dr. benjamin spock author of baby and child care, first published in 1946 and now in its ninth edition. for more information on this and other facts, book tv first year on the air, visit booktv.org. >> you're watching book tv. next, steven meyer said down with book tv and freedom fest to talk of his latest book. in the book discusses the mystery surrounding the origins of the animals that appeared during the cambrian explosion, over 500 million years ago. this is about half an hour. >> steven meyer of the discovery institute and author of our one step, the explosive origin of animal life in the case for intelligent design. dr. meyer, what was there was doubt? >> a great place to start the

conversation. that is what i do in the book, tell the story of this doubt that darwin had about his own theory in what has become of it, the way has grown up to become a major crisis sudden appearance of most of the major groups of animals in a geological time called the cambridge, 539 years ago. and there was aware of this problem, and in the origin of species the adjusted and enologist there was a problem. he understood it. it just on fulton a slow and gradual way. he depicted life as a branching tree. the base of the tree represents the first simple one-celled organisms, and all the terminal branches are presented the forms

of life that we see today. the connecting bridges were presented the intermediate forms a should have arisen through the dusty on the time. he also taught that the process would be very slowly because is the mechanism of natural selection acting on random variation had to act very slowly. the variations, as she conceived, would be small, minute, incremental. if there were huge, that would result in the form animals could not survive and therefore the process of natural selection had to work slowly and gradually. yet what he witnessed in the fossil record was that the first major groups of complex animals came on the scene fully formed very abruptly in the seventh three layers. this was contrary to what he thought the picture of life should be and also contrary to the way his mechanism of natural selection. so it was a real puzzle to him. he said there for that the cambrian explosion was he said a

valid objection. and that was his stock. what i do in the book is to what has become of that. >> where did charles r. one right that? >> right in the origin of species. it's one of the things that he expressed during modestly as far as the limitations of his theory i open the book by saying that when he finished his masterpiece , he thought he had to find every clue but one. the cambrian explosion was the one big thing that he knew that he had not yet explained. no, he had an idea about what my leader explain it. he thought that eventually paleontologists would find that sequence of intervening forms in the lower precambrian strata. as i explained in the book, subsequent fossil finds of actually intensified the mastery rather than alleviate it. >> where did the name cambrian come from? >> it was one of the names of the geological layers.

it's a place in wales. the earliest locale. so the name was given from that location. the most famous are in canada and one in seven china. >> i want to ask you why you included pictures? >> well, in telling the story of what happened there are really to mysteries. one is the missing ancestral fossils', and that mystery has become more acute because the subsequent fossil find would have had been made since star was live. he expected to find the missing ancestral and a lower precambrian it clears. so what has been down said

beneath the strata that documents the major animal forms, they found a sponge embryo fossil, small, microscopic, soft tissue animals and that is really a mystery because it shows that the deposition and burma was perfectly suited to preserving the ancestral forms of all the other forms that are lacking ancestors, and yet there were not found. so that really puts to rest the idea that we did not find them because we were either not looking hard enough or because the environment in which the fossils were fossilized were not suitable to preserve them. >> therefore we have this mystery. >> a big mystery. >> id you explain it?

>> well, there's one other thing i should say first. the first part is the mystery of the missing fossil. with the book addresses is really the deeper mystery. that is essentially an engineering problem. how would you build an animal or any of these complex animals, 20, 23 of silos that first arrived in the fossil record, one of the most famous includes critters like trilobites, a visual aid, if you will permit me. i will hold it up to the camera. those are three. one of the amazing things about trilobites is that they have compound eyes. in this particular fossil you can actually see the compound structure in the eyes. and so paleontologists were aware of the exquisite functional integration, this functional complexity read from the very dawn of animal life. and that raises the question quite independent of where all the missing and sisters are, what mechanism could build something as complex command

particular in the amount of time allowed by the fossil record? and what i do in the book is examine not just the darwinian mechanism, but the modern the elbe and up -- the little more sophisticated. it emphasizes natural variation and mutation in genetic material . the way that modern evolutionary tears slid understand the mechanism that generate large scale change. what i show in the book is there are a bunch of reasons to doubt the mechanism as the creative power attributed to it, one of which is what we now know about the importance of information, genetic and other forms of biological information to the maintenance and the construction of an all forms. a used to teach a lot of freshmen. >> what did you teach? >> the philosophy of science. i would ask them, if you want to give your computer and new function, we've been talking a lot about information.

