earth, where evolution continued.
Have you actually read what Hoyle said, or are you repeating claims from the ICR?
Comment by edarrell — February 14, 2007 @ 1:00 am
February 14th, 2007 at 1:12 am |
Here's what the Wikipedia article says:
Go see: Fred Hoyle
Comment by edarrell — February 14, 2007 @ 1:12 am
February 14th, 2007 at 1:53 am |
Eddarrel,
Do you have a reference to this interview? According to hs book "intelligent universe" he wrote about:
and according to Korthof:
In other words, he was replacing his panspermia idea with "intelligent control theory"
Comment by Guts — February 14, 2007 @ 1:53 am
February 14th, 2007 at 11:05 am |
edarrell asked:
In my article, I was quoting directly from Hoyle's book, Evolution from Space. I was keeping it open with the keyboard while I copied from it. Your Wikipedia article conveniently left out Hoyle's claim that only intelligent design could account for the origin of life. Yes, he believe that life on Earth evolved, once it was seeded with microorganisms from outerspace (panspermia). He denied that Darwinian mechanisms were the main way it evolved, and thought something that we would call Horizontal Gene Transfer was the main mechanism (or maybe Margulis's Symbiogenesis?). Since he thought that the Earth is continually seeded by panspermia, this process could add more genetic information.
If you think I'm lying, Edarrell, go find a copy of his book and read it yourself, instead of depending upon Wikipedia.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 11:05 am
February 14th, 2007 at 1:54 pm |
Using Wikipedia as a source for discussion of ID is like using Rosie O'Donnel as a biographical source for Donald Trump (or vice versa).
Recently I tried to edit a hack-job Wikipedia article done on an ID luminary. Within an hour of my changes they'd been eliminated. I tried over the following two days to create a reasonable article on this person and was overridden by a storm of anti-ID trolls (Joshua, FeloniusMonk, etc.) who eliminated my changes a dozen times– sometimes within minutes. And, they had the audacity to report me to Wikipedia and get me banned for making three changes within a 24 hour period!
Hoyle recognized evolution, but didn't believe the Darwinian mechanism was responsible for it. He raised a lot of great points. Don't expect to find them on Wikipedia. Go try and edit the article on him to include these points and see what happens. I bet the Hoyle article is on the watch lists of the trolls.
Comment by Stuart Harris — February 14, 2007 @ 1:54 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm |
That's a great point. A Wikipedia article is essentially an appeal to "some anonymous person on the internet." It can be useful to cite Wiki if you think the article nicely summarizes your own views, but it is not any type of authority.
In this case, bilbo actually reads Hoyle while ed reads some anonymous internet article.
Comment by MikeGene — February 14, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 2:37 pm |
Was this before or after Hoyle deduced that Archaeoptryx was a fake because transitional organisms were impossible?
Comment by Nick Matzke — February 14, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 2:43 pm |
Nick:
Don't know, Nick. Evolution from Space was in 1982. I think Hoyle was a big critic of Neo-Darwinism long before that, so I would guess the Archaeoptryx thing (I'm taking your word that this happened) was also before that. Hoyle didn't deny evolution. And at first he didn't deny abiogenesis. I think that came about between the late 70s and the lecture in '82.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 2:43 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 2:47 pm |
Another interesting date that helps us see that ID was not invented out of thin air in order to circumvent a court ruling.
one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. -Hoyle, 1982.
Comment by MikeGene — February 14, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 2:59 pm |
Mike Gene:
Yes, that's why I wrote this article. However, if Nick were clever, he would point out that there is little historical evidence to link Hoyle's views to the ID movement. Thank God he's not clever.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
No one ever said it was invented out of thin air, they said it was creationism relabeled. Creationists, who are desperate for secular credibility, employed Hoyle as a smokescreen. Why do you think Hoyle's coauthor, Wickramasinghe, was a witness for the creation scientists in the 1981 McLean v. Arkansas trial?
Comment by Nick Matzke — February 14, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Sorry, Nick. Just kidding.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
Nick:
Thanks for the historical evidence that I couldn't find, Nick.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:03 pm |
P.S.: My copy is copyright 1981, and the full title on the cover and title page is: Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism.
