ARGUMENT IN BEUTY
Aesthetic reality can be divided between our subjective
awareness of beauty and the objective beauty. Aesthetic arguments may therefore
focus either upon our ability to know beauty, or upon the existence of beauty
itself. Aesthetic arguments that focus upon our knowledge of beauty are
‘epistemological’ arguments; those that focus upon the existence of beauty per
se are ‘ontological’ arguments. Other epistemological arguments begin with the mere fact that we have
aesthetic awareness, seeking to show that design/theism gains credibility by
providing the best understanding of this capacity. As William C. Davis writes,
‘Humans have numerous features that are more easily explained by theism than by
metaphysical naturalism, if only because metaphysical naturalism currently
explains all human capacities in terms of their ability to enhance survival. Other
ontological aesthetic arguments propose the existence of God as the source and standard of objective aesthetic
value, just as the moral argument proposes God’s existence as the necessary
condition of objective moral value.
In
his 1914 Gifford lectures on Theism and Humanism, Arthur J. Balfour discussed
‘the incongruity between our feelings of beauty and a materialistic account of
their origin.’ [84] Balfour asserted that: ‘our aesthetic sensibilities must be
regarded (from the naturalistic standpoint) as the work of chance. They form no
part of the quasi-design which we attribute to selection; they are unexplained
accidents of the evolutionary process.’ However, ‘This conclusion harmonizes
ill with the importance which civilized man assigns to them in his scheme of
values.’ [85] The problem for naturalism, as Balfour observed, is that: ‘The
noblest things in. . . art. . . possess small survival value, and, though the
geniuses to whom we owe them have added greatly to the glory of their race,
they have added but little to its animal success.’ [86]
Clark Pinnock develops the argument from the inability of evolution to adequately account for our aesthetic sensibilities along the following lines:
1) From a secular standpoint, our capacity to appreciate beauty: ‘must seem an unaccounted-for ‘extra’ thrown in by chance. . . lacking as it does any survival value in terms of our evolution.’ [87]
2) It would therefore be reasonable to accept any explanation of our capacity to appreciate beauty that made the existence of this capacity more likely than the secular explanation.
3) If our capacity to appreciate beauty derives from the creative activity of an un-evolved being with a capacity to appreciate beauty, then our possession of that capacity would be more likely than it is on the secular explanation.
4) Therefore, it is reasonable to think that our capacity to appreciate beauty derives from the creative (and therefore intelligent and purposive) activity of an un-evolved being with a capacity to appreciate beauty.
F.R. Tennant covered the same ground:
in so far as the mechanical stability and the analytic intelligibility of the inorganic world are concerned, beauty is a superfluity. Also that in the organic world aesthetic pleasingness of color, etc., seems to possess survival-value on but a limited scale, and then is not to be identified with the complex and intellectualized aesthetic sentiments of humanity, which apparently have no survival value. From the point of view of science, beauty. . . is, in both its subjective and its objective factors, but . . . a biologically superfluous accompaniment of the cosmic process. Once more then lucky accidents and coincidences bewilderingly accumulate until the idea of purposiveness, already lying to hand as indispensable within the sphere of human conduct, is applied to effect the substitution of reasonable, if alogical, probability for groundless contingency. If we do apply this category of design to the whole time-process, the beauty of Nature may not only be assigned a cause but also a meaning, or a revelational function. It may then be regarded as no mere by-product, like physical evil, in a teleologically ordered world whose raison d’etre is the realization of other values - the moral and the religious. [88]
This version of the evolutionary aesthetic argument is stronger than Pinnock’s because it takes into account some measure of survival value attributed to our appreciation of beauty.
