Richard Sternberg is a mathematical biologist with a radical idea — one with deep roots in antiquity. We’re accustomed to thinking of ID as a historical science — one that looks at past incursions of complex and specified information into the cosmos and into life, such as the fine-tuning of the universe at the Big Bang and the great diversifications of life in the Cambrian and other explosions. Sternberg shows us intelligent design not in the past but in real time.

The Here and Now

Discovery Institute Senior Fellow David Klinghoffer introduces Sternberg’s thinking in a new book out today, Plato’s Revenge: The New Science of the Immaterial Genome. When Dr. Sternberg thinks of ID, he’s thinking of the here and now. With echoes in the ancient philosophy of Plato, which pointed to immaterial “forms” shaping life, he finds scientific evidence of agency at work in the formation of every embryo, the development of every organism in the womb, and in the ongoing operation of every cell. The genome is not a material entity alone — DNA — but one that transcends space and time, employing DNA as an instrument, right now.  

David Klinghoffer offers the lay reader an accessible and engaging preview of Sternberg’s technical work, the exposition of which I am privileged to be working on with Dr. Sternberg at the moment. 

As biologist J. Scott Turner notes in welcoming the book, it “brings to the fore the central, and largely unacknowledged dilemma of evolutionism: that how we think about evolution is as much philosophy as it is science.” Physicist Brian Miller writes, “Klinghoffer’s task is not an easy one: Introduce the general reader to a scientific hypothesis that is profound, potentially revolutionary, but hardly simple. Klinghoffer succeeds and, into the bargain, paints an engaging portrait of the scientist behind the idea.” See here for more praise of Plato’s Revenge.

A Scandal at the Smithsonian

Twenty years ago, Klinghoffer reported for the Wall Street Journal on a scandal at the Smithsonian Institution.  At the time, Dr. Sternberg was a researcher at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the editor of a technical scientific journal published at the museum. In his role as editor, Sternberg received a submission from philosopher of science Stephen Meyer — an article on the Cambrian explosion, 530 million years ago, as evidence for intelligent design.

Sternberg is a scientist with two PhDs in evolutionary biology, and notably, he was not at the time a proponent of ID. But he thought Meyer’s article was scientifically interesting, so he sent it out for peer review and then, on the recommendation of the reviewers, accepted it for publication. So ended his promising career at the Smithsonian. Sternberg had “platformed” a heretic, and he must, therefore, be deplatformed himself.  

What was all the fuss about? The heresy in question is the assertion that certain phenomena in nature are best explained by an intelligent cause. In his paper, the first of what would turn out to be many peer-reviewed research articles supporting ID, Meyer suggested that the sudden increase in biological diversity in the Cambrian explosion is one such phenomenon.  

A Form of Archaeology

Klinghoffer describes himself as “fascinated by intellectual life as a form of archaeology, digging for insight and wisdom in ancient sources.” He sees a kindred spirit in Sternberg, who has “mined the history of philosophy and science to excavate intimations and intellectual forbears of his argument.” Klinghoffer has long followed Sternberg’s thinking on Platonism and biology and recalls the chill —  that feeling that here was something transcendent operating in life — that he experienced when first encountering these ideas. 

In Plato’s Revenge, Klinghoffer tells the story of how Sternberg’s questions led him along a path from the “intellectually satisfied atheism” of his college days to Darwinian-evolutionist-with-questions to what Sternberg has jokingly referred to as his current “state of conceptual insanity.”  

Klinghoffer engages Sternberg’s big questions, and a number of his own, on philosophical, scientific, and even highly personal planes.

What Is Heredity?

The questions addressed in Plato’s Revenge include:

• What IS heredity, and what can it tell us about ourselves? 
• Is life itself indeed in the class of phenomena known to be generated by mind alone? 
• How much might Plato have been right about when he attributed material bodies to the causation of immaterial forms? 
• Can the mathematics behind Sternberg’s thesis be explained clearly to the curious layman?
• What makes a theory scientific? 
• Is it time for a “radical reconceptualization” of the gene?  (Hint: Yes!)

Plato’s Revenge places the hard topic of purpose in biology on a scientific footing and in a full historical context that is philosophically rich and coherent. As Klinghoffer points out,  

[A] tradition has persisted from ancient to modern times which, while using different terms, has seen in the genome not a material entity alone but an immaterial one as well: abstract, mathematical, not restricted to space-time. True, the majority view among philosophers is that abstract mathematical entities don’t make things happen in the material world. As will become clear, though, in Sternberg’s framework, some purposive agency is driving or informing things. It’s not just the “math.”

In Plato’s Revenge, Klinghoffer gives us a preview of the shape of things to come in the theory of intelligent design. Get your copy now!