Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
more complicated, and moreover that this complexity is directed to serving a specific
function - that of indicating the time. Paley argued that the only explanation must be
that an intelligent entity had designed and built such a complex purposeful structure.
He then extended this conclusion to explain the exquisite adaptations of all animals
and plants to their environments in terms of their creation by God.
In his
Autobiography
Darwin explained that he enjoyed reading Paley's topics
during his undergraduate days at Cambridge and was “charmed and convinced” by
Paley's arguments. But his experiences during the
Beagle
voyage led Darwin to
question Paley's supernatural argument from design, and he started to wonder what
natural biological and geological events could more simply explain the diversity,
adaptations and geographical distributions of so many different organisms, both now
and in the past. On his arrival in England, he decided to devote the rest of his life
trying to understand why the living world looks and behaves as it does. His sister
Caroline recorded at this time that Charles had gained “an interest for the rest of his
life”, while Darwin later recorded in his
Autobiography
that this voyage “determined
my whole career”.
Darwin did not invent either the idea of evolution or the idea that he called nat-
ural selection. The idea that species may evolve can be traced back as far as the
sixth century BC to the Greek philosopher Anaximander, who proposed that the
first men were generated in the form of fish. This view was not associated with any
religious belief, so it represents the first known example of evolutionary thinking in
a naturalistic framework. What Darwin did in his topic was to propose a particular
mechanism, and to amass a large amount of evidence in support of that mechanism -
the process he called natural selection. Unknown to Darwin, other people had sug-
gested this sort of mechanism before him, but unlike Darwin, they had failed to
present convincing evidence that supported this idea. So Darwin's real contribution
was to be the first person to bring together the previous ideas of evolution and natural
selection into a single theory, and to provide overwhelming evidence in their favour.
The sheer quantity and quality of the empirical evidence that Darwin amassed in
favour of the idea of natural selection is impressive even today. Richards Dawkins
brilliantly captured the replacement of Paley's idea that God is the watchmaker of
the living world with Darwin's idea that natural selection is the watchmaker in the
title of his topic
The Blind Watchmaker,
first published in 1986. Applying Occam's
razor, the design of living organisms is more simply explained by natural selection
than by the actions of an intelligent supernatural being because natural selection
involve fewer assumptions and these assumptions are testable.
Thus the major impact of Darwin's ideas has been to undermine natural theology
as espoused by Paley. In his
Autobiography
, Darwin says:
The old argument from design, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclu-
sive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered. There seems to be no
more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than
in the course which the wind blows.
Today, the main-stream Christian religions accept that evolution has occurred
by natural selection, but assert that this is the way their God has created the living