Comment by Nick Matzke — February 14, 2007 @ 3:03 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:07 pm |
Nick:
Hmmm…must be two different books. Mine is copyright 1982, and the full title is Evolution from Space (The Omni Lecture), and Other Papers on the Origin of Life.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:07 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:16 pm |
Yes, I googled Fred Hoyle's books, and it looks like there are two different books. Now I wish I had the other book, so I could see who Hoyle thought the designer was. In mine, the impression is that it's an ancient alien civilization. But from the title of Nick's book, it sounds different.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:20 pm |
Hi Nick,
"My copy is copyright 1981, and the full title on the cover and title page is: Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism."
So was Hoyle a creationist?
Comment by Krauze — February 14, 2007 @ 3:20 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:22 pm |
Krauze:
That's why I wish I could get my hands on Nick's version.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:22 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:24 pm |
Yes, the creationists were indebted to Hoyle instead of the other way around. Like I said, design is an older and broader stream than creationism. That creationists tap into it supports my point.
Comment by MikeGene — February 14, 2007 @ 3:24 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:25 pm |
Nick needs to define "creationist."
Comment by MikeGene — February 14, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:30 pm |
MG: Yes, the creationists were indebted to Hoyle instead of the other way around. Like I said, design is an older and broader stream than creationism. That creationists tap into it supports my point.
Nick, maybe you should reconsider the Trojan Horse metaphor. Perhaps creationism was a Trojan Horse for the older more established design POV.
Comment by Bradford — February 14, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:31 pm |
Nick needs to define "creationist."
Nick also needs to define Trojan Horse.
Comment by Bradford — February 14, 2007 @ 3:31 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:37 pm |
The wiki article doesn't cite a reference for this. In reality Hoyle believed that life was designed by some super intelligent extraterrestrial beings and Panspermia was the way they used to seed the universe with life.
This next statement from Wikipedia in same article contradicts with the one I quoted above:
Hoyle argued that a whole universe full of organic soup can not initiate life, so how could he believe that life could have originated somewhere else in the universe? He totally rejected chemical evolution either on earth or somewhere else.
It is laughable to see that anti-ID editors (including one Wikipedia administrator called JoshuaZ) attempted to put Fred Hoyle in Pseudoscience category. See the discussion here.
Comment by Farshad — February 14, 2007 @ 3:37 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 3:40 pm |
Farshad:
Farshad, that's the impression I got from my version of Evolution from Space. But I'm curious what Nick's version says.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 4:15 pm |
I wasn't aware that this book has two versions. In Hoyle's official site there is only one book titled Evolution from Space. In this site the same book is promoted as Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism but the picture of the book cover shows Evolution from Space (The Omni Lecture) and Other Papers on the Origin of Life. It seems that there are two different titles for same book.
Comment by Farshad — February 14, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 4:30 pm |
The Cosmic Creationism version came out in 1981. The Omni Lecture version came out in 1982
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 4:30 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 5:09 pm |
Bilbo said:
There are two versions of the book.
USA edition was titled: Evolution From Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, and
UK edition was Evolution from Space (The Omni Lecture).
Comment by Analyysi — February 14, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
February 14th, 2007 at 5:24 pm |
Yes, but the content of the two versions may be different. The Omni Lecture was given in January of 1982, which means it wasn't in the Cosmic Creationism version of 1981.
Comment by Bilbo — February 14, 2007 @ 5:24 pm
February 15th, 2007 at 7:26 am |
Wouldn't it be safe to assume that the later version is closer to his real views than the earlier version?
Comment by Terrahawk — February 15, 2007 @ 7:26 am
February 15th, 2007 at 2:36 pm |
A better source than even Hoyle's own web site is www.panspermia.org. A fellow named Brig Klyce continues to develop Hoyle's ideas there. It's very solid, with lots of documentation of recent scientific findings.
One thing that has happened even since Crick and Watson is the development of genetic sequencing and analysis tools. They are revealing anomalies in various genomes that will be hard for conventional evolution theory to explain. Of course, the evolutionists will explain away the anomalies, as being merely coincidences, as they tend to do when backed into a corner.
Another source is my own attempt to build on Hoyle's ideas, and on many others, and come up with a novel, teleological model of our place in nature. Yours to peruse at www.starlarvae.org
Comment by heresiarch — February 15, 2007 @ 2:36 pm
February 17th, 2007 at 6:06 am |
Hi Nick,
Have you given up on this thread? I'm still curious as to whether you think Hoyle was a creationist.