Professor H.E. Huntley in The Divine Proportion - A Study In Mathematical Beauty, poses the evolutionary puzzle of our aesthetic sense thus: ‘we might begin by asking whether the universal human thirst for beauty serves a useful purpose. Physical hunger and thirst ensure our bodily survival. The sex drive takes care of the survival of the race. Fear has survival value. But - to put the question crudely - what is beauty for? What personal or evolutionary end is met by the appreciation of a rainbow, a flower or a symphony? At first sight, none.’ [89] Huntley suggests that: ‘a part of the answer is that [beauty] serves as a lure to induce the mind to embark on creative activity. Beauty is a bait. [However] This view seems to require the existence of ‘absolute’ beauty, to demand that specimens of beauty antedate the human perception of them, although beauty in its subjective sense is called into existence only at the moment of its appreciation.’ [90] And this conclusion is fodder for the objective ontological aesthetic design argument. Of course, if our appreciation of beauty does have an evolutionary (efficient) explanation, this does not exclude the possibility that our appreciation is also the result of (teleological) intelligent design.
W.S. Rhodes agrees with Balfour and Pinnock: ‘The sense of beauty in human beings. . . has no obvious survival value. Human sensitivity to beauty cannot be accounted for on materialist lines and the beauty of the world only partly so. Unless there is an intelligence sensitive to beauty in some way directing the course of things the facts must remain without full explanation.’ [91] Anthony O’Hear concurs that: ‘from a Darwinian perspective, truth, goodness, and beauty and our care for them are very hard to explain.’ [92] He goes on to say that, ‘For some, speculation about the origin of our non-Darwinian concerns would take a religious direction.’ [93] O’Hear does not take this direction himself, but gives no reason for his refusal. William C. Davies follows the trail to its theistic conclusion:
consider the data of useless (nonutilitarian) beauty. Is God a better explanation of that feature of the world than metaphysical naturalism? To decide, you must ask whether useless beauty is more likely to exist if God exists or if metaphysical naturalism is true. This is by no means a simple or obvious estimate; but I’m convinced that an honest evaluation leads to the conclusion that God’s existence explains this and other features of the world far more successfully. . . Value, both moral and aesthetic, appears to be an objective feature of the world. . . a fact much more likely to have been the case if God exists than if the universe is a grand accident. [94]
Inductive Ontological Aesthetic Arguments
F.R. Tennant argues from the obvious assertion that: ‘Nature is sublime or beautiful, and the exceptions do but prove the rule.’ [95] Tennant’s next premise is that: ‘In general, man’s productions (other than professed works of art), and almost only they, are aesthetically vile [ugly]. . . We might almost say the one [human agency] never achieves, while the other [nature] never misses, the beautiful.’ [96] This generalization applies, says Tennant, both to the products and productive processes of humanity and nature (thus Tenant’s argument includes both instrumental and causal beauty): ‘Compare, e.g., ‘the rattling looms and the hammering noise of human workshops’ with Nature’s silent or musical constructiveness; or the devastating stinks of chemical works with Nature’s fragrant distillations.’ [97] Richard Swinburne would agree, for he writes that: ‘If one thinks of ugliness as a negative quality, as opposed to being the mere absence of beauty, one would be hard put to think of any part of the pre-human world which is ugly; ugliness in this sense seems to arrive with the arrival of humans, who, knowingly or unknowingly, make something which could be beautiful ugly instead.’ [98] Then comes the conclusion: ‘If “God made the country” whereas man made the town. . . we have a possible explanation of these things; but if the theism contained in this saying be rejected, explanation does not seem to be forthcoming.’ [99] The beauty of nature, argues Tennant, cannot be co-extensive with either nature’s ‘mechanicalness’, or its (supposed) lack of aesthetic design, ‘as man’s utilitarian productions shew.’ [100] Concrete car parks, for example, are utilitarian, but ugly overall; for, as Balfour pointed out: ‘An ill-proportioned building might have been equally fitted for its purpose; a plain sword might have been equally lethal.’ [101] Tennant is certainly on to something here, for as W.S. Rhodes writes:
Beauty may be associated with fitness for function. . . Economy and precision in design gives one kind of aesthetic satisfaction. So it is with certain living things. . . Their form. . has been developed to meet functional needs and we judge it beautiful. Yet things exactly suited to their function are not necessarily beautiful. . . It is only in certain cases that fitness for function is sufficient to account for the beauty of an object. And it is only in certain cases that the beauty of living things can be attributed to fitness for function. [102]
Or as Tennant says: ‘we may still ask why Nature’s mechanism affects us in such wise that we deem her sublime and beautiful, since mere mechanism, as such, is under no universal necessity to do so, and what we may call human mechanisms [produced on purely utilitarian lines] usually fail to do so.’ [103] Yet, ‘this potency, describable as the Objective factor in beauty, belongs to Nature’s very texture.’ [104]
