Every work demonstrates a workman

Voltaire 1694 · 1778Crush intolerance with reason and irony.

What it claims

There is a maker of the world, very powerful and very intelligent. It is "a probability approaching the greatest certainty", but reason does not say whether he is infinite or brought matter out of nothing.

Why

The world everywhere shows means arranged for an end, and any work of that kind points to a maker.

In short

"Every work demonstrates a workman" is an argument by Voltaire (Ignorant Philosopher, 15 (1766); "God", section I (manuscript published posthumously)) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: deism). Its claim: There is a maker of the world, very powerful and very intelligent. It is "a probability approaching the greatest certainty", but reason does not say whether he is infinite or brought matter out of nothing. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Ignorant Philosopher, 15 (1766); "God", section I (manuscript published posthumously)

Valid with an implicit premise

Voltaire fights the Churches, but he believes in God. His reason is simple: when we see a watch, we think of a watchmaker. Now the universe, with its mechanical laws and its organs made for an end, looks like an immense machine. He concludes there is a very powerful and very intelligent maker. He stays cautious about the rest: he does not know whether this maker is infinite, or whether he created matter. This is the deists' God, not the God of dogmas. Classification: the argument only proves an intelligent maker, which theists and deists both accept; we file it under deism because Voltaire himself stops the conclusion there, with no providence or revelation.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3, the computer finds a case where the universe shows means and ends, where every work announces a workman, but where the universe is not a work in the sense that a watch is: nothing then allows us to conclude there is a maker.

Valid with P3. P1 and P2 are not enough: one must also grant that the universe is a "work", comparable to what humans make. That is the premise Hume attacks. P4 adds an independent reason: intelligence cannot come from what has none. Diderot and, later, Darwin target that point and P2. Voltaire himself limits the conclusion: a very strong probability, and a maker of whom he knows almost nothing.

Analogy. You find a watch on a beach. You do not think the waves assembled it: someone made it. Voltaire says: the world is a far more skilful watch. The whole question is whether the world is enough like a watch.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Hume (Philo, in the Dialogues) 1779 · attacks premise 3

An analogy is only as good as the resemblance of the cases. We have seen thousands of houses and watches being made, never a universe. The difference is so great that we can only guess at a somewhat similar cause, not prove it.

no reply

No reply possible: objection raised in 1779, after the author's death (1778).

The debate goes on (our summary) The Dialogues appeared in 1779, a year after Voltaire's death. He had already, on his own, limited his conclusion: a "probability", a maker of whom we do not know whether he is infinite or created matter. So he and Hume are closer than they seem; they part ways on the strength of the analogy: "nearly certain" for Voltaire, "a conjecture" for Philo.

Diderot (Saunderson, in the Letter on the Blind) 1749 · attacks premise 4

Order can come from sorting without intelligence: matter produced countless combinations, the failed ones died out, and only those that could live and reproduce remained.

Voltaire replies

Voltaire Voltaire's reply to d'Holbach, not to Diderot (Questions on the Encyclopedia, "God", 1771)

Voltaire answers this idea when d'Holbach takes it up (1770): claiming that blind matter, without choice, produces intelligent beings is asserting a contradictory thing without proof. Producing beings with intelligence without intelligence: is that conceivable?

The debate goes on (our summary) For Diderot it is not contradictory: sensation and thought can arise from organised matter, as an egg becomes a chick. Voltaire had also written to Diderot in 1749 that he did not share Saunderson's view; that letter is not in our corpus.

Darwin (On the Origin of Species) 1859 · attacks premise 2

Organs are not made for an end: natural selection, over millions of years, keeps useful variations and eliminates the others. It produces the appearance of design without design. The eye is not a watch; it is the result of a long history.

no reply

summary: their text is not yet in our corpus

No reply possible: objection raised in 1859, after the author's death (1778).

The debate goes on (our summary) Defenders of design reply that selection explains living things, not the laws of physics themselves, the "mechanical and geometrical laws" Voltaire admired first. That is today's debate on the fine-tuning of the universe's constants.

What today's voices say

Defend it

Christopher HitchensHe grants that a designer may look logical, but says it is a huge step to claim the designer cares what you eat or who you go to bed with.

In the same family · Teleological (design)

The world has an architect (Balbus against Cotta)Cicero