SCIENCE AND THE FORTUNES OF NATURAL THEOLOGY: SOME HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES |
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| Authors: | John Hedley Brooke |
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| Institution: | Brooke is senior lecturer in the history of science at the University of Lancaster, England, where he has also been senior tutor and principal of Bowland College. He has published extensively on the history of organic chemistry and on the British natural theology tradition. He has lectured widely in both Europe and the United States and is currently completing a book on the historical relations between science and religion for the Cambridge History of Science series. Since May 1988 he has been editor of the British Journal for the History of Science. |
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| Abstract: | Abstract. The object is to examine strategies commonly used to heighten a sense of the sacred in nature. It is argued that moves designed to reinforce a concept of Providence have been the very ones to release new opportunities for secular readings. Several case studies reveal this fluidity across a sacred-secular divide. The irony whereby sacred readings of nature would graduate into the secular is also shown to operate in reverse as anti-providentialist strategies invited their own refutation. The analysis is used to support the claim that the sciences have put fewer constraints on religious belief than is generally assumed. |
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| Keywords: | argument from design deism naturalism natural theology Providence secularization |
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