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ABSTRACT
Although Joseph Priestley was notorious for rejecting much of orthodox Christianity and replacing it with a materialistic Unitarianism, in another respect he was an orthodox theist of his time in that he passionately upheld the Argument from Design. The Argument from Design was the heart of his “rational religion”. He contended that natural order, especially biological order, could only be successfully explained by intentional agency. At the time, however, the Argument was coming under attack, first from David Hume, then from Matthew Turner, and lastly from Erasmus Darwin. Priestley replied to each of these critics. This article surveys his replies. The three critics of the Argument contended that intelligent agency could offer only a weak explanation of natural order, that natural order is self-explanatory, or that natural mechanisms can explain biological order. Priestley in turn critiqued all three contentions, arguing that the Argument is a strong explanation; that natural order cannot be self-explanatory; and that the proposed natural explanations conflict with the empirical evidence.
Notes on contributor
Dr Alan Tapper is Adjunct Research Fellow at the John Curtin Institute of Public Policy, Curtin University, in Perth, Australia. In addition to his work on public policy, his interests include philosophy in schools, professional ethics, and 18th century intellectual history. He co-edited Morality and Meaning: Essays on the Philosophy of Julius Kovesi (Brill, 2012). He is Vice-President of the Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics. His philosophy papers are shown at https://philpapers.org/s/Alan%20tapper. His public policy research is shown at https://staffportal.curtin.edu.au/staff/profile/view/A.Tapper/.
Notes
1 Kemp Smith, Introduction, in Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 2nd edition, 44. The history of the Argument is under-researched. For one view, see Hurlbutt, Hume, Newton and the Design Argument.
2 Priestley, Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion; Priestley, Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever; Additional Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever. Here I will use the 1974 Garland reprint of the second edition. Tweyman, Hume on Natural Religion, 80–92, includes Letter XI of the Letters. Fieser, Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion, 261–75, includes Letters IX and X. Hereafter I will refer to the 1787 edition, which contains both the 1780 Letters, Part I (25–8) and the 1782 Additional Letters (229–304). Part II of the Letters is Priestley’s response to Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
3 Priestley, Letters, 25; Works, 4, 326.
4 For some general discussions of Priestley’s philosophical thought, see McEvoy and McGuire, “God and Nature”; Hiebert, “The Integration of Revealed Religion”; Schofield, “Joseph Priestley”; Tapper, “Joseph Priestley”; Brooke, “Joining Natural Philosophy to Christianity”; Dybikowski, “Joseph Priestley, Metaphysician and Philosopher of Religion”; Mills, “Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent”.
5 Paley, Natural Theology. See Gregory, “The Argument from Design”, for a recent exposition.
6 Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. I will use this edition hereafter, referred to as Dialogues.
7 Turner, Answer to Dr Priestley’s Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, Hereafter, Answer.
8 See Schofield, A Scientific Autobiography of Joseph Priestley, 9, for this identification. See also Schofield, The Enlightened Joseph Priestley, 248–9; Mills, “Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent”, 204–11.
9 Mills, “Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent”, 204.
10 Turner, Answer, xxviii.
11 Turner, Answer, vii.
12 “Editor’s Introduction” to Darwin, The Origin of Species, 43.
13 Priestley, Letters, 44; Works, 4, 334.
14 For an examination of his attempt to combine materialism and theism, see Wunderlich, “Priestley on Materialism and the Essence of God”.
15 Priestley, Works, 3, 222.
16 Priestley, Letters, vii; Works, 4, 314.
17 Priestley, Letters, 167; Works, 4, 385
18 Priestley, Letters, 202–3; Works, 4, 400.
19 Priestley, Letters, 125; Works, 4, 367.
20 This had also been the opinion of the Monthly Review’s reviewer when the Dialogues first appeared. Thomas Hayter also held that “Philo, not Cleanthes, personates Mr Hume”. See Tweyman, Hume on Natural Religion, 41–56 (Monthly Reviewer), 57–92 (Hayter). Priestley’s friend, Theophilus Lindsey, seems to have thought that Hume was a deist, not an atheist (Mills, “Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent”, 188).
