English Explanatory Dictionary

Paley's watch

English dictionary entry

Meanings

name
  1. A hypothetical pocket watch found lying on a heath, taken to be too complex to be formed by natural forces and therefore created by some entity; used in arguments for the existence of a creator God.

Word forms

Paley's watch

Etymology

Famously mentioned in a book by William Paley in 1802, though he was not the originator.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
Back to search All on P Russian dictionary Dahl dictionary