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Watchmaker analogy
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The watchmaker analogy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument for the existence of God. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe.
The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in 1802.
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The watchmaker analogy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument for the existence of God. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer. The analogy has played a prominent role in natural theology and the "argument from design," where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God and for the intelligent design of the universe.
The most famous statement of the teleological argument using the watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in 1802. In 1838, Charles Darwin's formulation of the theory of natural selection provided a strong counter-argument to the Watchmaker analogy. In the United States, starting in the 1980s, the concepts of evolution and natural selection (usually referred to by opponents as "Darwinism") became the subject of national debate, including a renewed interest in the watchmaker argument by both popular atheists and the intelligent design movement.
The Watchmaker argument
The watchmaker analogy consists of the comparison of some natural phenomenon to a watch. Typically, the analogy is presented as a prelude to the teleological argument and is generally presented as:
- The complex inner workings of a watch necessitate an intelligent designer.
- As with a watch, the complexity of X (a particular organ or organism, the structure of the solar system, life, the entire universe) necessitates a designer.
In this presentation, the watch analogy (step 1) does not function as a premise to an argument — rather it functions as a rhetorical device and a preamble. Its purpose is to establish the plausibility of the general premise: you can tell, simply by looking at something, whether or not it was the product of intelligent design.
In most formulations of the argument, the characteristic that indicates intelligent design is left implicit. In some formulations, the characteristic is orderliness or complexity (which is a form of order). In other cases it is clearly being designed for a purpose, where clearly is usually left undefined.
William Paley
As complicated technology, watches and timepieces were used as examples in philosophical discussions throughout history. Cicero, Voltaire and René Descartes, for example, used timepieces in arguments regarding purpose. The Watchmaker analogy, as described here, was most famously formulated by Paley.
William Paley (1743–1805) used the Watchmaker analogy in his book Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, published in 1802. In it, Paley wrote that if a pocket watch is found on a heath, it is most reasonable to assume that someone dropped it and that it was made by a watchmaker and not by natural forces.
Paley went on to argue that the complex structures of living things and the remarkable adaptations of plants and animals required an intelligent designer. He believed the natural world was the creation of God and showed the nature of the creator. According to Paley, God had carefully designed "even the most humble and insignificant organisms" and all of their minute features (such as the wings and antennae of earwigs). He believed therefore that God must care even more for humanity.
Paley recognised that there is great suffering in nature, and that nature appears to be indifferent to pain. His way of reconciling this with his belief in a benevolent God was to assume that life had more pleasure than pain. (See Problem of Evil).
As a side note, a charge of wholesale plagiarism from this book was brought against Paley in the Athenaeum for 1848, but the famous illustration of the watch was not peculiar to Nieuwentyt, and had been used by many others before either Paley or Nieuwentyt.
Criticism
There are two main arguments against the Watchmaker analogy. 1) Complex artifacts don't necessitates a designer. 2) The watch is a faulty analogy.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin's theory provided another explanation for complex artifacts, one where a design is not necessary.
When Charles Darwin (1809–1882) completed his studies of theology at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1831, he read Paley's Natural Theology and believed that the work gave rational proof of the existence of God. This was because living beings showed complexity and were exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world.
Subsequently, on the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin found that nature was not so beneficent, and the distribution of species did not support ideas of divine creation. In 1838, shortly after his return, Darwin conceived his theory that natural selection, rather than divine design, was the best explanation for gradual change in populations over many generations.
Darwin reviewed the implications of this finding in his autobiography:
The idea that nature was governed by laws was already common, and in 1833 William Whewell as a proponent of the natural theology that Paley had inspired had written that "with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this—we can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws." By the time Darwin published his theory, liberal theologians were already supporting such ideas, and by the late 19th century their modernist approach was predominant in theology. In science, evolution theory incorporating Darwin's natural selection became completely accepted.
Richard Dawkins
Dawkins also gives an explanation for complex artifacts, one where a design is not necessary.
Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker (1986) is a reply to the watch argument. Dawkins demonstrates through computer simulation that "highly complex" systems can be produced by a series of very small randomly-generated yet naturally selected steps, rather than an intelligent designer.
He further points out the self-refuting nature of the argument: that if complex things must have been intelligently designed by something more complex than themselves, then anything posited as this complex designer (i.e. God) must also have been designed by something yet more complex.
In a Horizon episode also entitled The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins described Paley's argument "as mistaken as it is elegant". In both contexts he saw Paley as having made an incorrect proposal as to a certain problem's solution, but did not disrespect him for this. In his essay The big bang, Steven Pinker discussed Dawkins' coverage of Paley's argument, adding: "Biologists today do not disagree with Paley's laying out of the problem. They disagree only with his solution."
Mandelbrot Analogy
A similar objection is coined as the Mandelbrot Analogy. It relies on the observation that some complex patterns and behaviours, such as those seen in fractals and chaotical systems, arise naturally from simple systems. Therefore the complexity of something isn't a valid argument for the necessity of a designer.
Faulty Analogy
Minor criticisms have found fault in the watch, or the alternatively 'eye', analogy.
For example anthropologists Richerson and Boyd argue the one human could not make a watch on their own and therefore a watch does not have a designer. ref>
Creationist revival of the analogy
In the early 20th century the modernist theology of higher criticism was contested in the United States by Biblical literalists who campaigned successfully against the teaching of evolution and began calling themselves Creationists in the 1920s. When teaching of evolution was reintroduced into public schools in the 1960s they adopted what they called creation science which had a central concept of design in similar terms to Paley's argument. That idea was then relabelled intelligent design which presents the same analogy as an argument against evolution by natural selection without explicitly stating that the "intelligent designer" was God. The argument from the complexity of biological organisms was now presented as the irreducible complexity argument.
The watchmaker analogy was referenced in the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. Throughout the trial, the Reverend William Paley was mentioned several times, naming Paley the "posterboy" of Intelligent Design.
The defense's expert witness John Haught noted that both Intelligent Design and the watchmaker analogy are both "reformulations" of the same theological argument..
On day 21 of the trial, Mr. Harvey walked Dr. Minnich through a modernized version of Paley's argument, substituting a cell phone for a watch.
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In his ruling, the judge stated that the use of the argument from design by intelligent design proponents "is merely a restatement of the Reverend William Paley's argument applied at the cell level" and that the argument from design is subjective.
See also
- The clockmaker hypothesis is a tenet of deism that states that God created the universe, but has not interfered with its operation since then. The analogy is that of a clockmaker who makes a clock, winds it up, and lets it run.
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