2 The Garber-Dauer Wilson Debate

In his 1982 article, Garber concluded that:

In Quine-ean terms one may say that on Garber's reading that in Berkeley's philosophy the visible and the indispensable, hidden qualities of things have ontological parity.Footnote ¹⁰ By contrast Margaret Dauer Wilson denies that Berkeley accepts imperceptible or insensible corpuscles (even if they are ideational) or the reality of hidden mechanical structure. For, in the intellectual culture of the mechanical philosophy corpuscles are by definition insensible so there is no reason why he would have to accept these into his ontology.Footnote ¹¹

While both Garber and Wilson draw on many of Berkeley's texts, the underlying debate seems to turn on to what degree Berkeley's response to his hypothetical critic expresses his own all things considered views (as Garber contends) or accepts premises only for the sake of argument to refute this kind of critic (as Dauer Wilson contends). As Winkler notes PHK 60-66 has ‘a complex structure’ (1989, p. 265). So, it is no surprise that part of Dauer Wilson's charge against Garber is that he ‘overreads’ the passage.Footnote ¹²

In refuting Dauer Wilson's criticism,Footnote ¹³ Winkler usefully points out that the central issue in the response to the hypothetical critics in Principles 60-66 is not one of ontology, but with the complexity hidden behind the visible world – a complexity that seems unnecessary on a natural reading of Berkeley's principles. In Winkler's terms, the critic ‘wants the immaterialist to explain why “God should make us, upon a close inspection into his works, behold so great variety of ideas, so artfully laid together”’ (Winkler, Reference Winkler1989, p. 268, quoting PHK 64, emphasis in Winkler). Winkler recognizes the real issue here is the question of God's providence (Reference Winkler1989, p. 275). But given that Berkeley endorses God's providence, Winkler does not explain why the hypothetical critic could have been worried about the drift of Berkeley's immaterialism. Berkeley reports the objection as, ‘how upon our principles, any tolerable account can be given, or any final cause assigned of an innumerable multitude of bodies and machines, framed with the most exquisite art, which in the common philosophy have very apposite uses assigned them, and serve to explain abundance of phenomena?’ (PHK, 60). So, the critic is both interested in how on Berkeley's account the diversity of phenomena can be explained and how final causes are assigned. Crucially for my present purposes the critic intimates a tight link between these two tasks in ‘the common philosophy’.

In my contribution to the debate, I show that the hypothetical critic expresses a concern that touches on the status of an extremely important and once influential design argument. This argument had been adopted by quite diverse schools of natural philosophy in the period. And while Berkeley's immaterialism also provides support for a distinct design argument, it does seem to undermine the more natural one embraced by the hypothetical critic, who, on my reading stands for the main current of the scientific culture of the age. On my proposed reading then, Berkeley really has no choice but to accept the premises that he needs in order to refute the hypothetical critic.

3 The Posidonian Argument

In this section, I introduce the once famous design argument transmitted, and perhaps invented by Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods (composed ca. 45BC).Footnote ¹⁴ In this section I offer two interpretations of this argument: (1) a prima facie interpretation; (2) a ‘neglected’ Footnote ¹⁵ one. In the subsequent section (4) I offer what I call (3) a ‘transcendental interpretation’, I show that it is very familiar to seventeenth and eighteenth centuries authors.

After discussing other kinds of design arguments, Cicero's Stoic character, Quintius Lucilius Balbus, says,

There are many arguments from design. Let's dub the main one articulated in the quoted passage by Balbus, the ‘Posidonian argument’. It deploys – in David Sedley's felicitous phrase – the ‘structural resemblance of state-of-the-art-planetary mechanism to the celestial globe.’Footnote ¹⁷ For, it relies, to simplify, on the supposition that everybody (even barbarians) will grant that if a sophisticated complex machine, which is a scientific representation of nature, is the product of intelligent design, then (once granted) it turns to suggest that the represented complex (beautiful, well-adapted, etc.) machine must itself also have an intelligent author.Footnote ¹⁸

I stipulate that despite the presence of minor variants, we are dealing with the Posidonian argument when (i) a presentation of a design argument is accompanied (as it is in Cicero's text) by (ii) a reference or allusion to Archimedes’ planetary sphere; (iii) a reference to Posidonius’ portable planetarium (iv) and some uneducated foreigner (ignorant barbarian, savage, etc.).Footnote ¹⁹ If all four of these are present in later texts we can be sure that the (original) source is Cicero. However, as I note below, there are variants of this design argument in which either (ii) or (iii) is dropped or different machines are used as examples. In these cases we may still be dealing with versions of the Posidonian argument (especially if Cicero is mentioned or knowledge of him can be presupposed). Of course, sometimes technical works on planetariums and astronomy (and their history), may note Cicero's mention of Posidonius’ or Archimedes’ planetarium without intending to offer a design argument (which is why (i) is necessary condition).Footnote ²⁰

