This article was originally published in Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe . This book provides a collection of invaluable, in-depth papers by leading design theorists such as Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer and myself from a conference sponsored by the Wethersfield Institute in 1999.

But was science right to repudiate design? In The Design Inference I argue that design is a legitimate and fundamental mode of scientific explanation, on a par with chance and necessity. In arguing this claim, however, I want to avoid prejudging the implications of design for science. In particular, it is not my aim to guarantee creationism. Design, as I develop it, cuts both ways and might just as well be used to defeat creationism by clarifying the superfluity if design in biology. My aim is not to find design in any one place but to open up possibilities for finding design as well as for shutting it down.

My aim, then, is to rehabilitate design as a mode of scientific explanation. Given that aim, it will help to review why design was removed from science in the first place. Design, in the form of Aristotle’s formal and final causes, had after all once occupied a perfectly legitimate role within natural philosophy, or what we now call science. With the rise of modern science, however, these causes fell into disrepute.