Richard Swinburne takes up Tennant’s suggestion that beauty provides a motive, meaning, and purpose for creation. Swinburne argues that, if God exists, then He has: ‘apparently overriding reason, for making, not merely an orderly world. . . but a beautiful world - at any rate to the extent to which it lies outside the control of creatures. (And he has reason too, I would suggest, even in whatever respects the world does lie within the control of creatures, to give them experience of beauty to develop, and perhaps some ugliness to annihilate.)’ [105] In other worlds, the world looks much as we should expect it to look if it were created by God, because ‘God has reason to make a basically beautiful world’, and because ‘he would seem to have overriding reason not to make a basically ugly world beyond the powers of creatures to improve.’ [106] This remains true, says Swinburne, ‘whether or not anyone ever observes [the beauty of the world], but certainly if only one person ever observes it.’ [107] Swinburne says that, ‘it is also good that people admire what is beautiful; but the beauty of the beautiful does not depend on being recognized.’ [108] Even if this is not so, Swinburne argues that ‘God has a very good reason for making a beautiful Universe, namely that he himself will admire it (not admire it because he made it, of course; but because what he made is admirable.)’ [109] Keith Ward agrees, saying ‘if God is the imaginative creator, the cosmic artist, then of course God will know and appreciate the whole cosmic process.’ [110] Moreover, the goodness of subjective, enjoyed beauty constitutes one reason for God to create creatures with an aesthetic sense. As Augustine wrote: ‘Then there is the beauty and utility of the natural creation, which the divine generosity has bestowed on man, for him to behold. . .’ [111] So, there are two reason why God might be expected to make a world such as ours: that He may appreciate its beauty, and that creatures such as ourselves may appreciate the beauty both of God and of God’s Creation. God’s reason for making a basically beautiful world is that ‘beauty is a good thing.’ [112] The conclusion Swinburne draws is that ‘if there is a God there is more reason to expect a basically beautiful world than a basically ugly one. . .’ [113] The next step in Swinburne’s argument is to assert that ‘A priori. . . there is no particular reason for expecting a basically beautiful rather than a basically ugly world.’ [114] The conclusion to be drawn from this observation is that, ‘if the world is [basically] beautiful, that fact would be evidence for God’s existence.’ [115] It only remains for Swinburne to point out that the world is indeed basically beautiful to complete his argument. While the judgment whether or not that the world is basically beautiful is one that every individual must make for themselves, agreeing that it is rounds off an apparently sound aesthetic argument for the existence of God.
Swinburne’s best defence - or perhaps ‘persuasive exemplification’ would be a better description of his method - of the basic beauty of the world, and of the claim that the creation of beauty provides God with an overriding reason to make a world such as ours, comes in Providence and the Problem of Evil:
The existence of all concrete things. . . is good in itself. The more [things], the better. And better that they be arranged in a beautiful way. Could anyone who has come to admire sculpture possibly deny that? But better still is a moving sculpture - a process whereby trillions of concrete things emerge from simple beginnings. Could anyone who has come to admire dance possibly deny that? And good that they should come in kinds with marvelous patterns of color, new kinds emerging from old - a living painting. The goodness of the existence and beauty of the non-conscious world. . . is so obvious, and yet it needs a poet to bring it alive. . . But is it not obvious that a good God would seek to bring about such beauty? [116]
While this argument can only carry the strength appropriate to an argument to the best explanation, I agree that ‘The argument surely works.’ [117]
In Scaling The Secular City, J.P. Moreland affirms that features of the world such as ‘a sun-set, fall in Vermont, the human body, the Rocky Mountains [and] the singing of birds. . . all exhibit real, objective beauty.’ [118] He also says that ‘if one denies the objectivity of beauty, then this sort of design will not be of use in arguing for a designer.’ [119] It is therefore rather disappointing that for Moreland, ‘Space does not allow for a defence of the objectivity of beauty.’ [120] However, I do not see why Moreland produces the conclusion that only objective beauty is of use to the apologist. For instance, F.R. Tennant contradicts Moreland:
Whether it be subjectively constituted. . . whether beauty be wholly Objective and literally intrinsic to Nature: these controversial questions are here immaterial. . . If we minimize phenomenal Nature’s gift by denying that her beauty is intrinsic. . . we must allow to ontal Nature an intrinsic constitution such that minds can make beauty. . . out of it. And the more we magnify man’s part in this making. . . and appreciating, the more motivation have we to believe that Nature comes to herself in man, has a significance for man that exists not for herself, and without man is a broken circle. Theologically expressed, this is the belief that Nature is meaningless and valueless without God behind it and man in front. . . [121]
If beauty is not objective, then clearly it is either subjective or non-existent. Since beauty patently exists, the only choice is to give it objective or subjective characterization. However, Tennant seems to me to demonstrate that inductive forms of objective aesthetic argument operate independently of questions about the objectivity or subjectivity of beauty.
