It could also be considered a reference to William Paley's Watchmaker analogy, a teleological argument found in his work Natural Theology.
In his essay The big bang, Steven Pinker discussed Dawkins' coverage of Paley's argument, adding: "Biologists today do not disagree with Paley's laying out of the problem. They disagree only with his solution."
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In Britain, where the philosophy of natural theology remained influential, William Paley wrote the book Natural Theology with its famous watchmaker analogy, at least in part as a response to the transmutational ideas of Erasmus Darwin.