The Works of William Paley, D. D. In Five Volumes. With Notes and Illustrations by James Paxton. 5 vols.

London, Thomas Tegg, 1845. 8vo. Uniformly bound in five contemporary blue full calf bindings with five raised bands and gilt lettering to spine. Edges of boards with gilt ornamentation. All edges marbled. With dedication from Money Wigram (1790 ? 1873) - English shipbuilder and ship owner, and a director of the Bank of England - to Woolmore Wigram (1831 - 1907), Church of England clergyman and campanologist, to front free end-paper. Bindings with light wear and some scratches, internally fine and clean. XXIV, 428 pp. XIX, (1), 531 pp. VI, 442 pp. XIX, 441 pp. + 39 plates IV, 407 pp. A nice set of Paley's collected works. William Paley (1743-1805) ?wrote several books on philosophy and Christianity, which proved extremely influential. (?) His most influential contribution to biological thought, however, was his book Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature, first published in 1802. In this book, Paley laid out a full exposition of natural theology, the belief that the nature of God could be understood by reference to His creation, the natural world. He introduced one of the most famous metaphors in the philosophy of science, the image of the watchmaker: . . . when we come to inspect the watch, we perceive. . . that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day" that if the 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, either no motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now served by it. . . . the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction and designed its use. Living organisms, Paley argued, are even more complicated than watches, "in a degree which exceeds all computation." How else to account for the often amazing adaptations of animals and plants? Only an intelligent Designer could have created them, just as only an intelligent watchmaker can make a watch: The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD.? (University of California Museum of Paleontology).…