Moreland argues that: ‘the beauty in the examples cannot be accounted for in terms of survival value, natural selection, and the like.’ [122] For this conclusion he gives the following reasons:
some of the examples (the Rocky Mountains) are not biological organisms. Further, even when one considers biological organisms (the human body) it is not clear that the beauty of those organisms is related to their survival. Since science does not deal with value qualities (aesthetic or moral) in its descriptions of the world, then beauty as an aesthetic property is not a part of evolutionary theory. [123]
The thought underlying these comments, which Moreland leaves undeveloped, is this: Since naturalistic explanations of the world give no a priori reason to expect beauty to arise in either the biological or non-biological realm, a theistic explanation, which can invoke teleology to explain this fact, gains a measure of credibility. As W.S. Rhodes says, ‘It is difficult to believe that so many beautiful things came into being without any kind of direction by a power sensitive to beauty.’ [124] Attributing biological beauty to a naturalistic evolutionary process hardly accounts for the overwhelming amount and degree of beauty produced, since it doesn’t explain why there should be a connection between beauty and survival value.
W.S. Rhodes argues from the beauty of flowers:
pollination by insects may be the means by which beautiful forms and colors are selected. We have then to suppose that the remarkable beauty of form and color has developed because insects are attracted to these characteristics. They can be shown to be attracted to bright colors. But the point here is not the brightness of the color, but its delicacy as compared. . . with the crudity of artificial ones. If insects are responsible for the exquisite beauty of form and color in so many flowers they must have great sensitivity to these qualities. [125]
It can hardly be imagined that insects appreciate beauty in the flowers whose evolution they have helped to shape. I doubt that bees, for instance, are conscious; let alone self-conscious. Rather, these insects are attracted to certain wavelengths of light, beyond those visible to the human eye, which are reflected by flowers. The naturalistic evolutionary explanation does not explain why the evolutionary pressure of insects unconcerned with beauty should lead to the existence of flowers which, purely as a side-effect of their insect-attracting ultra-violet coloring (as the naturalistic evolutionary story would have it) possess objectively beautiful colors in the very spectrum of light visible to the very creatures capable of appreciating that beauty; creatures who played no role in the evolution of the beauty they appreciate. As Norman L. Geisler notes: ‘all or most things in nature. . . move towards an end, be it staying alive or reproducing, and they move toward secondary purposes that have nothing to do with themselves. In the big picture their existence and actions make the world. . . beautiful’, and that implies a designer, because, as Aquinas argued, ‘These agents act in predictable. . . ways that seem to work towards the best results [and] whatever lacks knowledge must be directed toward an end.’ [126] ‘God’ provides a more adequate explanation of nature’s propensity to produce beauty than does the simpler but less adequate explanation of ‘chance’, and is therefore to be preferred. It may be possible that the interplay of chance gene mutation and environmental pressure should produce such fortuitous aesthetic ‘side-effects’, but it does not seem a very likely, elegant, or neat explanation of the facts. It might be argued that though humans had no effect on the evolution of flowers, the flowers had some effect upon the evolution of humans such that humans naturally appreciate flowers because of some association with fertility, for example. Such an explanation does not exclude God working within evolution to obtain this effect. Then again, such a response fails to take seriously the fact that the flowers are objectively beautiful. Moreover, as Moreland says, the theory of evolution can hardly account for the beauty of objects, like the Rocky Mountains, which did not evolve. As Aristotle noted: ‘it is unlikely that fire, earth, or any such element [i.e. that any material cause or the efficient causes thereof] should be why things manifest goodness and beauty.’ [127] Augustine’s remarks on this subject have lost none of their relevance:
And even if we take out of account the necessary functions of the parts, there is a harmonious congruence between them, a beauty in their equality and correspondence, so much so that one would be at a loss to say whether utility or beauty is the major consideration in their creation. . . There is no visible part of the body which is merely adapted to its function without being also of aesthetic value. . . Hence it can, I think, readily be inferred that in the design of the human body dignity was a more important consideration than utility.” [128]
This is not a matter of arguing for a ‘God-of-the-gaps’, because the explanatory gap being referred to is one inherent to the structure of scientific explanation. As John Polkinghorne testifies, ‘Beauty slips through the scientist’s net.’ [129] The metaphysical explanation for beauty available to the theist does not rule out scientific explanation, but rather subsumes it within a wider explanatory teleology that seems capable of providing a more adequate account of the place of beauty in the cosmos. The theistic hypothesis, as Keith Ward argues, makes sense of the fact that: ‘scientists often do appeal to teleological reasons, to a sense of beauty and elegance, in choosing ultimate theories.’ [130]
Moreland argues that: ‘Beautiful theories or systems of thought which are mere inventions get their beauty from the superior human intellect which formed them. Similarly, beautiful theories, which are discovered and which accurately reflect the way the world is, get their beauty from the Mind which formed them.’ [131] In support of this contention Moreland notes that ‘Philosophers of science have often pointed out that one of the criteria for a true (or rational) scientific theory is its elegance or beauty’ [132] For example, ‘Albert Einstein and Erwin Shrodinger were guided by the conviction, borne out by previous scientific discoveries, that a good scientific theory would safeguard the beauty of nature and would itself be formally or mathematically beautiful.’ [133] Paul Davies notes that: ‘It is widely believed among scientists that beauty is a reliable guide to truth, and many advances in theoretical physics have been made by the theorist demanding mathematical elegance of a new theory.’ [134] He goes so far as to say that: ‘when laboratory tests are difficult, these aesthetic criteria are considered even more important than experiment.’ [135] Responding to the proposal that our capacity to know beauty can be accounted for by natural selection, Davies seems to be on to something when he responds:
If beauty is entirely biologically programmed, selected for its survival value alone, it is all the more surprising to see it re-emerge in the esoteric world of fundamental physics, which has no direct connection with biology. On the other hand, if beauty is more than mere biology at work, if our aesthetic appreciation stems from contact with something firmer and more pervasive, then it is surely a fact of major significance that the fundamental laws of the universe seem to reflect this “something”. [136]
Aesthetics and Intelligent Design: Dembski and Behe
Proponents of intelligent design typically make use of objectively beautiful discoveries made in scientific fields such as cosmology and molecular biology; beauties that were simply unavailable to past champions of design. For example, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of DNA, writes of ‘the intrinsic beauty of the DNA helix. It is a molecule which has style.’ [137] ; while the structure of DNA is ‘flawlessly beautiful’ according to Judson in The Eight Day of Creation.