they would immediately get it. the program, the instruction, software, all of which are correct answers. it turns out that the same thing is true in life. you want to generate life in the first place from nonliving chemicals. you have to have information in the form of dna. if you want to build a new form of life from a pre-existing, then this is what darwin was trying to explain, you have also got to have digital code. the need tissues and organs, their for new types of cells. each new type of sony's new protein. those purchases in turn require information. so the cambrian explosion is not just an explosion of new form and structure, new animals but an explosion of information, digital code and other forms of biological affirmation. what a show in the book is that natural selection and random mutation is a singularly inept

mechanism for generating new information. mutation, random changes in code or software we know from our own experience tends to be great information, not generate new software programs are operating systems. assenting turns out to be true in the living world. you start mutating sections of genetic text, you will agree that information. mathematically it turns out to be extremely improbable that you would never be able to find new genes or proteins. >> where did you teach? >> washington state. >> what kind of colleges that? >> liberal arts college. >> christian oriented? >> yes. >> where did you get your ph.d.? >> cambridge university. the philosophy of science, particularly biology, did my dissertation on the question of the origin of life and our was the method of scientific reasoning which is selling it to

the idea of intelligent design. >> including the word intelligent design. how do you define intelligent design? >> great question. the idea that there are certain features of the biological system that are best explained by an intelligent pause rather than an underacted process such as natural selection and random mutation. maybe the best way to understand his but understanding it in contrast to that particular meeting of evolution. one of them is the area of change over time. the book above the cambrian explosion is all about that. another idea of a common ancestry. the third meeting of evolution is the nba that and and directed, and guided process,

namely natural selection acting on random variations and mutations is sufficient to produce, the new form and structure, but also the appearance of design that almost all biologists recognize. the great moderate spokesman for modern kneele darwinism, biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. and for dawkins and all of new darwinian is impossible darwinian, the key word is appearance. living systems look designed, but they're not really designed. there is a up mechanism. random mutation that can mimic the powers of the designing intelligence, which is not itself designer guided in any way. another new diet -- armas said we had designed without the designer. so intelligent design is challenging that idea. in terms of design in many cases it's real, and the best

explanation for that based upon what we know about the evidence we see in biology is an actual designing intelligence. purpose of intelligence behind process that gave rise to life. intelligent design a theological term? >> no, scientific, but it may have larger seek to find the logic implications. based on science, scientific evidence, and also an established method of scientific reasoning. i think one -- there was a debate here yesterday. both of the speakers said that one of the reason that history is so contentious is however you answer the question you're going to be giving an answer that has larger world you implications were challenging someone else's world view. you have to answer the question of what is called the primary reality, the mephitic -- metaphysical question. what is the process from which everything comes? the things we see around it

arose as a result of an underacted, and get a material process and therefore seems to have larger materialistic implications. there was a purpose of intelligence involved in the process, and therefore it has implications, for example, a more diaz to interpretation of the natural world. it is not based upon the logical propositions. for example, creationism. >> page 391, resister regard intelligent design as scientific theory. you write, many scientists and philosophers of science regard to the stability as an important feature of scientific inquiry and intelligent design as testable in three specific into related waste. >> right. that me back upon not one as well. the first thing it is important to understand, i made it in the book, looking at these two mysteries, the missing ancestral

fossils' and how you build an animal, show particularly in the second part of the book that the mechanism lax the creative power to generate these complex animals and especially the reformation necessary to build them. that is a critique of neo darwinism. a lot of people want to know how you get from that to a positive argument for intelligent design? and here is where darlings on method of scientific reasoning was really important are reasoning. i studied darlings method. i think he was a great pioneer. if you want to explain something like the cambrian explosion you cannot go into a lab and make the trilobites come into existence all over again. it's not replicable. you have to do is reason more like a forensic scientist and look at the clues that are left behind and then in firm back to the causes of the events you're trying to explain.