Before I offer a modest reconstruction and evaluation of the argument,Footnote ²¹ I note a few features related to (i-iv). Balbus suggests that there are three ordering principles of the universe: chance, necessity, or intelligence.Footnote ²² The chance option is historically associated with the epicurean position, an identification that continued in subsequent history through the eighteenth century.Footnote ²³ Sometimes I treat this option as synonymous with ‘brute fact’. Berkeley sometimes uses ‘blind chance’ (PHK, 93; it's called ‘blind’ because of the denial of providence and final causes). The necessity option (which also denies final causes), I'll associate with Spinozism. Berkeley calls it ‘fatalism’ or ‘fatal necessity’ (PHK, 93). Thanks to Cudworth and Bayle, Strato became the ancient figure associated with the system of necessity in the early modern philosophy.Footnote ²⁴ It is not altogether unlikely that the system of necessity was associated with Stoicism itself in Cicero's day.Footnote ²⁵ Finally, Balbus asserts that a divine mind is the final option. He clearly associates the products of a divine mind with a providential order. Often I'll simply use, following Berkeley, ‘God’ or ‘the Intelligence that sustains and rules the ordinary course of things’ (PHK, 62) to refer to this option. Without explanation, Balbus seems to think that chance, divine mind, and necessity exhaust the genuine possibilities.

If one takes Balbus’ exposition at face value,Footnote ²⁶ the argument relies on the analogy between the apparent beauty of the well-adapted, manufactured (etc.) machine and the beauty and well-adapted nature of the heavens to infer an intelligence behind the universe.Footnote ²⁷ Moreover this argument may be read to rely on a further aesthetic premise, ‘nature's attainments transcend those achieved by human design,’Footnote ²⁸ and in conjunction with the empirical assertion that human craft produces nothing without reason and art to argue for the existence of a higher excellent intelligence behind nature's order.Footnote ²⁹ I do not foreground the significance of this analogy, but it is not irrelevant (cf. PHK, 106-109).

Posidonius was a famous Stoic philosopher active on Rhodes, where he was almost certainly met by Cicero.Footnote ³⁰ It is very likely that Cicero encountered a portable planetarium designed by Posidonius. Neither Cicero nor Balbus explains what the function of the barbarian in the argument is. But I take it that it is meant to be the imagined judgment of untutored (because uncivilized) humanity, that is, a kind of lowest denominator judgment. If the thought experiment does its job – ‘even a barbarian will consent to X’ – then nobody can object to X. In the context of the Posidonian argument, it seems to entail that if a machine is of sufficient complexity and artificiality everybody will agree it is the product of highly rational design and artifice.Footnote ³¹

Okay, with that in place, I offer a rational reconstruction of Balbus’ argument. My reconstruction is not meant to be exhaustive (again I drop the role of analogy), but I intend for it to capture the gist of the implied argument and for it to be a valid argument.

1. 1. All of nature's parts are ordered; they exhibit apparent design and beauty.

2. 2. Artificial, complex machines are the product of rational design.

3. 3. A planetarium is a complex machine or concrete representation of the heavens.

4. 4. Nature's complexity is greater than the complexity of a planetarium.

5. 5. Posidonius’ planetarium is a successful representation of the heavens.

6. 6. Even a barbarian will acknowledge that Posidonius’ planetarium is a complex machine (when she is confronted by it)

7. 7. So, even a barbarian, who correctly accepts premise (2), will acknowledge that Posidonius’ planetarium is produced by rational design.

8. 8. Nature's order is caused either by chance, or by necessity, or by a divine mind.

9. 9. Nature's order is not caused by necessity or chance because it is impossible that something less complex can be the product of rational design while the more complex thing (i.e., nature) it represents is not.

10. 10. For if you thought otherwise, then the designer of the less complex concrete model would be superior to the cause of the thing represented by the model (nature). That is, if nature's order has greater complexity than the clock and the clock is a product of design then so is nature's order.

11. 11. Therefore, nature's order is caused by the divine mind's rational design.

Strictly speaking the conclusion does not require premises (2) through (7). But the particular appeal of this argument rests on these premises. The obvious weak spot in the argument is (8); Balbus assumes without argument that (8) is exhaustive. If it is not exhaustive, then the argument is obviously not sound. In addition, I have formulated (8) so as to take the origin of nature off the table. That's because due to the embrace of a version of the PSR – ex nihilo nil fit – for a Stoic, and most ancients,Footnote ³² nature must be caused. Obviously when we deal with a later, Christian context, the status of (8) and the acceptance of PSR which it presupposes, needs to be investigated.

The universal quantifier – ‘all of nature's parts are ordered’ – in premise (1) also seems rather strong.Footnote ³³ In addition, even if one were to grant that all of nature is beautiful, not everybody will naturally agree with (1) – as Diderot would argue, defective animals (so called ‘monsters’) are born not infrequently.Footnote ³⁴ This suggests that not all individual parts of nature are best adapted for use. How to think about (1) in light of such naturally occurring imperfections is no easy matter. There are ways to account for nearby versions of (1) in which some apparent imperfections turn out to be very beneficial in light of the overall beauty and aptness of the universe.Footnote ³⁵ Even so, it is no surprise that modern presentations of so-called deductive, abductive, and inference to the best explanation design arguments tend to require only that ‘some things in nature…exhibit exquisite complexity.’Footnote ³⁶