William A. Dembski has provided an ‘Explanatory Filter’ that reliably identifies intelligent design by its trademark, specified complexity: ‘Roughly speaking the filter asks three questions in the following order: (1) Does a law explain it? (2) does chance explain it? (3) does design explain it?’ [138] This follows Plato’s observation that ‘all things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance.’ [139] Nancy Pearcey explains
We detect design. . . by applying an ‘explanatory filter’ that first rules out chance and law. That is, scientists first determine if something is the product of merely random events by whether it is irregular, erratic, and unpredictable. If chance doesn’t explain it, they next determine if it is the result of natural forces by whether it is regular, repeatable, and predictable. If neither of these standard explanations works – if something is irregular and unpredictable, yet highly specified – then it bears the marks of design. [140]
For example, the four president’s faces on Mt. Rushmore are irregular (not something generally to be expected from erosion!) and specified (they fit a particular independent pattern): ‘Applying the explanatory filter, the evidence clearly points to design.’ [141] As with Mt. Rushmore, so with DNA. Consider the analogy of discovering an open combination lock. Richard Dawkins writes: ‘Of all the unique and, with hindsight equally improbable, positions of the combination lock, only one opens the lock. . . The uniqueness of the arrangement. . . that opens the safe, [has] nothing to do with hindsight. It is specified in advance.’ [142] Hence the best explanation of an open safe is not that someone got lucky, but that someone knew the specific combination required to open it. Compare this with Richard Dawkins’ description of DNA:
at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air. . . Not just any DNA, but DNA who’s coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds. Those fluffy specks are, literally, spreading instructions for making themselves. . . It is raining instructions out there; it’s raining programs; it’s raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn’t be plainer if it were raining floppy discs. [143]
If it was raining floppy discs, and those floppy discs, like DNA, carried a program (for making other floppy discs), wouldn’t everyone agree that this information must have originated in some mind or minds? Following Dawkin’s usage, both the floppy disc and the willow seed are physical packets carrying complex, specified, encoded information. We know that computer programs come from minds; should we not also conclude that the information encoded by DNA comes from a mind?
Dembski’s Filter detects design because intelligent causes can easily achieve something that unintelligent causes (whether they be ‘chance’ and/or ‘necessity’) find all but impossible; that is, the creation of specified complexity. A long string of random letters drawn from a scrabble bag would be complex without being specified. A short sequence of letters (like ‘so’, or ‘the’) is specified without being complex. A sonnet by Shakespeare is both complex and specified: ‘Thus in general, given an event, object, or structure, to convince ourselves that it is designed we need to show that it is improbably (i.e. complex) and suitably patterned (i.e. specified).’ [144] The ‘Explanatory Filter’ is only a positive test for design. Suppose an ecologically minded artist carefully distributes leaves in a forest so as to mimic a natural leaf distribution. The Filter would be unable to detect the activity of intelligent causation in the distribution of these leaves. On the other hand, if the leaves were arranged to spell out the words ‘welcome to my forest’ the filter would detect design, for such an arrangement of leaves is both highly unlikely (complex) and specified. Again, consider a painting of the Jackson Pollock sort where paint has been randomly distributed on a canvas as if they had just fallen from a table and spilt on the floor. Dembski’s filter would be unable to decide whether this painting was in fact the result of chance and natural laws (gravity, etc.) or the deliberate creation of an artist. On the other hand, present the filter with the Mona Lisa and it would swiftly infer intelligent design. Intelligent Design (whether applied to determining cause of death in forensic science or design in nature) can be rigorously cast in terms of information theory: ‘the actualisation of a possibility (i.e. information) is specified if independently of the possibility’s actualisation, the possibility is identifiable by means of a [non ad hoc] pattern. . . Information that is both complex and specified [CSI] is what all the fuss over information has been about in recent years, not just in biology, but in science generally. . . ‘ [145]
I want to float the suggestion that a high degree of objective beauty may be regarded as a specification that, in conjunction with contingent events of sufficiently high improbability, passes through Dembski’s explanatory filter to indicate design. For example, the fine-tuning of the universe discovered by cosmologists is an example of CSI because it constitutes an unlikely (complex) state of affairs that conforms to a specifiable (non ad hoc) pattern, the pattern of universal constants necessary for a life-permitting universe (in the case of cosmic fine-tuning, what calls out for explanation in terms of design is not merely the fact that a particular improbable set of physical laws exists, but the fact that this particular set of laws is specified as the set necessary for a life sustaining universe). These laws are not only specified considered as finely tuned preconditions of cosmic fruitfulness, but with respect to their beauty. For example, the fine-tuned laws obviously possess great instrumental and causal beauty. In other words, given that other sets of physical laws would have been less beautiful than the combination that in fact obtains, this combination constitutes an aesthetic specification, a particularly beautiful pattern. Hitting this aesthetic specification at low probability is an example of CSI. This bears out J.P. Moreland’s observation that beauty is an indicator of truth in theoretical physics, and his contention that: ‘beautiful theories, which are discovered and which accurately reflect the way the world is, get their beauty from the Mind which formed them.’ [146] After all, cosmic ‘fine tuning’ is just as necessary to the existence of a universe as beautiful as ours, and to the existence of sentient beings capable of appreciating that beauty, as it is to the existence of sentient beings per se. This might suggest that one of the designer’s purposes in creating a ‘fine tuned’ universe was the production of beauty and beings able to enjoy it.
