Abstract
The design argument was rebutted by David Hume. He argued that the world and its contents (such as organisms) were not analogous to human artifacts. Hume further suggested that there were equally plausible alternatives to design to explain the organized complexity of the cosmos, such as random processes in multiple universes, or that matter could have inherent properties to self-organize, absent any external crafting. William Paley, writing after Hume, argued that the functional complexity of living beings, however, defied naturalistic explanations. In effect he dared anyone to come up with an alternative to his inference to design, and hence a designer, outside of nature. Charles Darwin explained the apparent design of functional complexity by his theory of natural selection. Asa Gray, however, in essays as well as in correspondence with Darwin argued that natural selection allowed for a type of ‘evolutionary teleology’ in which design at most could be considered the result of universal principles. F.E. Hicks updated Hume by specifically objecting to the use of design arguments by Paley. Hicks argued that the apparent design seen in nature reflected order at a deep level in nature. The design argument was briefly revived by Lawrence Henderson early in the twentieth century but he ultimately concluded that design and teleology were not necessarily mutually entailing and he retracted his design argument in favor of one that he termed ‘natural teleology’. The current claims of ‘intelligent design’ have the same logical problems that have beset previous design arguments. If design is divorced from teleology and its discontents put behind us, then there is a possibility that the latter can have a place in the development of theories to explain the phenomena of emergent complexity.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abir-Am P.G. (1987) The biotheoretical gathering, transdisciplinary authority and the incipient legitimation of molecular biology in the 1930s: New perspective on the historical sociology of science. History of Science 25: 1–70
Allen C., Bekoff M., Lauder G. (1998) Nature’s purposes: Analysis of function and design in biology. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA
Barbour I.G. (2005) Evolution and process thought. Theology and Science 3: 161–178
Barrow, J. D. (2008). Chemistry and sensitivity. In Fitness of the cosmos for life: Biochemistry and fine-tuning (pp. 132–158). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barrow J.D., Tipler F.J. (1986) The anthropic cosmological principle. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Bar-Yam Y. (1997) Dynamics of complex systems. Perseus, Reading, MA
Behe M.J. (1996) Darwin’s black box: The biochemical challenge to evolution. The Free Press, New York
Blum H. (1951) Time’s arrow and evolution. Princeton University Press, Princeton
Brooks D.R., Wiley E.O. (1986) Evolution as entropy: Toward a unified theory of biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Browne J. (1995) Charles Darwin: Voyaging. Knopf, New York
Burkhardt F., Porter D.M., Browne J., Richmond M. (1993) The correspondence of Charles Darwin: Volume 8, 1860. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Casti J.L. (1994) Complexification: Explaining a paradoxical world through the science of surprise. HarperCollins, New York
Cicero, M. T. (1933). De Natura Deorum (H. Rackham, Trans.). London: William Heinemann.
Clayton P. (2004) Mind & emergence: From quantum to consciousness. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Clayton P. (2006) Biology, directionality, and God: Getting clear on the stakes for religion-science discussion. Theology and Science 4: 121–127
Cobbe F.P. (1872) Darwinism in morals and other essays. Williams and Norgate, London
Conway Morris S. (2003) Life’s solutions: Inevitable humans in a lonely universe. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Cooke J.P. (1865) Religion and chemistry: Or, proofs of God’s plan in the atmosphere and its elements (2nd edn). Griggs, New York
Cooke J.P. (1888) The credentials of science; The warrant of faith. Robert Carter & Bros., New York
Corning P.A. (2002) The re-emergence of “emergence”: A venerable concept in search of a theory. Complexity 7(6): 18–30
Corning P.A. (2003) Nature’s magic: Synergy in evolution and the fate of humankind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, London: John Murray. (Available also as a facsimile reprint (1964), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Darwin C. (1862) On the various contrivances by which British and Foreign orchids are fertilised by insects and on the good effects of intercrossing. John Murray, London
Darwin, F. (Ed.). (1887). Life and letters of Charles Darwin (2 Vols). New York: Appleton.
