It's a pity Michael Behe of 'Intelligent Design' fame is only a biologist.. because, like Richard Dawkins they're both ignorant of technology.. You need to do a serious course in Engineering for that. Technology means functional design and though not all designs are machines they do all have a purpose..
So Michael Behe calls a 'machine' or 'design'; "Irreducibly Complex"..
That is not a good description because almost any machine can be shown to be reducible to some minor degree without destroying its capacity to do the function.. I think he qualifies 'reducible' to mean the complete loss of an essential component.. but its not rigorous.
The reason you can reduce any machine by a small amount is simply the fact that we cannot build machines to anything approaching optimum. An optimum machine or structure has all failure modes occur at the same time. That is nothing to do with over design due to safety factors. It's over-design due to our imperfect knowledge, imperfect material quality and imperfect manufacturing processes.
A better description for any piece of technology (design) is..
A FUNCTIONALLY COMPLEX STATE OF MATTER.
All technology (design) satisfies this definition..
and has the following characteristics..
(a) It is SPECIFIED by semantic information
(this is the design part)
(b) It is ISOLATED from all other machines..
(where the design is not controlled by standards)
(c) It is internally INTEGRATED..
(the parts work together)
(d) Performs a FUNCTION (none of the parts can do)
(the whole is more than the sum of the parts)
(e) It has a PURPOSE
(meets a need)
All technology is therefore the product of a rational MIND.because only a rational mind can express a need.
Moving on..
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