Intelligent design

“ Would the inference of design be legitimate only on the supposition that the watch had the most faultless scapement, and the most artistic finish? Would not some rude, old crown-and-verge movement, dropped by some boor as he crossed the common, quite as irresistibly lead to the inference of design? And in dealing with the mechanism of the heavens, the real question at issue, is not—Is the intelligent contriver perfect? ”

“ The proof of Design, as shown in the works of Creation, is seen most clearly, not in mere physical arrangement, but in the structure of organized things;—in the constitution of plants and animals. In those parts of nature, the evidences of intelligent purpose, of wise adaptation, of skilful selection of means to ends, of provident contrivance, are, in many instances, of the most striking kind. Such, for example, are the structure of the human eye, so curiously adapted for its office of seeing ”

“ Well, it may be said, the remedy is with us—with the designers. We have only to use our invention in producing good and attractive designs, adapted to the process and material, and the factory and the machine will do the rest.
AXMINSTER CARPET WEAVING.
It is conceivable, certainly, that where the object is solely to produce something at once beautiful and serviceable, by a chain of associated and intelligent labour, with the most ingenious machines at the command of the designers, wonderful things might be done ”

“ If, because of their purposive character, we are to regard such instincts as of intelligent origin, may we not be told that through intelligent design the pike has beset its jaws, palate, and gill-arches with innumerable teeth, all backwardly directed for the purpose of holding its slippery prey; and the eagle has protected its eye with a bony ring of sclerotic plates, like the holder of an optician's watch-glass? If mimicry in form and colour is due to natural selection, why not mimicry in habits and activities? ”

“ How absurd the attempt to deduce this wonderful harmony from the blind mechanism of a fortuitous jumble of atoms! Those who deny the unity of design, so manifest in the relation of all the parts of this grand system, may endeavor as much as they will to conceal their absurdities with abstract ideas, coördinations, general principles, and emblematical terms. Whatever they may advance, it is impossible for me to conceive that a system of beings can be so wisely regulated, without the existence of some intelligent cause which effects such regulation. ”

“ If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot, and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a body and soul (without which, the use of the word design is delusive) , will present itself strongly to our minds in connection both with the true foot and with the model ”

“ Technical efficiency in the use of the tools is essential and must be gained by practice, but may be said to be second in importance to a thorough knowledge of decorative design, which can be attained only by the intelligent study of the best models. ”

“ Look round the world—observe its order—its regularity—its design. Something must have created it—the design speaks a designer: in that certainty we first touch land. But what is that something?—A god, you cry. ”

“ We do not for a moment doubt that the real foot was designed, but we are so astonished at the dexterity of the designer that we are at a loss for some time to think who could have designed it, where he can live, in what manner he studied, for how long, and by what processes he carried out his design, when matured, into actual practice. ”

“ These four qualities—emphasis, unity, balance, and rhythm—are necessary in what might be called the mechanics of beauty, the technique of design. We admit, cheerfully, that the beauty of a given masterpiece cannot be explained by pointing out an observance of certain fundamental laws of design, for an uninspired artist might obey all these laws without ever achieving beauty, just as a machinist might obey all the laws of mechanics without ever inventing a machine. ”

“ If designing could be taught, all the world would learn: as all the world reads—or calculates. But designing is not to be spelled, nor summed. My men continually come to me, in my drawing class in London, thinking I am to teach them what is instantly to enable them to gain their bread. "Please, sir, show us how to design." "Make designers of us." And you, I doubt not, partly expect me to tell you to-night how to make designers of your Bradford youths. Alas! I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. ”

“ We confine ourselves meanwhile to the first of the three, the techno-theological argument, or that which reasons from the phenomena of design.
Stated in brief compass, that argument amounts to the following inference. We see marks of adaptation, of purpose, or of foresight in the objects which, as we learn from experience, proceed from the contrivance of man. We see similar marks of design or adaptation in nature. We are therefore warranted in inferring a world-designer; and from the indefinite number of these an infinite designer; and from their harmony His unity. ”

“ If I am successful in my endeavour I shall have done something to show that “design” is demanded by all that we deem most valuable in life, by beauty, by morals, by scientific truth: and that it is design far deeper in purpose, far richer in significance, than any which could be inferred from the most ingenious and elaborate adjustments displayed by organic life. ”

“ There is no merit in the mere multiplication of features. It is a mistake. The rule of Pure Design, and it is the rule for all Design, is simplification rather than complication. As designers we ought to avoid additions, if possible. ”

“ So of thoughts: in a good composition, every idea is presented in just that order, and with just that force, which will perfectly connect it with all the other thoughts in the work, and will illustrate the others as well as receive illustration from them; so that the entire chain of thoughts offered to the beholder's mind shall be received by him with as much delight and with as little effort as is possible. And thus you see design, properly so called, is human invention, consulting human capacity. ”

“ The sense of order, which we all have, in a measure, needs to be exercised and developed. The spontaneity of undeveloped faculty does not count for much. It carries us only a little way. Let no one believe that without study and practice in Design he can recognize and appreciate what is best in Design. ”

“ Technologies, from primitive to sophisticated, supporting visual languages made possible complexities for which the intuitive use of visual expression is not the most effective. Consequently, the scope of design-oriented practical experiences changed. Design now affords more integrative projects of higher levels of synaesthesia, as well as experiences involving variable designs-that is, designs that grow together with the human being self-constituted in practical interactions with the designed world. ”

