IV. THE ARGUMENT SINCE DARWIN
Kant was generous to the design argument, as we
see in the above quotation,
on the ground that when
he wrote these words there seemed to be no
more
theoretically adequate hypothesis on which to explain
the amazing
intricacy of the natural order than that
of intelligent design. Hume's
proliferation of alterna-
tives was more
ingenious than convincing if looked to
for genuine help in understanding
the facts such as
those Paley had later piled so high. This situation,
however, was radically changed by Charles Darwin's
Origin of Species (1859); and the weight of
scientific
prestige, which had supported the argument since its
championing by physicists of the seventeenth century,
fell heavily against
it because of the biologists of the
nineteenth.
Darwin's primary contribution to the opponents of
the design argument was to
make available an intel-
ligible and
convincing alternative causal hypothe-
sis—just such as Kant acknowledged he had failed to
find—to take the place of intelligent contrivance. This
alternative was the mechanism of natural selection,
through which
“adaptation to environment” took the
place of
“purposive design” as the concept by which
Paley's
evidences could be understood. Changes in
biological species have occurred
randomly over vast
periods of time, Darwin argued, and the forms of
life
best equipped in the struggle for scarce resources have
left
their progeny to be admired by the natural theolo-
gians. Their intricate structures and admirable func-
tioning need not be attributed to an
intelligence behind
nature, however, since the facts are as they must
be
if living forms are to survive at all.
It might be tempting to compare this position, on
which nature is alleged to
need no external intellect
to bring about orderly and well adapted changes,
with
Aristotle's urging of immanent teleology against Plato's
more
dualistic view. To some extent the parallels hold:
Plato, lover of
mathematics, reminds us of Newton;
and Aristotle, son of a physician and
ardent collector
of biological specimens, cannot fail to suggest an
earlier
Darwin. But the biology of Darwin is post-Newtonian,
and it
would be misleading to push the comparison
too far. Precisely what is not
present in the evolution-
ary process of
natural selection is immanent purpose
in the Aristotelian sense. Teleology,
immanent as well
as external, is dispensable, and totally non-telic proces-
ses of chance variations and physical
interplay consti-
tute all the parameters of
the theory.
From its original home in biology, evolutionary
thinking has spread to other
fields as well. Theories
of cosmic evolution have replaced Newton's appeal
to
intelligent design in the arrangement of the solar sys-
tem and the galaxies. Historical geology, in a closely
related development, has extended understanding of
the present
state of our terrestrial environment. In all
this
“evolution” has come to mean something more
inclusive
than Darwin's original theory, but in all
its scientific applications
evolutionary thinking has in-
terposed itself
between the “appearances of nature”
and any easy
appeal to the explanatory need for
design.
Given this situation the design argument in its clas-
sical form has found few friends in recent times. There
have
been, however, post-Darwinian variations of the
ancient argument intended
to take account of the
battering it has received from both philosophy
and
science since the mid-eighteenth century. The laws of
the natural
order itself, including the laws of evolution,
may be taken as requiring
some explanation in terms
of a transcendent purpose. F. R. Tennant, for
example,
wrote:
The forcibleness of Nature's suggestion that she is the out-
come of intelligent design lies not
in particular cases of
adaptedness in the world, nor even in the
multiplicity of
them.... The forcibleness of the world's appeal
consists
rather in the conspiration of innumerable causes to
produce,
by their united and reciprocal action, and to maintain
a
general order of nature
(Philosophical Theology, Cambridge
[1930], II, 79).
Others in the twentieth century, like Peter A. Bertocci,
following Tennant,
and Charles Hartshorne, following
Alfred North Whitehead, have developed
current var-
iations of the argument; and
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
worked out a form of design argument in his
deeply
evolutionary and widely influential posthumous work
The Phenomenon of Man (1959). The ancient argument
remains alive, therefore; and though it has lost much
of its support in
philosophical circles, its perennial
appeal to religious persons and to
others who approach
the intelligible order of nature with a touch of
wonder
and awe will in all likelihood assure its continued
survival as
a live topic for meditation and debate.
