Paper: Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge of Complexity Irreducible to Evolution

This pioneering biochemical study introduces the revolutionary concept of "Irreducible Complexity" applied to micromolecular systems of the intracellular environment. By exhaustively analyzing the bacterial flagellum—a truly microscopic rotary motor driven by a complex flow of proton gradients—Michael Behe ​​mathematically demonstrates that the viability of the system requires the coordinated and simultaneous interaction of approximately forty different proteins. The absence or dysfunction of a single one of these proteins completely neutralizes the body's motor machinery. Consequently, it is logically demonstrated that such a biomechanical mechanism could never have been assembled through gradual, blind and successive evolutionary steps dictated by classical neo-Darwinism, since the hypothetical evolutionary "intermediate phases" would lack motor function and, therefore, would be invisible to natural selection. The design requires the preexistence of a functional plan.