While (1) is characteristic of arguments from design, one may well wonder if (1) is really required in Balbus’ version of the argument. For one can derive the conclusion (11) without it. That is to say, the real work in this reconstruction of the argument is not being done by the existence of apparent design (1), but by (a) the (partial) morphism between the concrete model and reality and (b) the relational complexity of model and reality (that is, (3), (4),(10)).Footnote ³⁷ Versions of the argument that continue to appeal to (1), I'll treat as ‘prima facie versions of the Posidonian argument’. Versions of the Posidonian argument that drop (1), I'll call the ‘neglected Posidonian argument’.Footnote ³⁸

Of course, some modern readers may also think that there is something fishy about (9–10). Surely, some artifices are better than their natural counterparts? One can grant that (perhaps easier now in age of precision tools), and still think that (9–10) can survive scrutiny. In fact, I would argue that Balbus’ point here is a more subtle.Footnote ³⁹ Even the very best concrete models of reality are imperfect because they must leave out or abstract away from some of the intricacy of nature. This point is basically stipulated in (4). This is not to deny that one can imagine successful concrete representations of nature where the concrete model is (say) unnecessarily more complex than nature (e.g., by adding an extra gear); but, leaving aside questions about to what degree such complexity must be functional and efficient, even that concrete model will leave out other bits of the machinery of nature or the phenomena it tracks. So, the stipulation (4) can be defended and survive scrutiny.

But that it is stipulated suggests that (9–10) may be dispensable. Here's a thought: premise (3) relies on the idea that the model inherits its features, or at least many of its significant ones, from reality in virtue of the effort in representing reality. That is to say, the particular complexity it has may be built by humans, but it is meant to track nature. The particular machine is built by humans, but – and this captures the intuition behind premise (10), the morphism it exhibits with reality is not original in the human designer, but extrinsic to it.Footnote ⁴⁰

Note that due to technological developments (2) can increasingly seem less plausible, if we insist that it is only humans can build artificial machines. Artificial machines that design and create other artificial machines (can) exist now.Footnote ⁴¹ It is conceivable, even likely, that in the fullness of time such artificially designed machines by other machines will prompt people, or even the machines themselves, to assert that ‘such exquisitely crafted machines could never have been designed by feeble creatures like humans!’Footnote ⁴² Of course, as stated (2) makes no mention of humans (even if the implied referent may well be humans), and, in fact, the argument would work just as well if one were to think, as Paley suggests, of machines or robots engineering other machines.

I offer one final observation on the reconstruction of the prima facie argument. Premise (6) is a bit redundant if you accept premise (3). And premise (7) is redundant if you simply accept premise (2). In both cases a rhetorically arresting thought experiment is used to provide evidence for something one is likely to accept anyway. So, one may consider premises (6–7) dispensable.

So, to sum up the situation so far: the prima facie version of the Posidonian argument, which is an argument from design (and so contains (1)), contains within it – if we drop (1), (6), and (7) – a very clever argument for the existence of God. The ‘neglected’ Posidonian argument goes like this:

1. A. Artificial, complex machines are the product of rational design.

2. B. A planetarium is a complex machine or concrete representation of the heavens (and the complexity of the planetarium that it has in virtue of being a model of nature is derived from nature.)

3. C. Nature's complexity is greater than the complexity of a planetarium.

4. D. Posidonius’ planetarium is a successful representation of the heavens.

5. E. Nature's order is caused either by chance, or by necessity, or by a divine mind.

6. F. Nature's order is not caused by necessity or chance because it is impossible that something less complex can be the product of rational design while the more complex thing (i.e., nature) it represents is not.

7. G. Therefore, nature's order is caused by the divine mind's rational design.

As Hunter notes, this ‘neglected’ version of the Posidonian argument (so without (1)) does not become obsolete through the rise of Darwinism or, as I have suggested, even robots. That's because it does not make any explicit claim about the appearance of design in nature. It's not an argument from design, but an argument to design.

Of course, there is a reason why this ‘neglected’ argument is neglected. A-D are dispensable. It's also not obviously sound because either (E) is incomplete, that is, there may be alternative ways to explain the origin of nature's complexity or order without a deist God; or the argument for necessity and/or chance can be made more robust and seem more explanatory than appeal to a divine mind. And (F) may be thought begging the question. In the next section I show that there was widespread familiarity with the (prima facie version) Posidonian argument in the early modern period in which the significance of premises (2-5)/(A-D) get re-conceptualized.

4 Early Modern Posidonian Arguments, especially Boyle

It is well known that Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1776) are modeled on, and often borrow heavily from, Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods.Footnote ⁴³ In fact, most learned readers would have been familiar with the Posidonian argument, because Cicero and On the Nature of the Gods continued to be read and quoted approvingly throughout the early modern period.Footnote ⁴⁴ That Berkeley knew his Cicero is exemplified by the fact that he took the very idea of minute philosophers from Cicero as is mentioned on the cover-page and in the first dialogue of Alciphron.Footnote ⁴⁵ Another quote from Cicero graces the cover-page of Passive Obedience.Footnote ⁴⁶

On the Nature of the Gods is, in fact, quoted in An Essay towards preventing the Ruin of Great Britain.Footnote ⁴⁷ In Passive Obedience (Section XIV), Berkeley explicitly quotes one of Balbus’ claims from Cicero's De Nature Deorum, that man is created to contemplate and imitate nature.

