Watchmaker analogy

The watchmaker analogy is a often used as a teleological argument (argument from design) in support of Irreducible complexity by opponents of Evolution. If we find a watch in a field, it is too complex to have appeared there by natural process so we 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.

Related Topics:
Teleological argument - Irreducible complexity - Evolution - Watch - Watchmaker - God

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

Related Topics:
Cicero - 106 BC - 43 BC

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: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)

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The great experimental scientist Robert Hooke made several 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"http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm. Hooke compared the way watches were assembled with the workings of the organisms he was examining:

Related Topics:
Robert Hooke - Micrographia

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: 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 Automatonshttp://www.gutenberg.org/files/15491/15491-h/15491-h.htm.

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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.

Related Topics:
William Derham - 26 November - 1657 - 5 April - 1735 - 1696

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