Encyclopedia of Evolution.pdf - Online Reading Center

very popular. Paley published Reasons for Contentment:
Addressed to the Laboring Part of the British Public in 1793.
In 1794 he wrote A View of the Evidences of Christianity.
His most famous book was Natural Theology: or, Evidences
of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from
the Appearances of Nature, which he published in 1802.
Although the very rationalist philosophers at whom the book
was aimed did not accept his arguments, it remained a popular
textbook at Cambridge for decades. Charles Darwin (see
Darwin, Charles), while a theology student at Cambridge,
loved the book and claimed to have practically memorized it.
Paley’s argument is presented here in his words, as they
remain the clearest statement of the argument from design.
Paley began his argument:
In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot
against a stone and were asked how the stone came
to be there, I might possibly answer that for anything
I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever;
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 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. Yet why should not
this answer serve for the watch as well as for the
stone? Why is it not as admissible in the second case
as in the first? For this reason, and for no other,
namely, that when we come to inspect the watch, we
perceive—what we could not discover in the stone—
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, of a different size 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.
Paley then considered several possible objections to the
argument:
Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion,
that we had never seen a watch made—that we had
never known an artist capable of making one—that
we were altogether incapable of executing such a
piece of workmanship ourselves, or of understanding
in what manner it was performed … Neither …
would it invalidate our conclusion, that the watch
sometimes went wrong or that it seldom went exactly
right. It is not necessary that a machine be perfect
in order to show with what design it was made
… Nor … would it bring any uncertainty into the
argument, if there were a few parts of the watch,
Neandertals
concerning which we could not discover or had not
yet discovered in what manner they conduced to the
general effect…
Paley proceeded, through the rest of the book, to show that
the human body appears designed for the purpose of sustaining
life, just as the watch appears designed for telling time.
He says that it is just as much “a perversion of language” to
attribute the origin of the human body to mere natural law
as it would be to attribute the watch to mere metallic law.
Perhaps Paley had in mind the evolutionary speculations
that some naturalists had published (see Darwin, Erasmus)
which claimed that evolution just happened, but provided
no explanation as to how it could have happened. In effect,
Paley argued, design requires a Designer.
One of Paley’s arguments is not used today by defenders
of intelligent design. Paley said that his argument was not
diminished if some component is not essential for the operation
of the watch. Intelligent design theorists, in contrast,
insist that biological systems have “irreducible complexity”
and will not work if even one of the components is missing.
Though many scientists and science educators today dismiss
Paley’s arguments, these arguments were very reasonable
for the state of knowledge that existed in 1802. But that was
soon to change. Little did young Charles Darwin suspect, as
he read Paley, that he would be the one to propose a process
that could produce design without an intelligent designer (see
natural selection). The effectiveness of natural selection in
producing the appearance of design is the inspiration for the
book title The Blind Watchmaker (see Dawkins, Richard).
Further Reading
Paley, William. Natural Theology. Available online. URL: http://www.
hti.umich.edu/cgi/p/pd-modeng/pd-modeng-idx?type=HTML&rgn=
TEI.2 &byte=53049319. Accessed May 3, 2005.
Neandertals Neandertals were a human species that lived
in Europe and adjacent regions of Asia between about 120
thousand and 30 thousand years ago. The original spelling
was Neanderthals (still a preferred spelling in Britain) but the
updated spelling reflects the German pronunciation and new
German spelling. Neandertals were apparently not ancestral
to modern humans (see Homo sapiens), and represent a separate
line of evolution from an African species of hominin,
probably Homo HeiDelbergensis. Most anthropologists
today accord them their own species status as Homo neanderthalensis.
Because of their large brains, they are usually called
humans despite a lack of direct evolutionary connection to the
modern human species. Neandertals have gotten a bad reputation
far beyond what the evidence requires. They were probably
the origin of the ferocious “cave man” image in popular
culture, and “Neanderthal” is a favorite epithet of some politicians
to describe their putatively stupid opponents.
The earliest discovery of Neandertal remains were skeletal
fragments of a child found at Engis Cave in Belgium about
1830. Much more famous was the 1848 discovery of a Neandertal
cranium at Forbes Quarry in Gibraltar. Neither of
these discoveries was originally recognized as representing a