The Darwinian iPod
Tom Vanderbilt's new piece on/in Design Observer is something I've been waiting to read for a long time. (Since the Neo-cons have grabbed Neocon, and the IDers have grabbed ID, it's been a bit depressing out there.)I first learned about "the problem of the watchmaker" in Intro Philosophy class, and it's a fun mind-twister when learning the philosophy of God (ours, not his, presumably). Indeed, similar conundrums already show up in D.O.'s comments: "Dave, I'm curious. You say you find the 'First Cause' compelling. Here's a question: If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. Do you agree with this? If so, what caused the First Cause? If not, why not? thanks."
But the truth is that if this thing catches even more momentum, it may finally force Industrial Design to change its name away from I.D. The magazine already did it (same abbreviation, differnt meaning), and many have long argued that that a new moniker may not be such a bad thing. Anyway, all this veers from the musings of Vanderbilt's piece: what happens when we look at design through the lens of intelligent design? It's a quick read and it infringes our iPod-news embargo, but it'll be the exception that proves the rule. (Hey, that smells like a future tenet of ID!)