Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996; second edition 2006) is a book by Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

[5] Despite this, the book has become a commercial success, and, as a bestseller,[6] it received a mostly supportive review from Publishers Weekly, which described it as having a "spirited, witty critique of neo-Darwinian thinking" that may "spark interest.

"[7] The politically conservative magazine National Review also voted Darwin's Black Box one of their top 100 non-fiction books of the century, using a panel that included Discovery Institute member George Gilder.

The philosophical tool is commonly used in scientific discourse, and Behe notes that understandings of cellular structure and other aspects of microbiology were not much understood when Charles Darwin was alive.

Behe states that elucidations of the evolutionary history of various biological features typically assume the existence of certain abilities as their starting point, such as Charles Darwin's example of a cluster of light-sensitive spots evolving into an eye via a series of intermediate steps.

He then points out that Darwin dismissed the need to explain the origin of the 'simple' light-sensitive spot, summarizes the modern understanding of the biochemistry of vision and claims that many other evolutionary explanations face a similar challenge.

Behe states that though he did identify assertions that evolution had occurred, he found none that had been supported by experiment or calculation, and concludes the book by offering intelligent design as a solution to irreducible complexity.

[10] Richard Dawkins criticized the book for The New York Times as being logically flawed by setting up a false dichotomy in which Darwinian evolution is rejected despite an enormous amount of positive evidence due to a single apparent failure to explain irreducible complexity.

Dawkins further commented that it was an argument Darwin himself had anticipated, and he stated that the example of a bacterial flagellum used by Behe had in fact been refuted by Kenneth R. Miller in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.