Monday, March 21, 2011

The Watchmaker Analogy Series

I have been working on a photo series for a while now.  I like what I have so far, but I don't feel like I'm quite done with it yet.  I thought I had decent enough inspiration for another photo for the series, but alas, I was dreadfully wrong.  I have been working with the idea all evening, created a few setups and hated everything I came up with.  This is the best of the bunch...nothing special at all, but it's today's photo.  deal with it.

A Failed Candidate for The Watchmaker Analogy Series
Maybe I will just have to consider the series complete.  I don't think this image really fits with the rest of it anyway.  

Here's more information about the series, and to to see the decent images from it check out the photos that have the series name in their title over here at Next2Hector's Etsy Shop
 
I have been working on a photo series entitled The Watchmaker Analogy. The Divine Watchmaker Analogy is a teleological argument that William Paley (philosopher) made famous. It explains that if you were to stumble across a watch out in nature, you would assume there must be a watchmaker. Like wise, with a universe thousands of times more complex than a watch, one would assume there must be a creator of that as well. Though it has been dissected and countered by many great minds, Darwin, Hume, and Dawkins to name a few, it is still an interesting analogy that, if nothing else, lends itself to an interesting photo series.

Here is an excerpt from Paley's book "Natural Theology" (1802)

"In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there. (...) There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed [the watch] for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. (...) Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation."

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