408 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 



therefore must have a purpose." Different terms are used to express what 

 is meant by "pattern," such as "design," "structure," "order." Usually the 

 argument is stated so as to involve a purposer. For example, beginning with 

 the assumption that the world has a design, the argument deduces that 

 "there can be no design without a designer and that if a designer produced 

 a design he must have done so for a purpose. Thus, if the world has a de- 

 sign, it must have a purpose." 



Critics attack the argument in several ways. They say that the assump- 

 tion that "the world has a design" is unwarranted. For there is also obvious 

 disorder and lack of design which cannot be ignored in claiming that the 

 world as a whole has a purpose, and it is possible that only our part of the 

 ■world is orderly and the rest of the world which we do not know is chaotic 

 and disorderly, and design may be merely apparent or a product of the 

 processes of perception in human beings who are uniquely purposive and 

 yet persist anthropomorphically in interpreting all other things as pur- 

 posive. 



Secondly, critics contend that the assumption that "there can be no de- 

 sign without a designer" is false. At least some designs are accidental. For 

 example ink drops folded in paper sometimes appear strikingly symmetrical. 

 If some patterns are produced unpurposively, then it is at least possible that 

 such patterns as the world as a whole may have have been produced un- 

 purposively. Also, perhaps teleologists have been deceived by ambiguities 

 of the term "design." Sometimes "design" means "intention" or "purpose," 

 as when one asks, "What did you design to do?" Here of course, "design" 

 involves "purpose." But "design" also means pattern apart from purpose, 

 as exemplified by patterns produced accidentally. Thus deduction of "in- 

 tended pattern" from mere "pattern" is unwarranted. 



Thirdly, critics point out that even if the world has a design and a de- 

 signer it still would not follow that "if a designer produced a design, he 

 must have done so for a purpose." For he too might have produced the 

 world accidentally, or he might be designing the world as a consequence 

 of some mechanical necessity rather than as a result of purpose. Finally, 

 even though the world was designed for a purpose in the past, there is the 

 possibility that it now no longer has the purpose that it once had, because 

 it may have lost its purpose, or it may have fulfilled its purpose. If so, pat- 

 terns produced by previous purposiveness may remain without the patterns 

 remaining purposeful. 



Such criticisms seem not to down those who would argue from design. 

 When attacked, they reply not so much by refuting these criticisms as by 

 reiterating their argument in a more plausible form. The three following 

 arguments, from analogy, from complexity, and from evolution are really 

 variations of, or extensions of, the argument from design. 



Analogy. "Even as a watch requires a watch-maker, a building an archi- 

 tect, an airplane a designer, a vessel a potter, so the world-machine requires 



