Teleological Explanation of Irreducible Complexity of the Biochemical Systems

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is a presentation of one of the subtheories included in the so‑called intelligent design theory – a concept of irreducible complexity of the biochemical systems. The concept says that some features of different biochemical structures indicate that they are designed. It is an alternative concept to naturalistic theories of evolution, and especially to the Neo-Darwinian theory of the development of the life forms that is currently the dominating theory in biology. I shortly discuss the logical and empirical point of the concept of irreducible complexity, whereas I give special attention to the most interesting, from the methodological point of view, part of the concept, namely the explanatory point. The explanatory point is concerned with the issue of design detection in natural sciences. I present also a response of the concept’s of irreducible complexity critics, in the form of a variety of proposals of the evolutionary scenarios of the irreducibly complex systems origins. Although some of these scenarios describe material processes that, theoretically, are capable of producing the irreducible complexity, I agree with a criticism of intelligent design theory proponents that a high degree of speculativity of the evolutionary explanations presently does not allow for examination if these explanations correspond to the real history of irreducibly complex systems origins. Because, so far, both the evolutionists and design theorists are developing only general approaches to the issue of irreducible complexity that need further detailed analyses, I recognize that the problem of irreducible complexity of the biochemical systems remains unsolved in the advantage of one of the proposed theories.