Perhaps more surprising is that Cicero is prominent among works that fit squarely in the modern canon of works at the intersection of philosophy and natural philosophy. More important, even when he is critical, Samuel Clarke calls Cicero ‘that great Master’ (A Discourse, 209) and ‘the greatest and best philosopher, that Rome, or perhaps any other nation has ever produced’ (A Discourse, pp. 292–293).Footnote ⁴⁸ It's not just Cicero's moral philosophy that is read; in drawing on Newton, Clarke quotes approvingly from On the Nature of the Gods in his important Boyle lectures (1705), A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (e.g. p. 110, where Toland is being mocked, and p. 229, where, as I discuss later, the Posidonian argument is explicitly discussed).

In fact, there were lively, high profile debates in the early modern period over Cicero's true philosophical views in On the Nature of the Gods (which anticipate the debates over Hume's views in the Dialogues.) For example, in his response to Collins's notorious (1713) Discourse on Free Thinking (which includes an epigraph from Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods),Footnote ⁴⁹ Richard Bentley, who had a much discussed correspondence with Newton and one of the leading classicists of the age, does not merely criticize Collins’ arguments and positions, but has a lengthy analysis of how to interpret Cicero properly. (Collins had treated Cicero as a free-thinker).Footnote ⁵⁰ The same strategy, including a motto quoting Cicero, is followed in The Guardian's critical review of Collins's book (published on March 14, 1713) attributed to Berkeley by his son.Footnote ⁵¹

But the most famous version of the prima facie Posidonian argument during the early modern period is probably to be found in Boyle. It occurs on a variant of a more familiar argument. First, I quote the familiar argument:

Boyle uses the world-clock analogy in order to drive home the idea that God's general providence works by general and original (this captures the sense of Boyle's ‘primitive’ in light of the ‘first design’) causes.Footnote ⁵² It presupposes Boyle's voluntarist treatment of God's agency.Footnote ⁵³ Boyle's argument seems familiar to us, educated as we are to see Darwinism, in part, as a response to Paley's watch.Footnote ⁵⁴ For my present purposes I want to focus on the Strasbourg clock because Boyle uses it elsewhere that reveal his debt to Cicero (or some intermediary source).

For, on the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, Boyle adds two claims to his treatment of the Strasbourg clock:Footnote ⁵⁵ (i) ‘the various motions of the wheels and other parts concur to exhibit the phenomena designed by the artificer in the engine…’; (ii) ‘and might to a rude Indian seem to be more intelligent than Cunradus Dasypodius himself.’ (Essay IV)Footnote ⁵⁶ Here I ignore Boyle's low regard for the intellectual achievements of native Americans. The phenomena exhibited by the (second) Strasbourg clock were primarily astronomical, that is, it was a gigantic, massive planetarium in which heavenly motions and phenomena were faithfully represented.Footnote ⁵⁷ In context, Boyle is explicitly rejecting local final causes (and action at a distance). That Cicero is probably his inspiration is confirmed not just by the great similarities in tropes, but also by the fact a few pages later he explicitly cites On the Nature of the Gods (for different purposes).

Boyle's version of the Posidonian argument (astronomical clock, ignorant foreigner) was familiar enough such that Locke would offer his own variant of a discussion of the Strasburg clock (without mention of Boyle) at Essay 3.6.3 and 3.6.9 but with ‘a gazing countryman’ and no Indian. The Essay also has a quote from Cicero's De Natura Deorum on its cover. Rather than piling on further examples, I'll treat it as established fact that the prima facie Posidonian argument was widely known in the early modern period.

Now I want to offer a more speculative ascription to the Early Moderns of recognition of a different version of the Posidonian argument. I have been unable to find an explicit statement of it. But it arises rather naturally upon reflection, and it illuminates the debate between Toland and Clarke.

Recall that the ‘neglected’ version of the Posidonian argument goes like this:

1. A. Artificial, complex machines are the product of rational design.

2. B. A planetarium is a complex machine or concrete representation of the heavens (and the complexity of the planetarium that it has in virtue of being a model of nature is derived from nature.)

3. C. Nature's complexity is greater than the complexity of a planetarium.

4. D. Posidonius’ planetarium is a successful representation of the heavens.

5. E. Nature's order is caused either by chance, or by necessity, or by a divine mind.

6. F. Nature's order is not caused by necessity or chance because it is impossible that something less complex can be the product of rational design while the more complex thing (i.e., nature) it represents is not.

