There must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed for the purpose which we find it actually to answer who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. . 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. . 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. Similarly to Newton, René Descartes (1596–1650) speculated on 'the cosmos as a great time machine operating according to fixed laws, a watch created and wound up by the great watchmaker'. Newton also upheld the idea that 'like a watchmaker, God was forced to intervene in the universe and tinker with the mechanism from time to time to ensure that it continued operating in good working order'. With these laws perfectly in place, events have unfolded according to the prescribed plan.' For Sir Isaac Newton, 'the regular motion of the planets made it reasonable to believe in the continued existence of God'. With such a backdrop, 'deists suggested the watchmaker analogy: just as watches are set in motion by watchmakers, after which they operate according to their pre-established mechanisms, so also was the world begun by God as creator, after which it and all its parts have operated according to their pre-established natural laws. Simultaneously, the development of machine technology and the emergence of the mechanical philosophy Įncouraged mechanical imagery unlikely to have come to the fore in previous ages. The scientific revolution 'nurtured a growing awareness' that 'there were universal laws of nature at work that ordered the movement of the world and its parts.' Amos Yong writes that in 'astronomy, the Copernican revolution regarding the heliocentrism of the solar system, Johannes Kepler's (1571–1630) three laws of planetary motion, and Isaac Newton's (1642–1727) law of universal gravitation-laws of gravitation and of motion, and notions of absolute space and time-all combined to establish the regularities of heavenly and earthly bodies'. Epictetus attributed this design to a type of Providence woven into the fabric of the universe, rather than to a personal monotheistic god. In the second century Epictetus argued that, by analogy to the way a sword is made by a craftsman to fit with a scabbard, so human genitals and the desire of humans to fit them together suggest a type of design or craftsmanship of the human form. Others, however, consider the watchmaker analogy to be compatible with evolutionary creation, opining that the two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins referred to the analogy in his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker giving his explanation of evolution. In the United States, starting in the 1960s, creationists revived versions of the argument to dispute the concepts of evolution and natural selection, and there was renewed interest in the watchmaker argument. In the 19th century, deists, who championed the watchmaker analogy, held that Darwin's theory fit with 'the principle of uniformitarianism-the idea that all processes in the world occur now as they have in the past' and that deistic evolution 'provided an explanatory framework for understanding species variation in a mechanical universe.' The 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection put forward an alternative explanation to the watchmaker analogy, for complexity and adaptation. Prior to Paley, however, Sir Isaac Newton, René Descartes, and others from the time of the scientific revolution had each believed 'that the physical laws he had uncovered revealed the mechanical perfection of the workings of the universe to be akin to a watch, wherein the watchmaker is God.' The original analogy played a prominent role in natural theology and the 'argument from design,' where it was used to support arguments for the existence of God of the universe, in both Christianity and Deism.

The watchmaker analogy was given by William Paley in his 1802 book Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity.

The watchmaker analogy or watchmaker argument is a teleological argument which states, by way of an analogy, that a design implies a designer, especially intelligent design by an intelligent designer, i.e.

Clockmaker hints