Wednesday 12 July 2023
Deconstructing David Hume.
Reconsidering David Hume’s Critique of Design Thinking
Recently, one of my philosophy colleagues, upon learning of my interest in intelligent design, asked me what I thought about the criticisms leveled at design thinking by 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume. According to my colleague, many think Hume destroyed once and for all the intellectual coherence of design theories. Therefore, he assumed I would have an opinion on the matter. I am not trained as a philosopher, and I had to confess that I had little knowledge regarding Hume’s arguments against design. But this question sent me scurrying to the library for some unplanned research. And I’m glad for this, for after engaging with Hume’s work, I came to the unexpected and somewhat ironic conclusion that while Hume’s arguments might have had some currency in their 18th-century context, the findings of modern science have actually rendered them much less convincing.
Hume’s anti-design arguments are found in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Here, he uses the character Cleanthes as the spokesperson for design, with Philo being the one to convey Hume’s own critical thoughts. A major part of Hume’s critique revolves around what he sees as the great dissimilarity between the world of nature and the world of human artifice. All knowledge, he says, comes through experience and we experience humans designing things all the time. But nature is unique and completely unlike the world of human contrivance, leaving us devoid of experience to draw on. We can thus draw no analogy between the work of human designers (of which we have much experience) and a designer of nature (which is singular and unlike anything produced by humans).
The Argument for Design
In one passage, Hume has Cleanthes clearly state the argument from design:
Look around the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines….The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of human contrivance….Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed.
But Hume does not buy Cleanthes’s analogy:
If experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature; both the effect and cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes, which we know, and which we have found, in many instances, to be conjoined with each other.
Since nature, in Hume’s view, is unique and unlike anything we can ascribe to human contrivance, we have no experience of nature being designed and cannot analogize it to human artifice, of which we have much experience.
What the Future Held
Little could Hume know what the future would hold — the discovery that at the cellular level, all organisms are driven by molecular machinery that looks and acts uncannily like the machines produced by humans, but far more sophisticated. Whether it be the bacterial flagellum with its rotor, stator, clamps, and bushings, the efficient whirring of the ATP synthase, or the mechanical movements of the kinesin walking protein (see below), every cell is a vast factory of biochemical processes and information processing being carried out by a nano-technology of unbelievable complexity and sophistication, but a technology nonetheless. Hume’s argument for the dissimilarity between natural and human-designed entities begins to melt away. If living organisms are indeed built on a nano-technology that mimics human-designed technology, and if similar effects do have similar causes, then molecular machines must be intelligently designed just like human machines. Cleanthes’s analogy seems to hold in a way that Hume could never have foreseen.
William Paley may be hinting at Hume’s critique in the following passage from Natural Theology:
I have sometimes wondered why we are not struck with mechanism in animal bodies as readily and as strongly as we are struck with it, at first sight, in a watch or a mill. One reason of the difference may be, that animal bodies are, in a great measure, made up of soft flabby substances, such as muscles and membranes; whereas we have been accustomed to trace mechanism in sharp lines, in the configuration of hard materials, in the moulding, chiselling, and filling into shapes of such articles as metal or wood. There is something, therefore, of habit in the case; but it is sufficiently evident that there can be no proper reason for any distinction of the sort. Mechanism may be displayed in the one kind of substance as well as in the other.
Hume wanted to maintain the distinction between nature and human artifice as the heart of his argument against design. But modern science sides with Paley. Below the level of flabby muscles and membranes, organisms do indeed display the sharp lines of mechanism.
Mind and Matter
In a second criticism of Cleanthes, Hume has Philo say to his friend:
Let us once more put the argument from design to trial. In all instances which we have ever seen, ideas are copied from real objects, and are ectypal, not archetypal….You reverse this order, and give thought the precedence. In all instances which we have ever seen, thought has no influence upon matter, except where that matter is so conjoined with it, as to have an equal reciprocal influence upon it.
In other words, minds can only influence matter making up the body to which the mind is attached. Here again, modern science undermines Hume’s point. We now know about quantum theory and the collapsing of the wave function of an elementary particle when it is observed and measured. Minds profoundly influence matter at the most fundamental level, not to mention research showing the possible influence of mind on random number generators or even in intercessory prayer. And certainly, the world of human culture and technology powerfully testifies to the power of mind to force matter into configurations that would never occur if left to natural laws (as I type this on a plastic keyboard). Hume’s criticism falls flat. Minds have transformed the world of matter.
In a somewhat humorous tip of the cap to irreducible complexity, Paley noted how a structure like the epiglottis could not have evolved gradually from a simpler form, because with only half an epiglottis, we would all choke to death! Paley comes off to me as a far keener observer of nature than Hume. And now from the vantage point of 21st-century science, we can see even more clearly the bankruptcy of Hume’s skepticism. There is no sense in which we can say that Hume destroyed the intellectual coherence of design thinking. Paley could already see this in 1802. How much more clearly can we see it today in the light of modern scientific advancement?
Man as natural element?
