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Watchmaker analogy

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The watchmaker analogy is often used as a teleological argument (argument from design) in support of the view that the universe (or features of it) are the product of a Conscious Designer.

History

Historically, proponents of a God as designer have suggested: If we find a watch in a field, it is too complex to have appeared there by natural process so they assume that there must be a watchmaker responsible for its creation. Similarly, the argument goes, life is too complex not to have a creator, God.

The watchmaker analogy before Paley

This analogy was anticipated by Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC) in De natura deorum, ii. 34

When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells the time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence, when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers? (Gjertsen 1989, p. 199, quoted by Dennett 1995, p. 29)

The great experimental scientist Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703) made several similar comparisons to watches in his revolutionary book Micrographia in 1664. The book featured drawings of life as it had never been seen before – through the lens of a powerful microscope – and compared man-made artifacts to natural organisms, concluding that artifacts paled in comparison with the "Omnipotency and Infinite perfections of the great Creatour"[1]. Hooke compared the way watches were assembled with the workings of the organisms he was examining:

For, as divers Watches may be made out of several materials, which may yet have all the same appearance, and move after the same manner, that is, shew the hour equally true, the one as the other, and out of the same kind of matter, like Watches, may be wrought differing ways; and, as one and the same Watch may, by being diversly agitated, or mov'd, by this or that agent, or after this or that manner, produce a quite contrary effect: So may it be with these most curious Engines of Insect's bodies; the All-wise God of Nature, may have so ordered and disposed the little Automatons, that when nourished, acted, or enlivened by this cause, they produce one kind of effect, or animate shape, when by another they act quite another way, and another Animal is produc'd. So may he so order several materials, as to make them, by several kinds of methods, produce similar Automatons [2].

The English divine William Derham (26 November 1657 – 5 April 1735) published his Artificial Clockmaker in 1696, a teleological argument for the being and attributes of God. The watchmaker analogy was also made by Bernard Nieuwentyt (1730).

William Paley

Perhaps most famously, William Paley (1743 – 1805) used the 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 field, 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 complex structures, such as living things, must be the work of God.

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked ho the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be found in that place; I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there ... there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use.

— William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)

As a sidenote, 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.

After Paley

When Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) completed his studies of theology at Christ's College, Cambridge in 1831 he read Paley's Natural Theology and was convinced by it as a rational proof of God's existence in the complexity of living beings exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world. Later, after years of study and observation, he changed his opinion. Darwin concluded that species had changed over generations during very long periods. He believed this was mainly through natural selelction. He wrote, "It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified".

In the 21st century, many creationists still use the Watchmaker analogy (or more sophisticated variants such as intelligent design). The majority of scientists believe that supporters of movements such as intelligent design either misunderstand of wilfully misrepresent evolution. [3]

The case against the watchmaker analogy

As Charles Darwin's investigations of natural history progressed he became convinced that "The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered." In 1868 Darwin wrote, “I cannot possibly believe that a false theory would explain so many classes of facts.”

Geneticist, Richard Dawkins wrote a book with the title, The Blind Watchmaker. In this book and others he demonstrated a case against an intelligent designer, that systems which are complex today did not have to be so in the past in order to grant the organism an advantage, so there was never any point at which an outside agent was needed to explain the origin of complexity.

One example Dawkins gives is a light sensitive patch of skin which is enough to allow an animal to move into the warmth, or out of light which may reveal it to a predator, without the need for the lens, cornea, or iris, but this patch can be seen as the foundation of the retina of the much more evolved eye, which is then built up in small steps.

Examples, by different authors of bad design are :

  • The African locust where nerve cells start in the abdomen but connect to the wing. This leads to unnecessary use of materials. [4]
  • The inverted nature of the vertebrate retina. The nerve cells that connect the light-sensitive cells of the retina to the brain are located in front of these cells, partially blocking the incoming light. Furthermore, because of this positioning, a blind spot is created where the optic nerve punctures the retina to reach these nerve cells.

Bad design of the human reproductive system include the following :-

  • The male foetal Testis develop within the abdomen. Later they migrate through the abdominal wall and enter the scrotum. This causes two weak points in the abdominal wall where Hernias can form. [5]
  • In male Humans the Urethra goes through the Prostate gland. Therefore if the prostate gland is enlarged for any reason the urethra risks being blocked. [6]
  • In female Humans the Birth canal goes through the pelvis. If the baby’s head is larger than the pelvic opening the baby cannot be born naturally. Before the development of modern surgery, (Caesarean section) this invariably lead to the death of the Mother, the baby or both. Birth would be easier if the birth canal went through the front of the abdomen. [7]
  • In female humans a fertilized egg can settle into the fallopian tube or the cervix instead of the uterus causing an ectopic pregnancy. If a fertilized egg passes through the space between the ovary and the fallopian tube into the abdomen this also can cause ectopic pregnancy. This gap is bad design. Placental tissue can form in all three abnormal areas although a baby cannot develop safely there.

It is claimed no intelligent designer would have made such unreasonable designs unless the 'designer' is inept or sadistic. These points are discussed in more detail in, Argument from poor design.

References

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