the method of reasoning that darwin used, it's called the method of multiple computing about the cs for the method of infering to the best explanation . the best explanation according to a bar when is one in which you are sitting across which is known to have the power to produce the effect in question. now, when i realize that that is what darwin is doing, i realize that tied directly to this critical question that is all through evolutionary biology. the question of the origin of formation. evolutionary theory has come to an impact in trying to to find the origin of genetic and other forms of violence confirmation, and i shall lie in the book. it is not the case that there is a cause of which we know that is capable of generating a formation. a cause that meets the key criteria of the best explanation which is known from our uniformly repeated experience in

the present to produce the crucial thing we're trying to explain. of the thing we're trying to explain his information, what is it that we know from are uniformly repeated experience, the basis of all scientific reasoning about what it takes to generate information. the creation of misinformation is habitually associated to conscious activity. what we know from experience is that mine's general information. if we look at a section of a book we trace it back. we always tend to combine the process. whenever we see information we immediately inferred that i mind planned will. the cambrian is explosion is an explosion of information. i argue that the best explanation using darlings on principle of reasoning, looking for a cause which is not to produce the affecting question is actually intelligent design.

intelligent design explains that because it provides a causally adequate explanation for the phenomenon in question which is in permission or an explosion of functional and permission. >> how is intelligent design portrayed in the media? >> well, we are sometimes told we are creationist and cheap tuxedos. it has been portrayed as another form of creationism, portrayed as a religiously motivated idea. remember an interview on nightline. and the people came out and tell us how interested they were in the scientific basis of the work that we were doing. it'll go the molecular machines and the circuitry. and after about an hour-and-a-half, a voice from new york turned in and wanted to know, will, who is the designer?

and the said, well, we can't tell that. we can just tell from the evidence that some kind of some kind was responsible. that is what you consult by analyzing the evidence. the man i interviewed had three words. they had a take on lives and i understand why the media portray it that way, but it misses a crucial distinction. between the basis and the possible implication.

intelligent design is based on scientific evidence, the presence of digital code, circuitry in the programs. it's based on a standard method of historical scientific reasoning. concluded using that evidence and that the that there is evidence of design in nature, that then raises a larger question, philosophical question. that is about the identity of the designer. based on science, but it raises the larger philosophical theological question and may even have the logical implications, but that is separate from the theory itself. the immediate typically tries to the in-flight those. that is portrayed to the public, the idea of a kind of -- an idea of something, and difficult fundamentalism. that is really not what it is. the inference from biological

evidence, not a deduction from religious authority. >> here on book tv we have talked with professors, religious professors and science professors who when we ask how long has mankind been on the earth the answer @booktv answers literally 6,000 years. is that accurate? >> no. is asking about the difference to an intelligent design and creationism creationism is based system logically on the belief in the bible. the starting point is the interpretation of the genesis text and some kind of deduction from that to what we ought to see in the natural world. it is also an idea about the age of the earth, the particular interpretation which says that the earth is very recent, the universe is young. the theory of intelligent design is not a theory about the age of

the earth but about whether design is real or merely apparent. secondly the starting point is not a biblical text or any other document. the key evidence we find in biology and related fields. it is an inference from biological evidence, not a deduction or interpretation. >> is intelligent design, as you have portrayed it, taught in public schools? >> not very often. i think we have actually discouraged people from trying to bring intelligent design into public schools at the secondary level. the simple reason that it immediately becomes enmeshed in these complicated jurisprudence issues. train wreck of a case in 2005. we were urging the school district not to try to get intelligent design into the school. we got blamed for what they did. we were actually asking them not to do it. i declined the opportunity to

