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: ''This article covers irreducible complexity as used by those who argue for intelligent design. For information on irreducible complexity as used in Systems Theory, see Irreducible complexity (Emergence).'' Irreducible complexity (IC) is a pseudoscientific argument that postulates that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler or "less complete" predecessors through natural selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring chance mutations.〔See *. *''Pseudoscience and Extraordinary Claims of the Paranormal: A Critical Thinker's Toolkit'', Jonathan C. Smith, p 307, ISBN 1-40518-122-2 * * * 〕 Central to the creationist concept of intelligent design, IC is rejected by the scientific community,〔"We therefore find that Professor Behe’s claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large." Ruling, Judge John E. Jones III, ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District''〕 which regards intelligent design as pseudoscience.〔"True in this latest creationist variant, advocates of so-called intelligent design ... use more slick, pseudoscientific language. They talk about things like 'irreducible complexity'" — "for most members of the mainstream scientific community, ID is not a scientific theory, but a creationist pseudoscience." Mark D. Decker. College of Biological Sciences, General Biology Program, University of Minnesota (Frequently Asked Questions About the Texas Science Textbook Adoption Controversy ) "The Discovery Institute and ID proponents have a number of goals that they hope to achieve using disingenuous and mendacious methods of marketing, publicity, and political persuasion. They do not practice real science because that takes too long, but mainly because this method requires that one have actual evidence and logical reasons for one's conclusions, and the ID proponents just don't have those. If they had such resources, they would use them, and not the disreputable methods they actually use." See also list of scientific societies explicitly rejecting intelligent design〕 Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments used by intelligent design proponents, the other being specified complexity. Michael Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University, first argued that irreducible complexity made evolution purely through natural selection of random mutations impossible.〔 *〕 However, evolutionary biologists have demonstrated how such systems could have evolved.〔〔 There are many examples documented through comparative genomics showing that complex molecular systems are formed by the addition of components as revealed by different temporal origins of their proteins.〔http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7381/full/nature10724.html〕〔http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/10/341〕 In the 2005 ''Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District'' trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large."〔 ==Definitions== Michael Behe defined irreducible complexity in natural selection his book ''Darwin's Black Box'': A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.〔''Darwin's Black Box'' 39 in the 2006 edition〕 A second definition given by Behe (his "evolutionary definition") is as follows: An irreducibly complex evolutionary pathway is one that contains one or more unselected steps (that is, one or more necessary-but-unselected mutations). The degree of irreducible complexity is the number of unselected steps in the pathway. Intelligent design advocate William A. Dembski gives this definition: A system performing a given basic function is irreducibly complex if it includes a set of well-matched, mutually interacting, nonarbitrarily individuated parts such that each part in the set is indispensable to maintaining the system's basic, and therefore original, function. The set of these indispensable parts is known as the irreducible core of the system.〔''No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence.'' by William Dembski pp. 285〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Irreducible complexity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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