21 Priestley, Letters, 127; Works, 4, 368.
22 Priestley, Letters, 35; Works, 4, 330.
23 Priestley, Letters, 37–8; Works, 4, 331.
24 Priestley, Letters, 38; Works, 4, 331.
25 Priestley, Letters, 39; Works, 4, 332.
26 Hume, Dialogues, 183.
27 Hume, Dialogues, 218.
28 Priestley, Letters, 140–1; Works, 4, 374.
29 Priestley, Letters, 141; Works, 4, 374.
30 Hume, Dialogues, 211.
31 Hume, Dialogues, 219.
32 Priestley, Letters, 138; Works, 4, 373.
33 Priestley, Letters, 269; Works, 4, 429.
34 Priestley, Letters, 275; Works, 4, 431.
35 Turner, Answer, 37–8.
36 Hume, Dialogues, 234.
37 Priestley, Answer, 38.
38 Priestley, Letters, 259; Works, 4, 425.
39 Priestley, Letters, 254–5 Works, 4, 423.
40 Paley, Natural Theology, ch. 16, section 5, 302.
41 Hume, Dialogues, 221.
42 Turner, Answer, 41–2.
43 Priestley, Letters, 276; Works, 4, 432.
44 Hume, Dialogues, 224, 227.
45 Priestley, Letters, 54; Works, 4, 338.
46 Priestley, Institutes, Works, 2, 12.
47 Priestley, Letters, 54; Works, 4, 338. The background history of eighteenth-century matter theory is examined in Heimann and McGuire, “Newtonian Forces and Lockean Powers”. Priestley’s “Boscovichean” position is expounded most fully in his Disquisitions relating to Matter and Spirit.
48 Priestley, Letters, 132; Works, 4, 370.
49 Both had been members of the Lunar Society; Darwin had carried forward some of Priestley’s work on photosynthesis. In 1791, Darwin had expressed the hope that Priestley would “leave the unfruitful fields of polemical theology, and cultivate that [natural] philosophy of which you may be called the father”. Natural philosophy, Darwin thought, would “overturn the empire of superstition”. Cited in Priestley, Works, 2, 153. Priestley, of course, saw science as supporting rational Christian theism.
50 This view is first put forward in the third edition of Darwin’s Zoonomia, and it is to this edition, as well as to The Temple of Nature (published in 1803 after Darwin’s death in 1802) that Priestley replied. For a discussion of Darwin and Priestley, see Abrahams, “Priestley Answers the Proponents of Abiogenesis”, 44–71; Feigenbaum, “Visions of Algae in Eighteenth-Century Botany”.
51 Darwin, Zoonomia, 2, 304. The theory came from Buffon, and in earlier editions of Zoonomia, Darwin had rejected it.
52 Priestley, “Observations and Experiments relating to Equivocal, or Spontaneous, Generation”, 129.
53 Darwin, The Temple of Nature, “Additional Notes” Section 4.
54 The experiments anticipate the work of Pasteur fifty years later.
55 See Abrahams, “Priestley Answers the Proponents of Abiogenesis”, 67–8.
56 Hume, Enquiries concerning Human Understanding, Section XI, 148.
57 Hume, Dialogues, 182.
58 Hume, Dialogues, 196.
59 Priestley, Letters, 155; Works, 4, 380.
60 Hume, Dialogues, 210.
61 Hume, Dialogues, 249.
62 Priestley, Letters, 68–9; Works, 4, 344.
63 Priestley, Letters, 57–8; Works, 4, 339. Priestley’s phrase “the immediate maker of the universe” is open to the criticism that, qua designer, God can only be a craftsman and not a creator. Kant was to raise this point in the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, the year after the first edition of the Letters. See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, ch.apter 3, Section 6; Kemp Smith edition, 518–24. Priestley did not read Kant, and does not seem to have felt the difficulty.
64 Priestley, Letters, 59–61; Works, 4, 340–1.
65 Against the objection that evil and suffering are prima facie evidence of God’s limitations, Priestley claims that some evils necessarily attend any possible world. He also thinks that natural evils are prescribed by God to serve a moral purpose (Priestley, Letters, 69–114; Works, 4, 344–63). On his progressivist theodicy, see Tapper, “Priestley on Politics, Progress and Moral Theology”.
66 Hume, Dialogues, 205–7.
67 Priestley, Philosophical Necessity, in Works, 3, 450.
68 The authorship of the Système was at that time unknown. Letter XI (160–74) is devoted to rebutting that work, which, he says, is “considered by many persons as a kind of bible of atheism” (Priestley, Letters, 160; Works, 4, 382.)
69 Priestley, Letters, 165; Works, 4, 384–5.
70 Priestley, Letters, 46; Works, 4, 335.
71 Priestley, Letters, 197; Works, 4, 398.
72 Priestley, Letters, 132; Works, 4, 370.
73 Priestley, Letters, 182–3; Works, 4, 392. One “metaphysician” who held this view was Hume’s Demea. See Hume, Dialogues, 232.
74 Priestley, Letters, 185; Works, 4, 393; quoted from Clarke’s Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, 30.
75 Priestley, A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of Materialism and Philosophical Necessity, 397; Works, 4, 114.
76 Priestley, Letters, 193–4; Works, 4, 397.
77 Priestley, Letters, 133; Works, 4, 371.
78 Priestley, Letters, 64; Works, 4, 342.
79 Priestley, Letters, 65; Works, 4, 342.
80 Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, xviii.
81 Mills has commented that “Priestley’s fundamental problem is that he largely ignores what is arguably Philo’s most forceful criticism of Cleanthes’s theistic position: that the analogy upon which all inferences about the deity necessarily depend within an empiricist theological framework is essentially a very weak one”. Mills, “Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent”, 202.