Complementary Design: Nature and Gardens
We are familiar with the compelling design features of planet Earth as a place for life and the abundance of evidence for design seen in the human body. But we may be less familiar with the complementary design of nature, the physical realm accessible to humans, and what I’ll call gardens.
The latter of these terms denotes human stewardship of Earth. It is not my invention. The Genesis narrative, while proclaiming Earth “good” and human beings as having been formed with intention, uses “garden” as an epitome of their mutually beneficial interactions.
Consider some ways that humans have complemented the natural features of Earth to their mutual benefit. Complementary features speak of intelligent design in multitudes of different scenarios. For example, a key that opens a lock is almost always a result of intentional design. A radio receiver that can pick up a local broadcast signal as I drive my car across town involves multiple layers of design. Finding at a department store shoes and clothing that fit comfortably (although a somewhat rare experience) could hardly happen without intentional design.
Our Desperate Needs
One of the overarching themes of the garden is need. Humans as physical beings are desperately needy. Air, water, food, and shelter represent our basic survival needs, and the global features of our planet have answered these needs for billions of people throughout human history.
The concept of a garden also embodies mutual flourishing. A vegetable garden can produce edible food, but we will flourish more if we learn how to nourish the soil to enhance the yield and nutritional content of the plants. Clearing weeds, mulching, watering, and warding off pests are all familiar activities to gardeners. Is the Earth healthier when well-tended? I visited a small-scale organic farm recently — just a few acres — and the variety of vegetables and flowers in all stages of growth was a thing of beauty. If land could express satisfaction at flourishing to its full potential, this small farm exemplified the mutual benefit of a tended garden.
Less Is More
Evidence of intelligent design shines forth when we consider how the complementarity of human need and tended earth enhances the well-being of both. But design is seen not only in the traditional sense of garden as a plot of vegetables. One of my favorite recreations when I was younger was visiting national parks and other wilderness areas. In these natural environments, the Earth provides the grandeur and beauty, while human involvement seems to serve best with the motto, “Less is more.”
Hiking a mountain trail to a remote lake in the North Cascades would have been overwhelmingly difficult, however, without the efforts of those who made and maintained the trails that penetrated into some extremely rugged terrain. Many people each year find needed refreshment from the stress of everyday life by visits to scenic recreation areas. Again, we can discern design by seeing the complementary aspects of human need and the beneficial meeting of those needs through appropriate stewardship of Earth’s resources.
Shifting our focus now to the “need” expressed by humans for the products of our technologically sophisticated society, design is evident in both the availability of the many essential raw materials and in our intelligence and ingenuity to be able to create from these materials the astounding array of products that most of us have come to regard as essential.
Did civilization need readily available fuel to power a developing technology? Fossil fuels, produced over hundreds of millions of years on Earth, have provided the majority of our energy needs for generations. Forests have provided structural materials for houses, furniture, and more. Limestone quarries have yielded building material for cathedrals and courthouses. The surface crust of our Earth has been enriched to provide metallic ores and almost every other element in the periodic table. A wide variety of these minerals are critical for civilization to continue to develop, including the transition to more “Earth-friendly” Technologies:
The types of mineral resources used vary by technology. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite are crucial to battery performance, longevity and energy density. Rare earth elements are essential for permanent magnets that are vital for wind turbines and EV [electric vehicle] motors.
Foresight and Design
In almost every conceivable aspect of our lives, what we perceive as a need can be met by resources made available to us by events in Earths history that long pre-date our existence. Foresight and design certainly come to mind as suitable descriptions of this beneficial arrangement.
Although this subject lends itself to avenues of discussion leading in many directions, I would like to return to the traditional sphere of garden as a park-like enhancement to nature’s palette. When visiting a beautiful park, one is struck by the cultivated beauty resulting from the complementary effects of the gardener’s efforts and nature’s resources.
When I lived in Washington State, my family visited the beautiful Butchart Gardens in British Columbia. This transformed limestone quarry is a stunning example of human design and stewardship, healing, as it were, a scar on Earth’s surface left from extraction of material to meet our needs.
With a former quarry as a canvas, Jennie Butchart envisioned transforming this space into a beautiful garden haven, overflowing with lush greens and colourful blooms. The result of her vision is The Gardens…
Complementary design is seen (and enjoyed) through humans imagining and creating beauty beyond the possible outcomes of natural forces or non-human life.
Nurturing Life and Beauty
In Tolkien’s Return of the King, Gandalf expresses his understanding of the service of stewardship, nurturing life and its beauty:
…the rule of no realm is mine… But all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail of my task…if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come. For I also am a steward.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, THE RETURN OF THE KING (NEW YORK: HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY, 1994), 741-2.
Our stewardship of nature involves a choice. Choosing to put forth our effort and creativity to enhance and beautify the natural realm available to us implies that we are not merely physically complex objects governed by the laws of physics. We participate as sub-creators in a designed system — a physical realm in which our own freedom allows us to complement the outcomes of nature to our mutual benefit.
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