The most famous design argument is of course that propounded by William Paley, who argued thus: even if we had never seen a watch before, an inspection would lead us to conclude that it was designed and made for a purpose. Observe the world and we see once again an intricate interplay of parts and contingent, complex physical laws arranged together and achieving a collective end (intelligent life forms). The world is analogous to the watch. The watch had a designer, so it is reasonable to think that the world had a designer. Modern knowledge has only increased the strength of this analogy: ‘Cells swim using machines, copy themselves with machinery, ingest food with machinery. . . highly sophisticated molecular machines control every cellular process.’ [147] Popular summaries of Paley notwithstanding, his argument goes well beyond mere analogy. Although he didn’t employ this precise terminology, Paley pointed out that a watch is irreducibly complex. Not only is the purpose carried out by the sum of the watch’s parts, but that purpose could not be carried out: ‘if its different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any other order than that in which they are placed. . .’ [148] Irreducibly complex systems, like a watch, are composed of a number of mutually interdependent parts, each of which is functionally useless on its own. This means that such a system cannot evolve by natural selection, because until the whole system is functional there is nothing of advantage in existence to be selected. (Indeed, manufacturing individual components of irreducibly complex systems would be a drain on resources, therefore constituting an evolutionary disadvantage.) Darwin admitted that the existence of a single irreducibly complex system would falsify his hypothesis: ‘If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.’ [149] Biochemist Michael J. Behe argues that the biomolecular level of life, unknown in Darwin’s day, is full of ‘irreducibly complex’ molecular machines
A system which meets Darwin’s criterion [for falsifying his theory] is one which exhibits irreducible complexity. . . An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced gradually by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, since any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition non-functional. . . Now, are any biochemical systems irreducibly complex? Yes, it turns out that many are . . . including aspects of protein transport, blood clotting, closed circular DNA, electron transport, the bacterial flagellum, telomeres, photosynthesis, transcription regulation, and much more. [150]
Now, as Balfour said, ‘Nice adjustment and fitness exquisitely accomplished are without doubt agreeable objects of [aesthetic] contemplation.’ [151]
Strictly speaking, the notion of irreducible complexity as stated by Behe appears to apply only to systems with the aesthetic qualities of maximal simplicity. This is because if any of the system’s parts were absent the system would not function at all. Hence the function in question is being achieved with the minimal number of parts possible, and such simplicity is a thing of beauty. However, there are biomolecular systems that are irreducibly complex at core, but less than maximally simple (Behe stretches the term irreducibly-complex to cover these systems as well). That is, there are systems where removing one or more parts degrade the causal efficacy of the system, but not fatally so; and yet where there are nevertheless a minimal number of parts required for the functioning of that system. A maximally simple irreducibly complex system may not perform its function as well as its less simple, but thereby more causally efficacious, rival. The more efficacious system would have greater beauty causally speaking, but less beauty in terms of simplicity; whereas the less efficacious system would have less causal beauty, but greater beauty in terms of simplicity. Either way, such systems exhibit great instrumental and causal beauty.
