“I look at the universe through the eyes of a Platonist,” says theoretical biologist Richard Sternberg, talking with host Beatris Rusu on a new ID the Future episode. Dr. Sternberg is among the most fascinating thinkers about intelligent design, tracing his own understanding of design theory to the Platonic dialogue Timaeus. Rusu talked with him about his recent lectures to Discovery Institute’s Summer Seminar on Intelligent Design.

The main theme of Sternberg’s research, to be captured in a planned series of six monographs on what he calls the “immaterial genome,” has been the “gap in data content” separating the material source of biological information as we know it, in DNA, from the finished, operating cell or whole organism: “There has to be something in addition to just the DNA sequences alone that explains development.” Among the implications of this is that the usual Darwinian explanation of how evolution generates biological complexity, through the mutation/selection process, is not just incomplete but wildly inadequate.

“It sounds spooky,” he admits, but “we can know this on logical and mathematical grounds.” Download the podcast or listen to it here. Listen to this all the way through. It’s worth it.

Photo: Richard Sternberg teaching at the Summer Seminar, by Daniel Reeves.