Davies P. (1998) Teleology without teleology: Purpose through emergent complexity. In: Russell R.J., Stoeger W.R., Ayala F.J. (eds) Evolutionary and molecular biology: Scientific perspectives on divine action. Vatican Observatory Publications, Vatican City, pp 151–162
Davies P. (2004) Emergent complexity, teleology, and the arrow of time. In: Dembski W.A., Ruse M. (eds) Debating design: From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 191–209
Davies P.C.W. (2005) The universe—what’s the point. In: Harper C.L., Jr. (eds) Spiritual information. Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia and London
Deacon T.W. (2003) The hierarchic logic of emergence: untangling the interdependence of evolution and self-organization. In: Weber B.H., Depew D.J. (eds) Evolution and learning: The Baldwin effect reconsidered. MIT Press, Cambridge MA, pp 273–308
Deacon T.W. (2006) Reciprocal linkage between self-organizing processes is sufficient for self-reproduction and evolvability. Biological Theory 1(2): 1–14
Dembski W.A. (1998) The design inference: Eliminating chance through small probabilities. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Denton M.J. (2005) Henderson’s “fine-tuning argument” Time for rediscovery. In: Harper C.L., Jr. (eds) Spiritual information: 100 Perspectives on science and religion. Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia and London
Depew D.J., Weber B.H. (1995) Darwinism evolving: Systems dynamics and the genealogy of natural selection. MIT Press, Cambridge MA
Desmond A., Moore J. (1991) Darwin. Michael Joseph, London
Dewar R. (2003) Information theory explanation of the fluctuation theorem, maximum entropy production and self-organized criticality in non-equilibrium stationary states. Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and General 36: 631–641
Fry I. (1996) On the biological significance and properties of matter: L. J. Henderson’s theory of the fitness of the environment. Journal of the History of Biology 29: 155–196
Fyfe A. (1997) The reception of William Paley’s “Natural Theology” in the University of Cambridge. British Journal for the History of Science 30: 321–335
Fyfe A. (2002) Publishing and the classics: Paley’s “Natural Theology” and the nineteenth-century scientific canon. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 33: 729–751
Ghiselin M.T. (1969) The triumph of the Darwinian method. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Gillespie N.C. (1990) Divine design and the industrial revolution: Williams Paley’s abortive reform of natural theology. Isis 81: 214–229
Gray, A. (1876). Evolutionary teleology. In Darwiniana: Essays and reviews pertaining to Darwinism (pp. 356–390). New York: Appleton.
Grene M., Depew D. (2004) The philosophy of biology: An episodic history. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Haldane, J. B. S. (1932). God-makers. In The inequality of man and other essays. London: Chatto & Windus. (Reprinted in On being the right size, pp. 85–100, by J. B. S. Haldane, 1985, J. Maynard Smith, Ed., New York: Oxford University Press).
Henderson L.J. (1913) The fitness of the environment: An inquiry into the biological significance of the properties of matter. Macmillan, New York
Henderson L.J. (1917) The order of nature. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Hicks L.E. (1883) A critique of design arguments: A historical review and free examination of the methods of reasoning in natural theology. Charles Scribner’s & Sons, New York
Hopkins, F. G. (1913). The dynamic side of biochemistry. Reports of the British Association, 1913, 652 (Reprinted in Hopkins & biochemistry, pp. 136–159, by J. Needham, Ed., 1949, Cambridge: Heffer).
Hume, D. (1779 [1994]). Dialogues concerning natural religion. (Reprinted in E. A. Burtt (Ed.), The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill. New York: Random House Modern Library).
