During the 1980s, governments in developed economies became very worried about globalisation. They gave high priority to finding technology-based solutions for improving the competitiveness of manufacturing industry. This was to help prevent the loss of jobs to countries with lower labour costs. At the time, I followed with great interest various initiatives in the US, Europe and Japan, designed to transform the process of clothing manufacture. The plans made use of the latest ideas in Flexible Manufacturing Systems, robotics and vision systems. The US initiative was based at the Draper Lab, whose engineers had helped to put man on the moon. The EU effort involved large electronics, engineering, clothing and textile companies with a track record of success in several industrial sectors. The Japanese project was the most visionary, with the intention of using robotic systems for each task currently undertaken by skilled sewing machinists. The research programmes were large, each with government support of the order of £40 million, with at least an equivalent amount provided by industrial participants.
During that decade, my own research interests involved the characterisation of manual human skills and then making comparisons with robotic capabilities. It became obvious that industrial robots were operating at skill levels far below that exhibited by human sewing machinists. Consequently, it came as no surprise to me when the three technology-led initiatives (to bring advanced manufacturing systems into clothing production) all failed to achieve their goals. Despite the vast injections of public money, the automation projects were quickly forgotten and made almost no impact on subsequent developments.
I remember thinking at the time that even industry leaders were seriously underestimating the manual skills necessary for assembling clothing products. Humans have remarkable hands, a wonderful vision system and extraordinary coordination to achieve adaptive control. Wouldn’t it be good to have a book that looked at human hands, or more generally, the human body, from an engineering design perspective? It struck me at the time that most people have little idea of how complex we are and how wonderfully we are made.
Happily, this book has now been written! It is The Origin of Man by Stuart Burgess, a design engineer. Chapter 3 deals with ‘skilful hands’ and other chapters consider our upright stature, fine skin, facial expressions, unique childhood, unique sexuality, unique genome, unique brain and man as a spiritual being. All this comprises Part 2: ‘The Unique Design of Man’. This is a book that informs and edifies, and everything about our bodies is related to God’s good purpose. Throughout, there are contrasts between the creationist and evolutionary worldviews, to show that the creationist perspective alone is able to do justice to the evidence of our own bodies.
Those who are familiar with the concept of ‘irreducible complexity’ (IC) will associate it with Michael Behe’s argument in Darwin’s Black Box. IC in molecular systems provides a very powerful argument to design. It takes a design engineer, however, to apply the same analytical approach to macroscopic systems – as Stuart Burgess does in Chapter 2 when discussing the human foot. On structural engineering grounds, there can be no gradualist route from an ape’s foot (for grasping branches) to the human foot (for bipedal walking). Anyone who is interested in the ape-human evolutionary stories would do well to familiarise themselves with the reasoning presented in this important chapter.
The emphasis within Darwinism is that apparent ‘design’ is functional, for it must help to make organisms more fit. Burgess shows repeatedly that the design we see in the human body goes far beyond fitness for survival or passing on one’s genes. The exquisite design we find in humans is to exercise the God-given dominion we have and to show by the things that we do that we are God’s image-bearers.
Burgess does an excellent job of spelling out the differences between humans and apes. Some examples are as follows:
– Bipedalism affects not just the few bones associated with walking. The whole system of locomotion has to be involved (including field of view, the way the neck joins the skull, the articulation of the hips and the sense of balance);
– Skin. Our body, hair, touch sensors and thermoregulation mechanisms are completely different for apes and man;
– Facial expressions. Gorillas have fewer facial muscles and none specifically for facial expressions like smiling. There are 12 pairs of facial muscles that are only found in humans, and all have to do with facial expressions and the communication of emotions. This is a fundamental part of our makeup (and for some of us – underused!)
Although the fossil data used as evidence for human evolution is discussed, Burgess makes the case for giving greater weight to the study of living humans and living apes. Every element of living creatures is available for analysis, whereas this is not true of the fossils. By adopting this approach we find that, as the book explains, “the differences between humans and living apes are so great that it is clear that humans did not evolve from any ape-like creature” (p.144).
Part 5 of the book, which contains the last two chapters, addresses the importance of origins. Burgess refers to two worldviews. These are the creationist and evolutionist belief systems that underpin two quite different approaches to life. Both are ultimately faith positions and both have a significant influence on the way we live. Contrasts are drawn for the two worldviews relating to morality and personal conduct, marriage, abortion, euthanasia, death and suffering, and eugenics. Finally, Burgess contrasts the ultimately pessimistic and nihilistic mindset emerging from the evolutionary view of man with the biblical view, which is that man is designed for eternity with God.
This is a good read for a broad range of readership and highly recommended.

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