Digressions&Impressions

On Paley's (and Nieuwentyt's) Watch, Spinozism and the Scientific Revolution

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 any thing I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to shew the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be enquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given, that, for any thing 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?...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 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 several parts had been differently shaped from what they are, 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.--William Paley (1802), Natural theology: or, Evidence of the existence and attributes of the Deity, 1-2 (emphasis in original; capitalization modernized.)

There is no doubt that Paley's design argument "displaced" Cicero as the source of pre-eminent design arguments (see Jantzen, p. 119). This got reinforced, perhaps constituted, by its (that is, Paley's) role in debates over Darwinism and Creationism (see this neat paper by Adam Shapiro). To be sure, there are ways of understanding Paley's argument that can be traced back to arguments presented in Cicero (go read Jantzen it's splendid book). In addition, as Jantzen notes (pp. 121, 168-9, Paley's argument was itself clearly inspired on a design argument presented in the preface to a translation of Nieuwentyt's Religious Philosopher (see pp. xlvi-xlvii). So, we should not assume that Paley's argument was wholly new. In what follows I will remain resolutely agnostic about the epistemic status of Paley's argument.

I want to talk about watches, but first we need to discuss stones. Stones are absent in Nieuwentyt's argument. The introduction of a stone in Paley's argument is not a minor detail. To underststand this, we need to remind ourselves that traditionally the design argument is contrasted with two alternatives: chance and necessity. The former is associated with Epicureanism, the latter with Spinozism. Now both Paley and Nieuwentyt oppose the watch argument to chance. 

Nieuwentyt's argument is explicitly directed against Spinozism. I don't just base this claim on the contextual detail that Nieuwentyt's other (posthumous) book -- Gronden van zekerheid (The Grounds of Certainty) -- is a brilliant methodological polemic with Spinozism. Rather, "necessary laws of nature" are the explicit third contrast to an "understanding artifice" as the cause of the watch (xlviii).+ So, Nieuwentyt is still in the orbit of the traditional design argument. Now, to be fair sometimes Nieuwentyt treats an appeal to the ignorant "laws of nature" as identical to an appeal to chance. But when he needs to sometimes he clearly distinguishes them).*

But Paley is distinctly uninterested in Spinozism. First, he treats laws in deflationary (even nominalist) manner. When Paley turns to the possibility of treating "necessary laws of nature," he demotes them to mere "laws of metallic nature." (7) For Paley, harking back to an older, more traditional view, laws presuppose “agents” (or “powers”) and its these powers which are causally efficacious. The only necessity Paley allows is hypothetical necessity (549). And this turns out to be the way in which chance events intersect. (He uses hypothetical necessity to explain the appearance of chance.) I actually think this reflects the impact of Hume, who is mentioned just once coincidentally on the previous page (548), and Hume's famous attack on the presupposition of natural order. But I can't prove that today.

Now, a Spinozist would not accept that a stone and a watch are treated fundamentally differently. Obviously they have different degrees of complexity (or perfection), they may resist destruction in different ways, and they may have different effects on the world. But God is immanent in both, and there are no fundamental differences in their nature.**

By contrast, Paley treats stones and watches differently because (as I suggested the other day) he wants to treat living and inanimate things differently. For Paley it’s not the case that all the parts of nature exhibit apparent design. Paley clearly distinguishes between living things (which do exhibit design) and inanimate ones, which may not. For, there is a lack of symmetry between living and inanimate things. In chapter 17, he shows that the living things are so formed that they can successfully navigate and draw from the inanimate surroundings. But the reverse claim is not made. So, for Paley (but Nieuwentyt), nature is bifurcated in a way that begs the question against the a Spinozist if the Spinozist had to be taken seriously. The bifurcation also helps prompt a further key difference between Paley and the more traditional design arguments. And it connects to the changing understanding of what a clock/timekeeper is.

As regular readers know (recall), I am fascinated by a feature in what I have dubbed the Posidonian (design) argument. A key premise in it, is this (quoting Cicero): "our friend Posidonius has recently fashioned a planetarium; each time it revolves, it makes the sun, moon, and planets reproduce the movements which they make over a day and a night in the heavens." That is, the argument uses as a premise that a concrete model accurate represents nature's patterns or order. But if we look at Paley's argument, he makes no such claim.

Rather, all Paley needs is that the the watch has a particular, functional internal coherence and complexity and indicates time ("its several parts are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day.") In fact, even if the clock is irregular or sbroken altogether, it makes little difference to Paley's argument. "It is not necessary that a machine be perfect, in order to shew with what design it was made: still less necessary, where the only question is, whether it were made with any design at all."  Irregular, even “stopped” watches are sufficient for Paley’s purposes (5)! 

As an aside, one may well think that Paley's argument is an obvious improvement, because his works with more minimal assumptions than the ancient argument. They need a working machine, he can do with an irregular one. Fair enough.++

Now, it is worth noting that all of the scientific instruments that Paley mentions – telescopes (e.g. 24), microscopes (e.g., 182), a lever (e.g, p, 48), a pump (e.g., 171), a hydraulic machine (82)  – are means toward creating a model of nature or intervening in nature, but not themselves such concrete models. The same is true of Paley's treatment of the eye which is an “optical instrument,” (e.g, 277) rather than, say, part of a model that successfully represent nature. (Paley mentions temperature, but never a thermometer or a barometer.) By contrast, a planetarium does represent nature. 