7. G. Therefore, nature's order is caused by the divine mind's rational design.

Recall that (F) seems to beg the question. And that the PSR seems to be presupposed in E. I made no effort to suggest that there is an important link between the PSR and F. But in the early modern period, they get linked together in a very famous passage:

In the context in which this passage is taught and discussed in the scholarly literature, the main interest is in connecting the two causal principles (a&b) to Descartes's theory of ideas, the relationships actual, formal, and objective reality, and understanding how these connect to his argument for the existence of God. Later in the book Descartes treats (a&b) as clearly linked.Footnote ⁵⁹

Descartes claims to derive or infer (a&b) from another principle, ‘Now it is manifest by the natural light that (c) there must be at least as much (reality) in the efficient and total cause as in the effect of that cause.’ This (c) is pretty much treated as axiomatic by Descartes. It has its roots in neo-Platonic conceptions of emanation which merged with Aristotelian ideas about efficient causation. The underlying idea is that an effect receives its qualities from a cause and these (cause and effect) are conceived hierarchically.Footnote ⁶⁰

I'll call (a-c), ‘Descartes’ causal principles’. The relationship between (a) and (c) is easy to discern (although one may wonder which one is truly the more fundamental principle). In addition, it's clear that with his embrace of (a)/(c) that Descartes is clearly committed to something akin to the PSR. That (b) follows from (c) is also pretty clear.

Obviously (b) is not identical to (F) in the neglected Posidonian argument. But if we are allowed to treat complexity as a species of perfection, as Descartes does in the First Replies,Footnote ⁶¹ then (b) underwrites (F). For (b) and ((C), from which (F) is derived) rely on the same intuition that the model or copy derives its key, effective properties, the ones that track or are morphic with reality, from reality. And reality is more perfect or nobler than a copy. What I assume, however, is that these causal principles are more widely shared in the early modern period until we see them explicitly challenged.

Of course, these reflections entail that (A-B) are misleading if we think of (to use Descartes’ terminology) the total cause of a complex machine that tracks nature (say a portable planetarium) as limited to the human artificer that designed and built the concrete model. Crucially, on the interpretation pursued here, the total cause of a planetarium includes something of, or presupposes, the natural order which it tracks.

Now, how much of nature's order is presupposed in a concrete model of it, is worth careful consideration. But if we import these Cartesian causal principles into the Posidonian arguments we have been considering, we get a new premise:

With this premise (I) we can drop (A-C) and doing so will be the basis of what I call a ‘transcendental Posidonian argument’. Before I articulate the full version of it I motivate it by looking at critic of Cartesianism, Samuel Clarke. I argue that this – possibly even more anachronistic – transcendental interpretation of the Posidonian argument is a natural outgrowth of reflection on the scientific revolution in progress. The transcendental interpretation focuses on the fact that a scientific model of the world plays a crucial role in the Ciceronian argument.

An important aspect of the enduring attraction of the prima facie version of the Posidonian argument in the early modern period depends on the fact that if one is committed to the idea that science can reveal design of nature then progress in the sciences aided by, say, microscopic and telescopic technology keeps revealing new and ever more sophisticated evidence of design.Footnote ⁶²

To see how such an argument plays out, I discuss Samuel Clarke's Boyle lecture, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God (1705). This is presented as a response to Hobbes and Spinoza and their followers, but the only follower mentioned is Toland, to whom I turn first.Footnote ⁶³

5 Toland's Appropriation of Newton.

Toland's The Letters to Serena (1704) is a rhetorically complex work in five letters.Footnote ⁶⁴ The first three letters include a genealogy of the idea of immortality of soul, a proto-feminist tract, and an account of justice amongst other themes discussed. The fourth letter is a self-styled ‘confutation of Spinoza’Footnote ⁶⁵ – like other English critics of Spinoza, Toland finds Spinoza's account of motion wanting – often using the authority of Newton's then recent Principia in the process; the fifth letter, by contrast, advances Spinozist themes by rejecting Newton's account of the vacuum, space, and God (amongst other doctrines).Footnote ⁶⁶ Among the Spinozist positions that Toland adopts as his own is that God's immanence in nature (and the denial of the immateriality of the soul).Footnote ⁶⁷

Here I focus on a key feature of Letter four. In order to do justice to Toland's position, I introduce some anachronistic terminology: by ‘anti-mathematicism’ I mean the expressed reservations about the authority and/or utility of the application of mathematics. Such anti-mathematicism can come in many guises and strands. Here I focus only on what I call ‘The global anti-mathematicist strategy’ by which I mean to pick out those arguments and positions that challenge and de-privilege the epistemic authority and security of mathematical applications as such. To avoid misunderstanding, this strategy is compatible with allowing some subservient uses (for bits) of mathematics in one's physics (and praise for pure mathematics). The position pre-dates Toland. The canonical late seventeenth century expression of the global anti-mathematicist strategy can be found in Spinoza's so-called ‘Letter on the Infinite’ addressed to Lodewijk Meyer and published in his Opera Posthuma.Footnote ⁶⁸

In order to understand what is at stake in Clarke's response to Toland it is indispensable that we have some features of Toland's global anti-mathematicist strategy in view. Toland expresses a key aspect of his position as follows: ‘The Mathematicians generally take the moving force for granted, and treat of local motion as they find it, without giving themselves much trouble about its original [cause]; but the practice of the philosophers is otherwise, or rather ought to be’ (Letters 4.8, p. 141, emphasis added).Footnote ⁶⁹

