[I]t will be demanded to what purpose serves that curious organization of plants, and the animal mechanism in the parts of animals; might not vegetables grow, and shoot forth leaves of blossoms, and animals perform all their motions as well without as with all that variety of internal parts so elegantly contrived and put together; which, being ideas, have nothing powerful or operative in them, nor have any necessary connexion with the effects ascribed to them? If it be a Spirit that immediately produces every effect by a fiat or act of his will, we must think all that is fine and artificial in the works, whether of man or nature, to be made in vain. By this doctrine, though an artist hath made the spring and wheels, and every movement of a watch, and adjusted them in such a manner as he knew would produce the motions he designed, yet he must think all this done to no purpose, and that it is an Intelligence which directs the index, and points to the hour of the day. If so, why may not the Intelligence do it, without his being at the pains of making the movements and putting them together? Why does not an empty case serve as well as another? And how comes it to pass that whenever there is any fault in the going of a watch, there is some corresponding disorder to be found in the movements, which being mended by a skillful hand all is right again? The like may be said of all the clockwork of nature, great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be discerned by the best microscope. In short, it will be asked, how, upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena? Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 60
[T]hat what has been objected in sect. 60 amounts in reality to no more than this:- ideas are not anyhow and at random produced, there being a certain order and connexion between them, like to that of cause and effect; there are also several combinations of them made in a very regular and artificial manner, which seem like so many instruments in the hand of nature that, being hid as it were behind the scenes, have a secret operation in producing those appearances which are seen on the theatre of the world, being themselves discernible only to the curious eye of the philosopher. But, since one idea cannot be the cause of another, to what purpose is that connexion? And, since those instruments, being barely inefficacious perceptions in the mind, are not subservient to the production of natural effects, it is demanded why they are made; or, in other words, what reason can be assigned why God should make us, upon a close inspection into His works, behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, and so much according to rule; it not being credible that He would be at the expense (if one may so speak) of all that art and regularity to no purpose. Berkeley--A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Book 1, 64
There is a famous and thus far inconclusive, multi-layered debate between the two giants of early modern scholarship, Margaret Dauler Wilson (her paper) and Daniel Garber (his paper). The debate centers on Berkeley’s views on (what has been dubbed) ‘corpuscular skepticism,’ roughly, the idea that in addition to veil-of-ideas skepticism, Berkeley inherits from Locke skepticism about our ability to access to the posited to exist (real) corpuscular essences of things. One of the hermeneutic questions about Berkeley (and one that he faces with admirably forthrightness in Principles, Book 1, 60-66) is what right Berkeley has to posit such material corpuscles in his system. It is worth noting that the debate matters for the history of science (and philosophy) because in these passages, Berkeley helps promote a decisive shift in explanatory standards from an emphasis on essences to an emphasis on laws in the natural sciences. When we do not reflect on this, we tend to assume that such shift was a natural one, and perhaps already completed due to the influence of Descartes and the success of Newton’s Principia. But the shift in explanatory standards was, in fact, an eighteenth century achievement (unsettled again Lavoisier provided access to chemical essence). [See work by McMullin, Ducheyne, Downing, and your reporter.]
But the Garber-Wilson debate and its reception has overlooked, I think, that in Principles 60-66, Berkeley is responding to an ingenious argument developed by Clarke in his (1704) Demonstration on the Attributes of the Being of God. It would be correct to label Clarke’s argument a ‘design’ one, but in doing so we also obscure the significance of Clarke’s argument. For the particular design argument that Berkeley is responding to is an argument relies on the history of empirical success of science. In particular, in Principles 60 and its restatement in 64, Berkeley is responding to a hypothetical critic that has assimilated Clarke’s particular argument (the “common philosophy”) in defense of the existence of not just general, providential “final causes,” but local design (or finality). Clarke’s argument relies on then recent and progressive, specialized (to use some anachronism) scientific knowledge. Clarke writes:
If Galen so many ages ago could find in the construction and constitution of the parts of a Humane body, such undeniable marks of Contrivance and Design; as forced him Then to acknowledge and Admire the Wisdom of its Author: What would he have said, if he had known the Late Discoveries in Anatomy and Physick, the Circulation of the Blood, the exact structure of the Heart and Brain, the Uses of Numberless Glands and Valves for the Secretion and Motion of the Juices in the Body, besides several Veins and other Vessels and Receptacles not at at all known, or imagined for so much as to have any Existence in his Days, but which Now are discovered to serve the Wisest and most exquisite Ends imaginable?...Certainly Atheism, which Then was infinitely unable to withstand the Arguments drawn from this Topick; must Now, upon the additional Strength of these later Observations, which are every one an unanswerable Proof of the incomprehensible Wisdom of the Creator, be utterly ashamed to show its Head. We Now see with how great reason the Author of the Book of Ecclesiasticus after he had described the Beauty of the Sun and Stars, and all the then Visible Works of God in Heaven and Earth, concluded, ch. 43, v 32, (as We after all the Discoveries of later Ages, may no doubt still truly say,) There are yet hid greater things than these and we have seen but a few of his Works.” (S. Clarke, Demonstration, 226-233, Emphases by Clarke)
One point of Clarke’s argument is revealed by his use of Ecclesiasticus 43:32. For Clarke this is the predictive assertion, or philosophical prophecy, that there is still much to learn about nature (and that God will reveal this at appropriate time in future). In context, Clarke treats Newton's discoveries as evidence of our progress in knowledge and as instantiating the promise that there is much more to learn. According to Clarke revelation teaches us that nature is knowable and that inquiry is open ended. (Recall this post.)
But the more important point for present purposes is that on Clarke’s account natural philosophy provides a very special kind of design argument: (1) At a given time natural science provides evidence of abundant design in nature which seems to point to a designer—this is a familiar argument and also has now familiar objections. But Clarke bags that first argument, to claim that (2) over time – with a history of empirical success – science provides a kind of cumulative, argument for design. This second point, too, has two components: (a) if it was reasonable (by Galen, Lucretius, Cicero, etc.) to accept a godly designer on much less empirical evidence back in the olden days, how much more reasonable is it now to accept the inference to a Godly designer with so much more empirical evidence available after Leuwenhoek’s microscopes and Isaac Newton’s achievement. And (b) Clarke explicitly revives an argument found in Cicero that the very possibility of science constitutively presupposes commitment to design in nature (and, thus a designer) such that the history of scientific success is a kind of further reinforcement of the design argument.*
So, even though Berkeley’s overall project is to make sure that metaphysical explanation has room for final causes (promoted by Clarke), he recognizes that his very own arguments can appear to undercut a key premise -- that there are hidden mechanisms, which provide further evidence of design, that are revealed by the specialized, conjoined operation of advanced scientific instruments and advanced scientific theory – of that argument. (That this is key is not so clear in 60, but more explicit in the restatement in 64.)
Now it is not entirely obvious what Berkeley’s answer to the hypothetical critic is (and this is, in part, the debate between Dauler Wilson and Garber). The way I understand Berkeley’s position is not that he wishes to undercut the special kind of design argument (1 through -2(b)), but he only wishes to block the further inference that explaining things “by corporeal causes” really counts as (privileged or) a genuine explanation (for to explain one must do so by reference to signs, final causes, and active principles and, by definition, matter is none of these). So, one can use the revelation of hidden structure as evidence for design, but not as evidence for the mechanical philosophy.
*Here I do not spell out this argument. (But Clarke overlooks the possibility of a regulative presupposition.)
Comments