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In late July 1996, Mike Behe sat down in his office, flicked on his computer, and began paging through his e-mail messages. It had been an exhilarating month: his book was finally rolling off the press. He was excited about how well his half-day press briefing had gone in Washington, D.C., in front of dozens of intellectuals and media persons. While vacationing at the Maryland shore with his family, he had received an overnight package from Free Press that contained a copy of his literary first-born. Then, a few days later, word had come that a review would appear in the New York Times Book Review. That news brought excitement mingled with dread: he felt like celebrating, but he wondered if he should brace for an attack.

As Behe scanned the e-mail list, he spotted a message from Phillip Johnson. As he clicked open Johnson's message and scrolled through it, he smiled at his pep talk: "Don't worry, Mike. Even if the Times bashes you in their review, a cultural earthquake will take place [in the United States] on August 4 when they publish it."

A few days later, Behe received an early copy of the review and typed an e-mail report that popped onto computer screens of several dozen colleagues in the design movement: "Good news—I just got the New York Times review. Not bad. Not bad at all. On a scale of one to ten (ten being ecstatic praise, one being a total bashing), it's an eight." Behe could already feel the distant tremors.

As Behe lectures, one of the first questions asked is "What do Darwinians say about your book?" He ticks off three or four recurring responses. A few simply label him a "creationist" and dismiss his arguments without a careful hearing; but that is not the typical response. Almost all reviewers have admitted that Behe has the facts right. Biochemist James Shapiro said that Darwin's Black Box had actually understated the complexity of the cell's systems, while James Shreeve conceded that "Behe may be right that given our current state of knowledge, good old Darwinian gradualist evolution cannot explain the origin of … cellular transport."

Nevertheless, Shreeve and others say the professor from Lehigh simply has given up too soon. Many add that science simply cannot entertain such unscientific notions as "intelligent design." Behe considers this objection a transparent attempt, based on philosophical bias, to set limits on science.

Some critics have sought refuge in the new mathematically based ideas of Stuart Kaufmann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who uses computer models to simulate what he calls "spontaneous ordering of life." Behe critiques Kaufmann's ideas in his book, pointing out that a recent article in Scientific American described Kaufmann's work as a "fact-free science." Behe emphasizes that Kaufmann's models never refer to real chemical or biological data and have produced no laboratory experiments. Thus, he concludes, Kaufmann's ideas offer no hope as an escape route for the Darwinians.

After reactions to Darwin's Black Box had poured in from professional biologists, Phillip Johnson noted, "All the criticism of Behe's book so far doesn't challenge the truth of what he says. It just reflects how unhappy it makes the Darwinists to see the scientific evidence and their materialist philosophy going in opposite directions."

This unhappiness was evident at the recent University of South Florida lecture. The professor who teaches the university's undergraduate course on evolution objected, "You're giving up too soon. Biochemistry is in its infancy. These systems were discovered just 20 or 30 years ago. Within the next few years, we may begin to figure out how all these systems evolved."

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April 28 1997, Vol. 41, No. 5