Kauffman S.A. (1993) The origins of order: Self-organization and selection in evolution. Oxford University Press, New York
Kauffman S.A. (2000) Investigations. Oxford University Press, New York
Kauffman S.A. (2004) Autonomous agents. In: Barrow J.D., Davies P.C.W., Harper C.L., Jr. (eds) Science and ultimate reality: Quantum theory, cosmology and complexity. Templeton Foundation Press, Philadelphia and London
Kleidon A., Lorenz R.D. (2005) Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the production of entropy: Life, earth, and beyond. Springer Verlag, Heidelberg
Lennox J.G. (1994) Darwin was a teleologist. Biology and Philosophy 8: 405–421
Levere T.H. (1981) Poetry realized in nature: Samuel Taylor Coleridge and early nineteenth-century science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Moore J.R. (1979) The Post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Morowitz H.J. (2002) The emergence of everything: How the world became complex. Oxford University Press, New York
Needham J. (1936) Order and life. Yale University Press, New Haven
Oppy G. (1996) Hume and the argument for biological design. Biology and Philosophy 11: 519–534
Ospovat D. (1978) Perfect adaptation and the teleological explanation: Aprroaches to the problem of the history of life in the mid-nineteenth century. Studies in the History of Biology 2: 33–56
Ospovat D. (1981) The development of Darwin’s Theory: Natural history, natural theology, and natural selection. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Pagels H.R. (1988) The dreams of reason: The computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity. Simon and Schuster, New York
Paley W. (1802) Natural theology, or evidences of the existence and attributes of the deity collected from the appearances of nature. Fauldner, London
Parascandola J. (1971) Organismic and holistic concepts in the thought of L. J. Henderson. Journal for the History of Biology 4: 63–113
Parascandola J. (1972) Lawrence Joseph Henderson. In: Gillispie C.C. (eds) Dictionary of scientific biography VI. Scribner’s Sons, New York, pp 260–262
Polkinghorne J. (2004) The inbuilt potentiality of creation. In: Dembski W.A., Ruse M. (eds) Debating design: From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 246–260
Popper K. (1990) A world of propensities. Thoemmes, Bristol
Powell B. (1860) On the study of the evidences of Christianity. In: Parker J.W. (eds) Essays and reviews. Parker & Son, London, pp 94–144
Prebble J., Weber B. (2003) Wandering in the gardens of the mind: Peter Mitchell and the making of Glynn. Oxford University Press, New York
Prigogine I. (1981) From being to becoming: Time and complexity in the physical sciences. Freeman, New York
Prout W. (1834) Climate, meteorology and the function of digestion considered with reference to natural theology. William Pickering, London
Rosenberg A. (2006) Darwinian reductionism: Or, how to stop worrying and love molecular biology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Ruse M. (2002) Darwin and design. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA
Schneider E.D., Sagan D. (2005) Into the cool: Energy flow thermodynamics and life. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Secord J.A. (2000) Victorian sensation: The extraordinary publication, reception, and secret authorship of vistiges of the natural history of creation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Silberstein M. (2002) Reduction, emergence and explanation. In: Machamer P., Silberstein M. (eds) The Blackwell guide to the philosophy of science. Blackwell, Malden, MA, pp 80–107
Sober E. (2004) The design argument. In: Dembski W.A., Ruse M. (eds) Debating design: From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 98–129
Swenson R. (1989) Emergent attrtactions and the law of maximum entropy production: Foundations to a theory of general evolution. Systems Research 6: 187–197
Taylor M.C. (2003) The moment of complexity: Emerging network cultures. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Topham J.R. (1998) Beyond the “common context”: The production and reading of the Bridgewater Treatises. Isis 89: 233–262
Ulanowicz R.E. (1997) Ecology the ascendant perspective. Columbia University Press, New York
Ulanowicz R.E. (2002) Ecology, a dialog between the quick and the dead. Emergence 4(1): 34–52
Ulanowicz R.E. (2004) Ecosystem dynamics: A natural middle. Theology and Science 2(2): 231–253
Waldrup M.M. (1992) Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of order and chaos. Simon and Schuster, New York
Weatherall M., Kamminga H. (1992) Dynamic science: Biochemistry in Cambridge 1898–1949. Cambridge, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Weber, B. H. (2007). Emergence of life. Zygon (in press).
Weber B.H. (2009) Lawrence Henderson’s natural teleology. In: Lynden-Bell R.M., Conway Morris S., Barrow J.D., Finney J.L., Harper C.L. (eds) Water of life: Counterfactual chemistry and fine-tuning in biochemistry. Taylor and Francis, Boca Ratan, FL (in press)
Weber B.H., Depew D.J. (2004) Darwinism, design and complex systems dynamics. In: Dembski W.A., Ruse M. (eds) Debating design: From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 173–190
Whewell W. (1833) Astronomy and general physics considered in reference to natural theology. William Pickering, London
Wicken J.S. (1987) Evolution, information and thermodynamics: Extending the Darwinian program. Oxford University Press, New York
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weber, B.H. Design and its discontents. Synthese 178, 271–289 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9543-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-009-9543-7