This passage presupposes a hierarchically organized intellectual division of labor between the ‘mathematicians’ who, Toland explains, find ‘rules of motions’ by ‘observations learnt from…experience’; they only deal with ‘local motion’ (or a ‘change in situation’) in order to generate the ‘ordinary rules of motion’ by ‘probable calculations’ (Letters 4.8, p. 141). That is to say, these ‘mathematicians’ are primarily engaged in what we would call ‘empirical induction’ and ‘instrumentalist description’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Higher in status are the ’philosophers’, who assign causes and the (causal) ‘principles’ of ‘true’ motion (Letters 4.8, p. 140).Footnote ⁷¹

There are three key features of the hierarchical intellectual division of labor:

1. (i) it is normative (‘ought to be’);

2. (ii) mathematicians, or we might say, mathematical natural philosophers do not have last word on their own analysis (qua mathematician);

3. (iii) mathematicians are incapable of supplying what we really want – a causal understanding of how the world operates.

It is the combination of (i-iii) that makes Toland's position instantiate a global anti-mathematicist strategy. (That's compatible with him allowing a pragmatic or instrumental role for mathematics in physics.) In context, and throughout the Letters, Toland implies that the methodological stance of (the first edition of) the Principia explicitly recognizes a distinction between the discovery of local forces (which, Toland grants, are discovered by Newton) and the ‘general or moving force of all matter’ (see Letters 5.29, p. 233–34). Toland may thereby be the first to interpret the methodological stance of Newton's Principia in an instrumentalist fashion – something that only becomes fashionable after the addition of the General Scholium and Clarke's exchange with Leibniz. For this precedes the changes to the Principia in response to the controversy over the status over action at a distance.Footnote ⁷² Here I leave aside the question to what degree Toland's interpretation of Newton can be defended in light of the details of the Principia.Footnote ⁷³Toland's strategy may well have inspired Berkeley's in De Motu.Footnote ⁷⁴ But for present purposes another key move by Toland is to reject what we would call the invocation of a ‘God of the gaps’.Footnote ⁷⁵ He does so by appealing to the authority of Cicero. He then goes on to imply that one reason to favor the idea that motion is essential to matter is that it minimizes such invocation of gap-filling-God:

In these passages, Toland is not merely criticizing occasionalist views, but all views, including even the concurrentist,Footnote ⁷⁶ that require any activity by God. Toland contrasts two (coherent) positions: first, one claims that matter is passive and requires God to be the first and concurring cause. Second, one aims to minimize God's role altogether and, thereby, opts for active matter and ‘activity’ is an essential quality of matter. The second view dispenses with God's role as the first cause of motion and has a tendency to insist that the universe must have existed forever.

In a nutshell: Toland adopts the second position: ‘I deny that matter is or ever was an inactive dead Lump in absolute Repose, a lazy and unwieldy thing…I hope to evince that this Notion alone accounts for the same Quantity of Motion in the Universe, that it alone proves there neither needs nor can be any Void, that Matter cannot be truly defin'd without it, that it solves all the Dificultys about the moving force, and all rest which we have mention'd before.’ (Letters 5.16, pp. 159–60). By contrast, in a Demonstration Clarke adopts the former position (matter is passive, etc.), strongly implying that this is also Newton's position.Footnote ⁷⁷

So, the way to understand Toland's challenge is as follows: the mathematical structure of the Principia is ultimately neutral on matter being truly active or passive and what the general source of motion is. While Newton qua mathematician talks of forces as causes in order to help keep track of observed regularities, these do not pick out genuine explanatory causes in nature – that's the task of the philosopher and by Toland's lights Newton acknowledges this division of labour. Toland takes up the task to offer a philosophical conception of matter that coheres with the Principia; one in which matter is essentially active and, with a nod to Cicero's authority, that dispenses with a need for God (beyond a vague immanent substance monism in which God gives being to matter).Footnote ⁷⁸ If, by contrast, you insist that matter is passive then you introduce the ‘god of the gaps’.

Now, while the next section is devoted to analyzing Clarke's response to Toland, I do not have space to explain Clarke's response to Toland's matter theory here (or Berkeley's attitude toward Newton). But, while I do not want to downplay their differences, notice how much Toland anticipates features of Berkeley: they both think there is a hierarchical division of labor in which the metaphysician/philosopher assigns causes while the work of the natural philosopher/geometrician can be interpreted as a mere tracking of the relations of the phenomena (for Berkeley, see De Motu, pp. 71–72; PHK, p. 107)). They are both in a non-trivial sense global anti-mathematicists (while allowing the use of mathematics for evidential reasons) and, perhaps, even instrumentalists about Newtonian natural philosophy. They do not take the self-understanding of the new sciences as authoritative in first philosophy.

Moreover, Toland's move is essential for understanding why people would have thought that the stance one takes about the nature of matter theory has significant effects on how one views the status of providence/Intelligence. In response to Toland, Clarke uses the Posidonian argument to link a particular conception of matter theory and scientific progress to the existence of Intelligence. By the end of the next section it should be clear that Berkeley's immaterialism undermines Clarke's framework.

