The Design Inference

William A. Dembski and Winston Ewert

A landmark of the intelligent design movement, The Design Inference revolutionized our understanding of how we detect intelligent causation. Originally published twenty-five years ago, it has now been revised and expanded into a second edition that greatly sharpens its exploration of design inferences. This new edition tackles questions about design left unanswered by David Hume and Charles Darwin, navigating the intricate nexus of chance, probability, and design, and thereby offering a novel lens for understanding the world. Using modern concepts of probability and information, it exposes the inadequacy of undirected causes in scientific inquiry. It lays out how we infer design via events that are both improbable and specified. Amid controversial applications to biology, it makes a compelling case for intelligent design, challenging the prevalent neo-Darwinian evolutionary narrative. Dembski and Ewert have written a groundbreaking work that doesn’t merely comment on contemporary scientific discourse but fundamentally transforms it.

Coming October 2023

A landmark of the intelligent design movement, The Design Inference revolutionized our understanding of how we detect intelligent causation. Originally published twenty-five years ago, it has now been revised and expanded into a second edition that greatly sharpens its exploration of design inferences. This new edition tackles questions about design left unanswered by David Hume and Charles Darwin, navigating the intricate nexus of chance, probability, and design, and thereby offering a novel lens for understanding the world. Using modern concepts of probability and information, it exposes the inadequacy of undirected causes in scientific inquiry. It lays out how we infer design via events that are both improbable and specified. Amid controversial applications to biology, it makes a compelling case for intelligent design, challenging the prevalent neo-Darwinian evolutionary narrative. Dembski and Ewert have written a groundbreaking work that doesn’t merely comment on contemporary scientific discourse but fundamentally transforms it.

William A. Dembski

Board of Directors, Discovery Institute
A mathematician and philosopher, Bill Dembski is the author/editor of more than 20 books as well as the writer of peer-reviewed articles spanning mathematics, engineering, philosophy, and theology. A past philosophy professor, he retired in 2014 from active research and teaching in intelligent design (ID) to focus on the connections between freedom, technology, and education — specifically, how education helps to advance human freedom with the aid of technology. Bill Dembski is presently an entrepreneur who builds educational software and websites. He lives near Denton, Texas.

Winston Ewert

Senior Fellow, Senior Research Scientist, Software Engineer
Winston Ewert is a software engineer, intelligent design researcher, and Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley Center on Natural and Artificial Intelligence. He received his Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science from Trinity Western University, a Master’s Degree from Baylor University in Computer Science, and a PhD from Baylor University in Electrical and Computer Engineering. His specializes in computer simulations of evolution, specified complexity, information theory, and the common design of genomes. He is a Senior Research Scientist at Biologic Institute, a Senior Researcher at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, and a Fellow of the Bradley Center.