argument from design

For them, as we saw in Chapter 9, the argument from design depended on envisaging the universe as manufactured, rather than on showing nature itself to be purposive.

The corpuscular philosophy leads to atheism if it is combined with the claim that the universe arises from chance, but not if this further step is blocked, as Boyle sought to block it, by the argument from design.

Newtonianism was thus only conceivable within a culture which had elaborated and become dependent upon the argument from design.

It has been claimed that the modern argument from design first appears in John Wilkins, one of the founders of the Royal Society, in Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1675.

But the legacy of the mechanical philosophy was not simply modern versions of the argument from design, which are still widely defended in the form of Intelligent Design.