6 Clarke responds to Toland

In the context of a polemic with Toland, who in the Letters to Serena with his own appeal to Cicero's authority rejects what we would call the invocation of a ‘God of the gaps’,Footnote ⁷⁹ Clarke points out that when in Ancient times, ‘Epicurus and his follower Lucretius’ imagined ‘finding fault in the frame and constitution of the Earth’ this was somewhat plausible due to the ‘infancy of natural philosophy’ (although Clarke notes with satisfaction that even then the ‘generality of men’ were not persuaded). Clarke can point to recent discoveries in anatomy and physiology such as ‘the circulation of the blood, the exact structure of the heart and brain’ as well as the discovery of a number of veins and other vessels neither known nor imagined in ancient times. (A Demonstration pp. 227–28; cf. Hume's Dialogues, 11.11). Then Clarke writes:

The history of scientific progress becomes an added argument for the plausibility of the Posidonian argument.Footnote ⁸¹ In the narrow sense this is so because on Clarke's account, science discovers more evidence of apparent design where previously there just had been mystery or lack of knowledge and, thus, is capable of ever more refined representations of nature covering an increasing domain of nature. This fact feeds into a broader argument that Clarke makes in context: the history of scientific progress itself becomes a further argument for the existence of a designing and benevolent God. In fact, after listing a large number of Newton's then recent discoveries, Clarke interprets the history of scientific progress as an unfolding Biblical prophecy:

Newton's then recent discoveries become an important evidentiary signpost for understanding scientific progress as an open-ended, unfolding and confirmation of confident Biblical prophecy.

Now we can return to the Posidonian argument in order to explore the transcendental interpretation of it. As I have emphasized the Posidonian planetarium is more than a time-keeper; it is capable of predicting other heavenly phenomena, especially eclipses. So, rather than viewing the heavenly phenomena as portents of danger (revolution, omens, etc.) the scientific representation fits them into an ordered universe.Footnote ⁸³ That is, the empirical success of the planetarium points to the significance of predictable order; the designer of a planetarium presupposes an orderly celestial globe.Footnote ⁸⁴ For example, In Newton's Principia this orderliness is crowned by the original closing pages of the book, Newton's ability to predict the orbits of comets.Footnote ⁸⁵

So, we can put the significance and true intuitive force lurking within all elements of the Posidonian argument in anachronistic fashion: a condition of the possibility of (an intended) successful scientific representation of nature is that nature is orderly or ordered. Then a history of successful scientific representations, and technologies of representation relying on these, becomes a distinct and over time increasingly compelling argument for an orderly nature.Footnote ⁸⁶ This leads me to the promised transcendental interpretation of the Posidonian argument.Footnote ⁸⁷ The form of the transcendental intrpretation is as follows:

1. I. A condition of the possibility of (an intended) successful scientific representation of nature is that nature is ordered.

2. II. Science has a history of success.

3. III. The world's order is not produced by nothing.

4. III *. The same cause or principle is responsible for the existence of the world and its order.

5. IV. Order is produced by necessity, or by chance, or by designing mind.

6. V. The particular order science finds is not the subject of chance or necessity.

7. VI. ∴ So nature's order must be produced by a designing mind (or nature is designed).

I make three claims about this version of the argument. First, most early moderns who were interested in such arguments were interested in re-affirming that God was the cause of the world. For Christians it is natural to assume (III*) there is a tight link because the cause of the existence of nature and the cause of its order are taken to be the very same.Footnote ⁸⁸

Second, the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument changes the significance of the history of science and the character of science more generally. For, on the prima facie approach to the Posidonian argument when it comes to the question of intelligent design in nature, science is, in principle, perceived to be a neutral means in order to establish the nature and existence, if any, of the God(s). However, on the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument, science is not neutral at all about the existence of an Intelligence, because science itself presupposes for its very possibility and intelligibility that there is order and a source of order. So, while the scientist has a kind of privileged access to the hidden features of nature, she has it in virtue of a commitment to finding the hidden order of God's design in our discoveries.

Third, on the transcendental version, the force of the Posidonian argument does not rely anymore on the (perhaps dubious to post-Humeans or post-Darwinians) explicit assumptions of the original argument in Cicero (such as ‘nature's attainments transcend those achieved by human design’) and the role of Descartes’ causal principles in the neglected version of the argument. Moreover, now the Posidonian argument stresses the structural resemblance between state-of-the-art-planetary mechanism and the celestial globe, but does not appeal to aesthetics more generally nor claims about analogies between the designer of the planetarium and heavens.Footnote ⁸⁹ As in the neglected version of the Posidonian argument, this argument does not appeal to apparent design to motivate the argument nor mentions it in its premises.

Of course, the premises of the transcendental version of the argument are not without controversy. Premise (I) may be thought too strong in two ways. First, it may be the case that all that is required is to presuppose in a scientific practice that a relevant region of nature is ordered. So one can imagine rewriting premise (I) as follows:

While this would require reformulating other premises (e.g., III), it does not undermine the conclusion of the argument. In fact, as it turns out that ever more bits of nature are orderly (comets, geology, etc.), it may well strengthen the overall argument. Even so, to what extent all regions of nature share the same order or whether the same region remains orders is also not obvious (something Newton and Hume worried about).

