A watch in the woods

Exploring Paley's Watchmaker Analogy

I’ve always found complex systems to be supremely overwhelming. 

I remember a conversation I had with my parents near the end of high school while trying to figure out what career path I’d pursue in the near future. 

As I considered technical options, like engineering, all I could think about were the detailed circuit boards that controlled something as small and simple as my cell phone. All those components, chips, wires, nodes—how could one person possibly understand what they all do and how their combined efforts allow me to see my friends’ Instagram posts or stream an album? 

I’m a big picture thinker, and minutiae like that can sometimes be too much for me to take in all at once. It’s why I didn’t go into operations or logistics; why I marvel at “systems of systems” like the Saturn V or the human body; why it takes me several business days to wash, dry, fold, and put away a single load of laundry; why I don’t prefer to plan a trip with an itinerary more detailed than “check in is at 4.” 

I think the reason these complex systems are so striking is their intentionality. There are so many details to attend to, so many tasks to be accomplished, so many moving parts to coordinate and collaborate to achieve the goal. Yet, somehow, it works.

So, in a big way, my incredulity isn’t at the systems themselves, but in the nearly incalculable amount of manpower behind them—the designers, the operators, the improvers, the maintainers. Complexity almost seems to necessitate design, and where there’s a design, I think we have to assume a designer. 

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This form of observation is fundamental to philosophy; Aristotle argued that wonder at the natural world is what caused people to start thinking philosophically in the first place: “For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize…”¹

One of my favorite illustrations of this design-designer relationship is William Paley’s Watchmaker analogy, published in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity. It goes like this: 

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 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 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, viz., 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.²

Paley continues by giving an overview of the inner workings of the watch: 

To reckon up a few of the plainest of these parts, and of their offices, all tending to one result: We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavor to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain communicating the action of the spring from the box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fusee to the balance, and from the balance to the pointer, and, at the same time, by the size and shape of those wheels, so regulating that motion as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable and measured progression, to pass over a  given space in a given time. We take notice that the wheels are made of brass in order to keep them from rust; the springs of steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work; but in the room of which, if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not be seen without opening the case. 

This mechanism being observed, the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch had a maker: that there must have existed at some time, and 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.

This analogy falls under a class of philosophical arguments for God’s existence often called “Teleological Arguments,” which appeal to the design of the universe. Popular teleological arguments include the Fine-Tuning Argument, which uses math and science to highlight how the physical laws that allow life to exist in our universe imply an intentional designer. 

I’m partial to Paley’s Watchmaker Analogy for a few reasons. For one, I’ve been married to a mechanical design engineer for nearly four years; I’d like to think that helps me appreciate Paley’s detailed discussion of the inner workings of the watch, complete with considerations of why and how each material was chosen for each specific component. 

But, I also love the straightforward, common-sense approach that the argument takes.

In the following sections, Paley defends his conclusion by listing a few possible objections. For example, Paley can reasonably assume a designer for the watch even if he’s never seen a watch made, or known anyone who can make a watch. If the watch didn’t work perfectly; if it had parts with unknown purposes; if he’s ignorant of the physical laws that allow the gears to turn; none of these assumptions imply that the watch came to be without the agency of a creator. 

This leads Paley to conclude that

Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater and more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation. 

I mean that the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. 

If you get a chance on this holiday weekend, consider the vast complexity of the world around you; the natural laws that govern motion and allow life; the complex ecosystems that sustain nature; the intentionality behind the mechanics in your car, your phone, your ice cream maker. Allow yourself to be amazed like Aristotle and the philosophers of old, and thank God for his design in every aspect of life. 

Next week, we’ll look at some common objections and responses to teleological arguments. 

From the archives:

And a recommendation:

See here for a hot-off-the-press discussion of one of the more scientific versions of the Teleological Argument.

1. From Aristotle’s Metaphysics, accessed here: https://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdWildWeb/courses/wphil/readings/wphil_rdg05_metaphysics_entire.htm#:~:text=For%20it%20is%20owing%20to,the%20stars%2C%20and%20about%20the

2. I’m quoting the argument as it appears in Philosophy of Religion, Fifth edition, by Peterson, Hasker, Reichenbach, and Basinger. If you’re interested in reading more, the full text is available here: https://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=A142&viewtype=text&pageseq=1