Deductive Ontological Aesthetic Design Arguments
Many of the epistemological and ontological versions of aesthetic arguments point to an instrumental relationship between the existence and appreciation of objective beauty as a good fact. Because it is good that beauty be known, the designer has created creatures capable of such knowledge, and a cosmos of such beauty to be known. Because beauty is itself a good thing, the designer has created a beautiful cosmos. The existence of a cosmos that is beautiful, to the overwhelming extent that our cosmos displays this quality, is down to intelligent design. The existence of creatures capable of knowing and thus enjoying this beauty, is likewise down to intelligent design. However, these inductive arguments do not seek to uncover any closer ontological link between the designer and beauty. They do nothing to support the intuition that God is not merely the source of such beauty as there is in the cosmos, and of our capacity for knowledge of that beauty, but is also the ontological ground of beauty per-se. This closer link is something that only a deductive ontological aesthetic argument could demonstrate. In the City of God, Augustine provides the following deductive aesthetic argument:
beauty. . . can be appreciated only by the mind. This would be impossible, if this ‘idea’ of beauty were not found in the mind in a more perfect form. . . But even here, if this ‘idea’ of beauty were not subject to change, one person would not be a better judge of sensible beauty than another; the more intelligent would not be better than the slower, nor the experienced and skilled than the novice and the untrained; and the same person could not make progress towards better judgment than before. And it is obvious that anything which admits of increase or decrease is changeable.
This consideration has readily persuaded men of ability and learning. . . that the original ‘idea’ is not to be found in this sphere, where it is shown to be subject to change. . . And so they saw that there must be some being in which the original form resides, unchangeable, and therefore incomparable. And they rightly believed that it is there that the origin of things is to be found, in the uncreated, which is the source of all creation. [152]
Given that beauty is objective, then our judgments about beauty must be measured against some objective standard which the human mind apprehends and employs. This standard of beauty cannot be constituted by any individual finite mental state, or collection thereof, or else it would of necessity be a subjective standard; and objective aesthetic judgments cannot depend upon a subjective aesthetic standard. Therefore, there must exist an objective standard of beauty that is independent of finite minds. However, an aesthetic standard or ideal is not the sort of thing that could possibly exist in the physical world. Therefore the standard of beauty must exist neither in finite minds, nor in the physical world, but in an infinite Mind. This argument, unlike the inductive aesthetic arguments given previously, depends upon an objective definition of beauty as that which it is intrinsically, objectively good to appreciate aesthetically. The link this argument forges between divinity and objective beauty is the same as the link proposed by the Moral argument between objective goodness and divinity: namely, that without divinity - which necessarily exemplifies total objective goodness (and hence total objective beauty, because goodness is beautiful) - there would be no objective good. [153] And without objective good, there would be no objective beauty, because nothing can be objectively beautiful that it is not objectively good to appreciate. This deductive aesthetic argument has no unique apologetic force, relying as it does upon the Moral argument. However, the fact that objective beauty - construed in the manner that I have advocated - is dependent upon God being the objective exemplification of goodness that the Moral argument aims at proving, is of intrinsic interest.
Conclusion
Intelligent design theory, as Phillip Johnson notes, encourages us to reclaim the concept of objective beauty, because it makes ultimate reality personal rather than the impersonal. However, the resurrection of objective beauty is logically independent of intelligent design, being defensible on philosophical grounds, and has something valuable to contribute to the research program of intelligent design theory. I have delineated four categories of aesthetic design argument. While some of these arguments do not depend upon an objective understanding of beauty, others do. The detection of design in nature establishes the existence (at least at one time) of one or more designing intelligences; intelligences independent of any material systems such as those that cannot be explained without reference to design, and therefore, in all probability, independent of material reality per se. A consideration of the aesthetic dimension of reality not only reinforces the conclusions of intelligent design; it also brings us closer to the God of theism than intelligent design theory ever can. As F.R. Tennant wrote:
Aesthetic values are closely associated, and often are inextricably interwoven, with ethico-religious values. God reveals Himself. . . in many ways; and some men enter His Temple by Gate Beautiful. Values alone can provide guidance as to the world’s meaning, structure being unable to suggest more than intellectual power. And beauty may well be a meaning. That is the element of sense contained in the romanticist’s paradox, beauty is truth, or truth is beauty. . . If Nature’s beauty embody a purpose of God, it would seem to be a purpose for man, and to bespeak that God “is mindful of him”. Theistically regarded, Nature’s beauty is of a piece with the world’s intelligibility and with its being a theatre for moral life; and thus far the case for theism is strengthened by aesthetic considerations. [154]
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