Page "William Paley" Paragraph 10
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Although Paley devotes a chapter of Natural Theology to astronomy, written by his old friend John Law and the Dublin Astronomer Royal John Brinkley, they did not consider astronomy to provide sound evidence of " designedness.
" For my part ," he says, " I take my stand in human anatomy "; elsewhere he insists upon " the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear.
The germ of the idea is to be found in ancient writers who used sundials and Ptolemaic epicycles to illustrate the divine order of the world.
These types of examples can be seen in the work of the ancient philosopher Cicero, especially in his De natura deorum, ii.
Thus, Paley's use of the watch ( and other mechanical objects like it ) continued a long and fruitful tradition of analogical reasoning that was well received by those who read Natural Theology when it was published in 1802.
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