In the comments section of the previous post, a link was provided that led to the following definition of reverse engineering:
In a landmark paper on the topic, M.G. Rekoff defines reverse engineering as “the process of developing a set of specifications for a complex hardware system by an orderly examination of specimens of that system.” He describes such a process as being conducted by someone other than the developer, “without the benefit of any of the original drawings … for the purpose of making a clone of the original hardware system.”
Reverse Engineering and Design Recovery: A Taxonomy- E.J. Chikofsky and J.H. Cross II
The first sentence is a fairly straight forward definition of reverse engineering that very few would have issues with. It is the second sentence, when examined in parts, that I find interesting.
1a. “He describes [reverse engineering] as being conducted by someone other than the developer [or designer]“ While this may seem obvious, it is an important aspect that is missed or overlooked when using the reverse engineering argument in ID. Alone, this would make for many long (and perhaps boring) philosophical discussions and discourses.
1b. “…’without the benefit of any of the original drawings …’ “ Again, this seems obvious, but it is even more important than point 1a. It is an extremely difficult task to reverse engineer a structure/process without the original plans, without the original design notes, and without making off-the-cuff remarks about the designer. Reverse engineering often deals with incomplete information and that, in of itself, should temper any claims/findings from the process.
2. “… for the purpose of making a clone of the original hardware system.” The two-part question I pose to both critic and defender of ID is this: should someone reverse engineer and then subsequently and successfully re-engineer a single-celled organism, a) would that be considered science (either the reverse engineering or the re-engineering processes or both combined), and b) would that constitue evidence (no matter how comprehensive/complete it may be) of a designer for the cell that was re-engineered?
The asylum is now open.
Note: the Rekoff quote was referenced from “On Reverse Engineering”, IEEE Trans. Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, March-April 1985, pp. 244-252
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