Over at Pandas Thumb Nick Matzke has announced his departure from the NCSE (the leading Darwin-only lobby group) to focus on getting an advanced degree in evolutionary biology. Perhaps he should consider taking some history courses as well.

Matzke reiterates the old canard that the phrase “intelligent design” was concocted after the Edwards v. Aguillard supreme court case in which creationism/creation science was ruled out of bounds for public high school science classes. This is simply a Darwinian urban legend.

In 2005 we published a paper by Dr. Jonanthan Witt, titled, The Origin of Intelligent Design:
A brief history of the scientific theory of intelligent design.

Witt explains the origins of the term in part here:

Its roots stretch back to design arguments made by Socrates and Plato, and even the term “intelligent design” is more than 100 years old. Oxford scholar F.C.S. Schiller employed it in an 1897 essay, writing that “it will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.”

Witt goes on to show how other books and writers used the term well before the 1987 court case Matzke and others continue to falsely claim lead to the term’s origination.

Furthermore, in James E. Horigan’s 1979 book, “Chance or Design?” (Philosophical Library: New York), Horigan uses the phrase “intelligent design” and explicitly connects it extensively to the literature of the 1800’s that used the term in a similar spirit to how it is used today.

If you want a brief, and more importantly, accurate account of the origins of intelligent design theory, definitely read Witt’s paper.

Finally, ResearchID.org has a wonderful timeline that documents historical references to the phrase intelligent design as well as intelligent design ideas.