testify as an expert witness in the famine stover case. we think it is counterproductive at this point. we have a terrific scientific argument. we're trying to make that argument at the highest levels of academia. we have labs. scientists from the world, it's a bit of a sideshow. we're encouraging people not to get into that. the discovery institute. it is the institutional home for a lot of the research that is going on in advancing the intelligent design research program. >> page 109. even if we assume that mutation and natural selection and other leads to cover other similar and directed evolutionary processes can account for the emergence of a novel proteins. we cannot also assume that the protein molecular clock ticks at a constant rate c'mon like real metric dating methods, molecular parks depend on a host of

contention factors. >> that is from a chapter in which our was addressing one of the ways that people have tried to solve the problem of the missing ancestral fossils'. the fossils' are not documented. a lot of scientists have said, maybe it means do. we can make some projections back in time as to when the common ancestor of those animals might have existed. the rule is that the greater the degree of similarity between two genes or proteins in different animals, the shorter the time they diverge from our common ancestor, the greater the difference the longer back. the deep coverage and support this is. what i show in the book is that

that method of trying to account for the missing or to establish the common ancestors does not work either. and the reason, two main reasons. depending on which proteins or genes each use to compare you get very conflicting trees showing different relationships. and so i argue that if this method of investigation, giving a true historical signal, we should get an unambiguous signal, one that is giving as a single tree. one historical unfold in. we give so many conflicting trees. it raises questions. the other problem with this method of investigation is it that it begs the question. it says that the degree of difference between two proteins

or genes in different animals is an indication of how long ago they diverged from our common ancestor. presupposed from the outset of the investigation. presuppose in all the algorithms so you can i use the method of investigation that presupposes. that is a question. that is the argument i make in that section of the book. >> published by harpercollins. >> that is a wonderful trilobite the beautiful structure. >> of a 530 million years. >> we been talking on book tv with the author of this book, steven meyer, the discovery institute. darwin's doubt is the book. thank you for being with book tv. >> thank you for having me on. a great conversation. >> is there and nonfiction

author a book you would like to see featured on book tv? send us an e-mail. or tweet us. >> when the united states invaded russia. a new book by professor carl regard. when did the u.s. invade russia? >> well, 1918. the height of world war one. the germans are closing in. it looked as though the allies were going to lose the war, bombarding. big bertha was sending chills. the french government's for attacking. the evacuate. and so the question is, what can we do? the immediate answer was recreate the russian front. the bolsheviks had taken over russia in november 1917. he pull russia out of the war. they said to we need another russian front to take german troops away from france, and that is basically why woodrow wilson decided to send 80500

american soldiers to siberia. yet he was hit with protect part of the trans siberian railroad so that we can get aid to the anti bolshevik said that they could be overthrown and recreate the russian -- >> whose idea was that? >> well, the allies were pressuring for six to nine months to do this. they were scared. >> they were specifically asking the wilson government to go into russia? >> right. but there was able difference in philosophy because they were thinking of some massive invasion of russia and using japanese troops because japan was the only ally was sufficiently engaged on the western front. all these japanese troops could go up the trans siberian railway and start a new front.

and that was not his idea at all. wait a minute. the russians are going to rise up against that, especially japan because they fought a war against japan 14 years earlier. the japanese had one, humiliated the russian spirit of last thing that one is some for an army going in there. that will just throw them into the hands of germany. his idea was of little bit different. that is that he wanted these trips to keep a low profile, not big armies. the russians themselves, the anti bolsheviks should be the ones to do it, not some big, for an army. his idea was that -- only 8500 troops. his idea is that this would provide support, control the railway so that we can send aid. ..

this is what today they call mission creep. you start with one mission and you end up with another. the reason they stayed a year and a half is that wilson began to see the bolsheviks. he looked around at the postwar world, especially europe and he said you've got all these hungry