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tween science and religion, and he arranged to have his Dialogues published before him, Denis Diderot had also written some speculations that tantaliz-after his death in 1776 precisely in order to save himself from persecution.
    ingly foreshadowed Darwin: "I can maintain to you ... that monsters anni-He caved in because he just couldn't imagine any other explanation of the hilated one another in succession; that all the defective combinations of origin of the manifest design in nature. Hume could not see how the "curious matter have disappeared, and that there have only survived those in which the adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature" could be due to chance—
    organization did not involve any important contradiction, and which could and if not chance, what?
    subsist by themselves and perpetuate themselves" (Diderot 1749). Cute ideas What could possibly account for this high-quality design if not an intel-about evolution had been floating around for millennia, but, like most ligent God? Philo is one of the most ingenious and resourceful competitors in philosophical ideas, although they did seem to offer a solution of sorts to the any philosophical debate, real or imaginary, and he makes some wonderful problem at hand, they didn't promise to go any farther, to open up new stabs in the dark, hunting for an alternative. In Part VIII, he dreams up some investigations or generate surprising predictions that could be tested, or speculations that come tantalizingly close to scooping Darwin (and some explain any facts they weren't expressly designed to explain. The evolution more recent Darwinian elaborations) by nearly a century.
    revolution had to wait until Charles Darwin saw how to weave an evolutionary hypothesis into an explanatory fabric composed of literally Instead of supposing matter infinite, as Epicurus did, let us suppose it finite.
    thousands of hard-won and often surprising facts about nature. Darwin nei-A finite number of particles is only susceptible of finite transpositions: And ther invented the wonderful idea out of whole cloth all by himself, nor it must happen, in an eternal duration, that every possible order or position understood it in its entirety even when he had formulated it. But he did such must be tried an infinite number of times __ Is there a system, an order, an a monumental job of clarifying the idea, and tying it down so it would never economy of things, by which matter can preserve that perpetual agitation, again float away, that he deserves the credit if anyone does. The next chapter which seems essential to it, and yet maintain a constancy in the forms, reviews his basic accomplishment.
    which it produces? There certainly is such an economy: For this is actually the case with the present world. The continual motion of matter, therefore, in less than infinite transpositions, must produce this economy or order; and by its very nature, that order, when once established, supports CHAPTER 1: Before Darwin, a "Mind-first" view of the universe reigned itself, for many ages, if not to eternity. But wherever matter is so poised, unchallenged; an intelligent God was seen as the ultimate source of all arranged, and adjusted as to continue in perpetual motion, and yet pre-Design, the ultimate answer to any chain of "Why?" questions. Even David 34 TELL ME WHY

    Hume, who deftly exposed the insoluble problems with this vision, and had glimpses of the Darwinian alternative, could not see how to take it seriously.
    CHAPTER 2: Darwin, setting out to answer a relatively modest question about CHAPTER TWO
    die origin of species, described a process he called natural selection, a mindless, purposeless, mechanical process. This turns out to be the seed of an answer to a much grander question: how does Design come into An Idea Is Born
    existence?
    1. WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT SPECIES?
    Charles Darwin did not set out to concoct an antidote to John Locke's conceptual paralysis, or to pin down the grand