Paradoxical philosophy : a sequel to the Unseen universe.

  • Balfour Stewart
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Paradoxical philosophy : a sequel to the Unseen universe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ment, but because it is in itself particularly instructive as a characteristic of the pseudo- scientific man.] But extend Paley’s illustration. Suppose we saw a watch suddenly start into existence. Here we should at once recognise a manifest breach of continuity. There would still remain, as complete a,s before, the evidence of design; but it would be design acting in a manner wholly inscrutable to human beings. It would put them to a species of intellectual confusion. Thus we come to see that a watch or any other machine supplies us with something more than the mere argument for design. We per- ceive in it the evidence of design working after a thinkable method. We may perhaps under- stand very little about the machine or its method of working, but we know that it did not spring into existence ready made out of nothing. We know perfectly well that the materials of which it is made must have ex- isted in the universe before they were brought together by the maker. Think of the spring
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