“ The idea that a design must have a beginning, and that a designer need not, is a simple expression of human ignorance. We find a watch, and we say: "So curious and wonderful a thing must have had a maker." We find the watchmaker, and we say: "So curious and wonderful a thing as man must have had a maker." We find God and we then say: "He is so wonderful that he must not have had a maker." ”

“ Such questions ought not to be overlaid with archæological inquiries, or with the information which only profits the designer; though of course it is best that the knowledge of design should be part of the education of the craft. ”

“ All civilization and most forms of savagery demand that the equipment of routine life shall be pleasing to the eye after its prime purpose of usefulness has been developed.
If an article be pleasing in appearance its making will have involved some of the elements of design. The relationship of its parts, the lines of its construction, its coloring, the manner in which it is ornamented will depend first upon its purpose, but will be guided by a group of recognized traditions which we call the principles of design. ”

“ It is only the design, the teleology, of the old school, touched by the Ithuriel spear of modern knowledge, and changing into a conception of universal design, that can only have originated in an infinite mind. ”

“ All the old ideas of Design, the looking for mysterious forces at work in the world, and for a Mind behind it all in order to explain the suitability of each organ to its function, could be scrapped. There was no creative God required. ”

“ It is precisely your knowing why not to do these things, and why to do just what you have done, which constituted your power of design; and like all the people I have ever known who had that power, you are entirely unconscious of the essential laws by which you work, and confuse other people by telling them that the design depends on symmetry and series, when, in fact, it depends entirely on your own sense and judgment. ”

“ Given a certain outline and certain tones, measures, and shapes to be put into it, it is the Problem of Pure Design to do the best we can, getting as many connections making unity as possible. The process is one of experimenting, observing, comparing, judging, arranging and rearranging, taking no end of time and pains to achieve Order, the utmost possible Order, if possible the Beautiful. ”

“ The language of design has an implicit set of anticipations and a projected endurance. Aesthetic structuring, culturally rooted and technologically supported, affects the efficiency of designed items. The explicit set of expectations is measured against this implicit set of anticipations. It translates from the many languages of human practical experiences to the language of design, and from here to the ways and means of embodying design in a product, event, message, material, or interaction. ”

“ What we call the evidences of design in the universe may be merely certain laws of our own minds, certain inward necessities we are under to think of everything as having an order and a plan and a cause. ”

“ But the moment we speak of this apparatus as a provision intentionally made for sight, we have introduced the idea of a Designer in the strongest sense of the word. Now, it is difficult to think of anything as an example of intelligent arrangement, and at the same time give no hint even to our own thoughts of arranging Intelligence. We can hardly look through a pane of glass and admire the perfect transparency of one surface to the exclusion of the other! ”

“ Why do we admit design in any machine of human contrivance? Simply, because innumerable instances of machines having been contrived by human art are present to our mind, because we are acquainted with persons who could construct such machines ”

“ In the primitive ornament of all peoples we find the same or similar typical forms constantly recurring, the germs of pattern design afterwards developed, complicated, and refined upon: the chequer, the zigzag, the fret, the circle, the spiral volute, the twisting scroll—can we ascribe their invention to any individual mind or hand? Can the mechanician tell us who were the inventors of the wheel, the lever, the mode of producing fire, the canoe, the paddle, the spade, the plough, the vessel of clay, the axe, the hammer, the needle, or even spinning and weaving? ”

“ The more we are able to keep before our minds the place and purpose of any design we have to make, the more we realize the conditions of use and service of which it must be a part, as well as the capacities of the material of which it is to be made; and the more we understand its constructive necessities, the more successful our design is likely to be, and the nearer we shall approach to bridging the unfortunate gulf which too often exists between the designer and the craftsman. ”

“ If wonder suggests a designer, can it go on increasing until it denies that which it suggested?
You must remember, too, that the argument of design is applicable to all. You are not at liberty to stop at sunrise and sunset and growing corn and all that adds to the happiness of man ”

“ As regards procedure in working out a design, one generally thinks of some leading feature, some central mass or form or curve—of a figure or a flower, say—and one thinks of its capacity in repeat; and, since one form or line should inevitably suggest or necessitate—as by a kind of logic—another, one adds other forms until the design is complete. For it must never be forgotten that design is a growth which has its own stages of evolution in the mind, answering to the evolution of the living forms of nature—first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. ”

“ And therefore have they ever been the instruments of great designes, yet seldom understood the true intention of any, accomplishing the drifts of wiser heads, as inanimate and ignorant Agents, the general design of the World; who though in some Latitude of sense, and in a natural cognition perform their proper actions, yet do they unknowingly concurr unto higher ends, and blindly advance the great intention of Nature. ”

“ Consequently, to design means to experience the table in advance of its physical embodiment. Thus designing is the virtual practical experience, at the borderline between what is and what new experiences of self-constitution require. ”

“ This critical and creative spirit on the part of the individual is not, therefore, to be despised by the technical expert. It encourages novelty, and tends towards the evolution of new ideas in design and colour, and a liberation from an excessive dominance of the commercial standard. ”

“ But it is not so much the activity as the people who are the activity that make either the criticism or glorification of design meaningful. This brings up the identity of the designer in the civilization of illiteracy.
Designers master certain parts of the vast realm of the visual. Some are exquisite in visualizing language: type designers, graphic artists, bookmakers; others, in realizing 3-dimensional space either as product designers, architects, or engineers. Some see design dynamically-clothes live the life of the wearer; gardens change from season to season, year to year ”