Watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy is a teleological argument to support the view that the universe, or parts thereof, caused by the action of intelligent consciousness.
History
Cicero ( 106-43 BC) leaves in his philosophical dialogue De natura deorum ( On the Nature of the Gods, Book II, Chapter 84. ) Include a Stoic from the well-planned operation of a solar or water clock that they are not the hours of random, but display due to the inherent technology; analogy would the world have arisen because of planning and reason.
Robert Hooke in Micrographia compares ( 1664) that explored by him with the microscope small creatures with the clockwork mechanisms ( with the construction of which he also addressed ). His assessment is that fade away designs by human hands next to the " omnipotence and perfection of the great Creator ."
Voltaire concludes the second chapter of his Traité de métaphysique (1734 ) from the growth and functioning of the human body, that it must have been planned as a clock by an intelligent being. Further conclusions from this about the nature of that being, his eternity, infinity, etc. but does not hold for Voltaire logically justified.
William Paley argued in his Natural Theology (1802 ), that you recognize a pocket watch found on the field as intelligently constructed object, and that, consequently, the living organisms are to be regarded as works of an intelligent designer.
The watchmaker analogy is used today by representatives of Creationism and Intelligent Design in a similar manner.
Criticism and counter- criticism
The analogy is often criticized by pointing out that it presupposes a prior knowledge about the formation of artifacts, but which is not present in living organisms. Thus, a clock is detected as created by humans, since the viewer that watches are made artificially already knows through education and embossing. The recognition of order and complexity is not decisive.
Representatives of intelligent design (eg Rammerstorfer, pp. 93 ff ) argue, however, knowledge about the origin was not necessary, since the detection intelligently created structures 'll moored at specific patterns that would indicate intelligent intervention. As an example, the SETI program is headed. Again, could, in the opinion of the ID representatives can not be resorted to empirical knowledge, the search for signals orienting rather at conspicuous patterns.
The astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute has this comparison back as faulty; complex patterns alone would not prove intelligence. Wesley R. Elsberry stressed that SETI would only detect signals having certain properties of human communication, as they were determined on the basis of experience with human communication. Among other things, for example, the use of electromagnetic signals in the radio range of wavelengths, and certain types of encoding. Even SETI explicitly claimed not to be able to detect non-specific intelligence. Only those signals from intelligent beings that are sufficiently similar to human intelligence, so that our experience with the latter also applies to these intelligent beings can be detected by SETI.
The British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins sits down in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker critical of the watchmaker analogy apart. A German translation appeared in 1990 under the title The Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins explains how the theory of evolution plausible the existence of living beings explained without the need for a creator God would be necessary. To this end, he explains the difference between a completely random process and a process with random mutations and subsequent selection. This is a sample program ( the Weasel Program) explained and also by the computer program The Blind Watchmaker is available, which simulates the process of natural selection.