|
Born in July 1743, in Peterborough, England, William Paley trained
for the
Anglican priesthood, graduating from Christ's College, Cambridge in
1763. He was appointed a fellow and tutor of his college in 1766,
and rose through the ranks of the Anglican Church. He died on May
25, 1805.
Paley wrote several books on philosophy and Christianity, which
proved extremely influential. His 1794 book A View of the Evidence
of Christianity was required reading at Cambridge University until
the 20th century. His most influential contribution to biological
thought, however, was his book Natural Theology: or, Evidences of
the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the
Appearances of Nature, first published in 1802. In this book, Paley
laid out a full exposition of natural theology, the belief that the
nature of God could be
understood by reference to His creation, the natural world. He
introduced one of
the most famous metaphors in the philosophy of science, the image of
the
watchmaker:
. . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . that its
several
parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are
so formed
and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as
to point
out the hour of the day; that if the different parts had been
differently
shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in
any other
order than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all
would have
been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered
the use that
is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable,
that the
watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some
time and
at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for
the
purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its
construction
and designed its use.
Living organisms, Paley argued, are even more complicated than
watches, "in a
degree which exceeds all computation." How else to account for the
often amazing adaptations of animals and plants? Only an intelligent
Designer could have created them, just as only an intelligent
watchmaker can make a watch:
The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have
had a
designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD.
And, as Paley went on to argue, if God had taken such care in
designing even the
most humble and insignificant organisms, how much more must God care
for
humanity!
The hinges in the wings of an earwig, and the joints of its
antennae, are as
highly wrought, as if the Creator had nothing else to finish. We see
no signs
of dimunition of care by multiplicity of objects, or of distraction
of thought
by variety. We have no reason to fear, therefore, our being
forgotten, or
overlooked, or neglected.
Paley's arguments go back to authors such as John Ray, and have had
a long
intellectual history, surviving to the present day in many a piece
of
creationist rhetoric. Yet Charles Darwin, while himself a student at
Christ's
College of Cambridge University, not only had to read Paley, but was
deeply
impressed with Paley's arguments, as the quote at the top of this
page shows.
Even though Paley's concept of God as a designer is very different
from Darwin's
theory of natural selection, Darwin took from his reading of Paley a
belief in
adaptation -- that organisms are somehow fit for the environments in
which they
live, that their structure reflects the functions they perform
throughout their
lives. Where natural theology ran into trouble was in explaining the
many cases
of apparent pain, waste, and cruelty in the living world: why would
a benevolent
Designer have made cats play with mice before killing them, or
parasites that
eat their hosts from the inside? Paley struggled to reconcile the
apparent
cruelty and indifference of nature with his belief in a good God,
and finally
concluded that the joys of life simply outweighed its sorrows. Where
Darwin
departed from Paley was in his concept of natural selection as a
process that
could produce adaptation and design without the all-encompassing
intervention of
a benevolent Designer.
|
