William Paley - Legacy

Legacy

Since Paley is often read in university courses that address the philosophy of religion, the timing of his design argument has sometimes perplexed modern philosophers. Earlier in the century David Hume had argued against notions of design with counter examples drawn from monstrosity, imperfect forms of testimony and probability, and it has been assumed that Paley could not have read Hume. However, in both published works and in manuscript letters, you find that Paley was engaged directly with Hume from his time as an undergraduate to his last works. Hume's examples ring true with many 21st century readers, and they appealed to some of Paley's 18th-century contemporaries as well. Paley adopted a number of Hume's points, although he rejected most (but not all) of those aspects of his arguments which were considered to be inconsistent with Christian theology. Notably, Paley and Hume both rejected Scottish moral sense theory, on the grounds that one could not know with certainty that there was such a thing as a moral sense. Both based their philosophical hermeneutic in probability theory. Notions of evidence and probability were different then, being based in legal thought rather than statistics. Hume was trained as a lawyer, and Paley was regarded by his peers, some of whom were prominent lawyers themselves, as having one of the most acute legal minds of his age. Hume's arguments were only accepted gradually by the reading public, and his philosophical works sold poorly until agnostics like T H Huxley championed Hume's philosophy in the 19th century.

Scientific norms have changed greatly since Paley's day, and are inclined to do less than justice to his arguments and ways of reasoning. But his style is lucid and was willing to present transparently the evidence against his own case. His subject matter was central to Victorian anxieties, which might be one reason Natural Theology continued to appeal to the reading public, making his book a best seller for most of the 19th century, even after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species. Natural Theology and the Evidences of Christianity appealed to Victorian Evangelicals, although not so much to adherents of the Oxford Movement - and both found his utilitarianism objectionable. Paley's views influenced (both positively and negatively) theologians, philosophers and scientists, then and since.

In addition to Moral and Political Philosophy and the Evidences Charles Darwin read Natural Theology during his student years and later stated in his autobiography that he was initially convinced by the argument. His views changed with time. By the 1820s and 1830s, well-known liberals like Thomas Wakley and other radical editors of The Lancet were using Paley's aging examples to attack the establishment's control over medical and scientific education in Durham, London, Oxford and Cambridge. It also inspired the Earl of Bridgewater to commission the Bridgewater Treatises and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge to issue cheap reprints for the rising middle class.

Today, Paley's name evokes both reverence and revulsion and his work is cited accordingly by authors seeking to frame the history of human thought. Even Richard Dawkins, an opponent of the design argument, described himself as a neo-paleyan in The Blind Watchmaker. Today, as in his own time (though for different reasons), Paley is a controversial figure, a lightning rod for both sides in the contemporary "war between science and religion". Consequently, it is difficult to read him with objectivity, as his writings reflect the thought of his time, but as Dawkins observed, his was a strong and logical approach to evidence, whether human or natural. The Oxford constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey had his pupils read the Evidences to teach them about legal reasoning. It is for such reasons that Paley's writings, Natural Theology included, stand as a notable body of work in the canon of Western thought.