Comment by Krauze — February 17, 2007 @ 6:06 am
February 17th, 2007 at 7:01 pm |
Part of Wickramasinghe's statement to the court:
So he (and presumably Hoyle) agree that the creator of life is not supernatural, but are vague on what the creator of life within the universe exactly is.
Comment by Bilbo — February 17, 2007 @ 7:01 pm
February 17th, 2007 at 7:54 pm |
Wickramasinghe:
Two sentences later:
Could somebody reconcile these two statements for me?
Comment by keiths — February 17, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
February 17th, 2007 at 8:01 pm |
I think it's the "emphatic" in "emphatic denial" that he sees as arrogance. I didn't include the reasons he gave for concluding that "life could not be an accident." That came in the previous paragraph.
Comment by Bilbo — February 17, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
February 17th, 2007 at 8:04 pm |
Here's the full statement: http://www.panspermia.org/chan...Comment by Bilbo — February 17, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
March 5th, 2007 at 11:14 pm |
So, now I'm really curious: Did no one here read Wickramasinghe's denial of the case you're trying to make, under oath, after the book was published, in the Arkansas trial?
And did none of you find the Hoyle interview in Scientific American (March 1995)?
Here's an excerpt from Judge Overton's decision in McLean v. Arkansas:
There's nothing much there for intelligent design; Hoyle and Wickramasinghe argued that they didn't think there was time for evolution to proceed so far as it has on Earth, so they conjectured that evolution started somewhere else, and live arrived on Earth already far down the path of evolution.
The only concession they made to intelligent design would have been their note that it was possible that an alien intelligence intended to seed life here, that the seeding was not wholly accident.
That's no blow to evolution, of course, and it's pretty weak tea as support for intelligent design.
Nick, can you pull out the text of Hoyle's profile in Sci Am? My files were two computer crashes ago, and I'm not finding them quickly.
Comment by edarrell — March 5, 2007 @ 11:14 pm
March 8th, 2007 at 3:45 pm |
If you replaced "intelligent design" with "young earth creationism", your statement would be correct. But as it is, I don't see how you can draw that conclusion from their position. I thought their position (see also earlier statements) was quite clear about the fact that
Consequently, unless the universe and life are both eternal, they hold that the remaining conclusion is that it is designed. The position of ID is that life is an instance of a feature of the universe that is best explained by an intelligent cause. Unless life has been eternal, life is designed.
This is exactly in line with the ID position. As the court also observed, it is "weak tea" only for the YEC position.
Comment by eric — March 8, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
March 8th, 2007 at 3:50 pm |
I'll look for the March '95 copy of Scientific American.
Comment by Bilbo — March 8, 2007 @ 3:50 pm
March 8th, 2007 at 4:15 pm |
edarrell:
Yes, I just found and read it here at the library. Hoyle didn't recant a single word.
Now, edarrell, where exactly did Wickramasinghe recant? And was he repudiating YEC, or the intelligent design of carbonaceous life?
Comment by Bilbo — March 8, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
March 8th, 2007 at 4:44 pm |
The college textbook The Mystery of Life's Origin, published in 1984, surveyed origin of life research. They examined the inability of those unguided scenarios to provide an explanation for the specified complexity required by life, especially in light of what has been learned through that research.
In an Epilogue, they considered some possible alternatives. In the section on Panspermia, they credit Hoyle and Wickramasinghe for reviving interest in that idea, but they also observe that although Panspermia might address the origin of life on earth, by itself it does not explain the origin of life. The research has revealed objections that still apply to unguided origins, even if one moves the location to somewhere else (e.g. p. 193,194).
Hoyle and Wickramasinghe are brought up again in more detail in the section on Special Creation by a Creator Within the Cosmos:
Thus, in a broad sense one might defend referring to them as "creationists", but given the YEC connotations firmly attached to that term, it would be misleading. They are referring to a creating intelligence within the cosmos, which is another way of saying designing intelligence. ID does not necessarily mean "supernatural". The focus is on intentional, designed activity by intelligence in contrast to unguided natural processes.
— Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space
Comment by eric — March 8, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
March 8th, 2007 at 5:10 pm |
Another quote from The Mystery of Life's Origin and from Evolution from Space highlights the distinction in Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's position between intelligent design (which they affirm) and young earth creationism (which they do not affirm).
Comment by eric — March 8, 2007 @ 5:10 pm