There is an important, underlying issue. In ancient times it was quite natural to think of the motions of the celestial bodies as being time (or the true measure of time, for present purposes that makes no difference). We can find an important representative of this view in the Timaeus (itself non-trivial when it comes to reflecting on Design arguments):

Wherefore, as a consequence of this reasoning and design on the part of God, with a view to the generation of Time, the sun and moon and five other stars, which bear the appellation of “planets,” came into existence for the determining and preserving of the numbers of Time... Of the other stars the revolutions have not been discovered by men (save for a few out of the many); wherefore they have no names for them, nor do they compute and compare their relative measurements, so that they are not aware, as a rule, that the “wanderings“ of these bodies, which are hard to calculate and of wondrous complexity, constitute Time. Plato, Timaeus [38C-39D]***

So, if you  take such a position on the nature of time, the successful concrete model of the heavens is simultaneously not just an indicator, but a kind of representation of time. During the scientific revolution such a view was decisively abandoned. Leibniz, Huygens and Newton don't agree about much, but the heavenly motions themselves become imperfect means toward measuring (what I'll call) a 'temporal frame' (see here for explanation). But the measurements of these motions require all kinds of corrections and themselves don't bring you in contact with absolute time (if you are Newtonian), something you may well think non-existent (if you are Huygens/Leibniz). More important, a local time-keeper may be calibrated with astronomical motions, but can be decoupled from them. What a watch indicates is local time; there is no clear representation of nature's motions in them. 

 

 

 

 

On the emergence of philosophy of science

What I (try to) do, however, is not philosophy of science. I suppose what I do amounts to old-fashioned Oxford-style conceptual analysis, though again with a new historical emphasis. I should note that I think the word ‘analysis’ in this context is often given much too restrictive a sense (to analyze the concept F is to give necessary and sufficient conditions of the form ‘x is an F if and only if…’ – well, no). In fact I suspect that what I do amounts to the kind of thing that, according to Schliesser, philosophy of science since the time of Newton’s exegetes was deliberately conceived in order to rule out as invalid. On his story, philosophy of science emerged as the exclusive authority of empirical science was invoked by figures like Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, Musschenbroek, and Nieuwentyt against the notion that mere reflection on the meanings of concepts can reveal substantive truths about concrete reality.--Alex Douglas, responding, in part, to my post.

Alex's post (welcome to the blogosphere, Alex!) allows me to clarify something about my own position about the emergence of philosophy of science. By 'philosophy of science,' I mean a distinct, second order reflection on scientific practice and images of science (on images of science recall this).* Douglas is right to associate my story with now-obscure figures like Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, Musschenbroek, and Nieuwentyt. What these eighteenth century characters have in common is that they were willing to appeal to the authority of Newtonian natural philosophy to settle debate within philosophy/metaphysics proper. (I call such a move "Newton's Challenge!") Maclaurin, ‘s Gravesande, and Musschenbroek also made some contributions to Newtonian natural philosophy, but on the whole they are worth remembering (together with Nieuwentyt) for their reflections on the nature of Newton's achievement. To be clear: none of these four characters were slavish followers of Newton; they recast Newton's position in terms that served their own philosophical ends often in polemical context (often, but not exclusively, anti-Spinozistic). But on my account, their arguments did not go unchallenged. In particular, Diderot, Hume, Buffon, Mandeville (etc.) all offer arguments and considerations that are, in part, a response to "Newton's Challenge" as such and, in some part, directly addressing the detailed arguments offered in its favor. By my lights these arguments by Diderot, Hume, Buffon, Berkeley, Mandeville also contribute to the emergence of philosophy of science as a distinct, second order enterprise. So, the authority of science was debated in the emergence of philosophy science (see here, in part). As an aside, this was, in part, a debate within what is now  known as 'empiricism.'

An Image of Science Against Spinozism

Everybody, who understands the reasonings of both [mathematicians and philosophers] knows that the mathematicians, who following the rules of her science, have found many truths and have suffered fewer disputes about this than any other philosophers, who have followed a different path. No atheist [not even a follower of Spinoza--ES] can contradict this with the appearance of truth; in order to pass off his lamentable feelings for truths, Spinoza adopted the proof methods of geometry or mathemathematics in his Ethics in order to persuade the inexperienced with such superficial appearance.—Nieuwentyt (1720) Gronden van zekerheid,

Philosophy of science, as a distinct intellectual topic within philosophy, is parasitic on the existence of science. Science-like activity co-originates and coincides with the origins of Western philosophy in its mythological origins (think Thales). So, it stands to reason that there was some philosophy of science from the start; indeed we can discern in Plato and in Aristotle topics that we might label (even anachronistically) 'philosophy of science.' Throughout recorded history we find practitioners of the science that also engage in philosophical reflection on their own (and others') practice, or that articulate various epistemic and normative ideals, say, for the nature of scientific knowledge.

But if we understand 'philosophy of science' as a distinct, second-order intellectual enterprise that reflects on the nature, methods, presuppositions and aims (etc.) of science, then we're dealing with a relatively recent invention. I used to think, in fact, that it could only exist as a consequence of the institutional and methodological split(s) between philosophy and science. This split is commonly thought to be a nineteenth century  event, although various disciplines become differentiated from philosophy at different times in different  places in various institutions of higher learning.*

Some philosophy of science preceded the split between philosophy and science and, in fact, made it possible. To the best of my knowledge Bernard Nieuwentijt's posthumously published (1720) Gronden van zekerheid, of de regte betoogwyse der wiskundigen ...: ter wederlegging van Spinosaas denkbeeldig samenstel; : en ter aanleiding van eene sekere sakelyke wysbegeerte (that is the, "Grounds of Centainty; or the straight way of mathematical argumentation put together in order to refute Spinoza’s imagery combinations; and to promote a secure factual philosophy") is the first, distinct book of philosophy of science. As is clear from the title, it's written as a refutation of Spinoza. In particular, it's designed to show that despite the geometric method, Spinoza's work should not be conflated with, and receive the intellectual prestige of, the emerging mathematical sciences exemplified by Huygens and, especially, Newton throughout  the book.