Premise (II) is hard to evaluate – a lot depends on one's baseline and one's expectations. But it is no surprise that as the scientific revolution unfolds this premise seems very secure, despite the development of pessimistic meta-induction arguments (offered, say, by Aristotle's Ghost in Swift in Gulliver's Travels).Footnote ⁹⁰

Premise (III) relies, in its most general sense on a version of the causal principle or on the PSR. Not all thinkers embraced the PSR in the early modern period, but I am unfamiliar with anybody that denies the causal principle. As I noted above (III*) is in one sense controversial – there were lots of debates over the relationship between God and secondary causes –, but in other sense not so controversial (because God's omnipotence was simply assumed). In addition, there are hidden simplicity and parsimony assumptions packed into (III*).

Premise (IV) is inherited from the ancients. After Berkeley, philosophers start to explore new sources of order (e.g., the mind's imposition, emergence, and even the development of a science that deals with the nature of order, entropy, etc.) and start to challenge the naturalness of this premise.

Premise (V) requires argument. There are some philosophical proponents of chance (most notably Hume) as a source of order. And once probability theory is developed, the argument for chance is made in sophisticated fashion (by D’Álembert and Laplace) in the context of Enlightenment debates over cosmology and cosmogony in the generation after Berkeley. But in Berkeley's life most of the philosophical debates center on the challenges of Spinozism to this premise. In a nutshell critics of Spinozism (Clarke, Newton, MacLaurin) argue that while it predicts (by stipulation) necessary variety, it fails to predict the particular variety we observe. But as cosmogony starts developing (from Kant onward), the Spinozist position gets recast and becomes more plausible again. But in so doing another premise (III*) starts to become less likely.

That is, even if one is distinctly reserved about final causes or God's providence, the transcendental version of the argument tightly links scientific progress to God's or nature's order. If you accept this argument then, with scientific progress, you get a providential deism for free. It also motivates commitment to the possibility of scientific progress.

Before I return, in closing, to Berkeley, let me note one more feature about Clarke's version of the transcendental version of the Posidonian argument. Above I quoted Clarke on Tully and Archimedes’ sphere, and the fact that the history of scientific progress makes the Posidonian argument even more compelling now than it was in Cicero's time. On the preceding page, Clarke had expressed a version of the thought as follows:

Here Clarke relies on modern discoveries about the hidden structure of living things, plants and animals. That is to say, the larger context of Clarke's Posidonian argument treats the natural and living world symmetrically. Our inquiry of nature generated, compared to the by no means mean achievements of the Ancient world, hitherto unimaginable signs of order and functionality.

7 Berkeley's Hypothetical Critic

Let's, finally, return to the eleventh objection. My claim is now straightforward. In Berkeley's presentation of the eleventh objection, we can discern that this objection involves anxiety that Berkeley's philosophy is undermining appeal to Clarke's version of the Posidonian argument. I quote:

In the first sentence of the quote we see a clear allusion to Clarke's use of Galen in the Demonstration. In the third sentence, there is a clear allusion to Clarke's extension of Boyle's prima facie version of the Posidonian argument. And further down the paragraph, the hypothetical critic echoes Clarke by reminding the reader of Berkeley that there is still a great deal to be discovered of nature (‘the clockwork of nature, great part whereof is so wonderfully fine and subtle as scarce to be discerned by the best microscope’). So, while it is true that the characteristic features of the Posidonian argument are not mentioned, PHK conveys central features of Clarke's particular presentation of it.

The connection to the Posidonian argument is reinforced and even strengthened by Berkeley's restatement of the objection in paragraph 64:

The restatement makes clear that the critic's worry is really about Berkeley's immaterialism reopening the door to chance (‘ideas are not anyhow and at random produced’). And also, by undermining the argument for final causes, even the system of necessity (‘all that art and regularity to no purpose’). The whole point of securing Intelligence in the Posidonian argument, is to rule out necessity and chance. In addition note, too, that the critic is concerned that Berkeley's position makes pointless the scientist's effort to find hidden structure. The cultural significance of the Posidonian argument is precisely that scientific activity is an act of faith and strengthens it rationally. Finally, the restatement of the hypothetical critic also reveals the commitment to something like the PSR in making scientific enquiry intelligible (‘what reason can be assigned why God should make us, upon a close inspection into His works, behold so great variety of ideas so artfully laid together, and so much according to rule’).

Now Margaret Dauer Wilson had claimed that ‘in these sections Berkeley is confronting an opponent who simply argues that on his principles the organization of nature as we know it makes no sense. Berkeley contends that this organization does have a point, though not a causal role’ (Dauer Wilson, 1999, p. 247). This is right in so far that Berkeley does deny that that this organization involves efficient causes. Instead he proposes his doctrine of signs to explain nature's regularity. But Berkeley does insist that his argument leaves room to conclude the ‘wise contrivance’ of nature's order. For he has no doubt that the ‘order and connexion between’ our ideas (PHK, 64) is a sign of the order imposed by Intelligence. That is to say, the eleventh objection turns on the relationship between the hidden order of nature and the order and functionality science finds in providing evidence for the working of providence.