Stephen Gaukroger
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199296446
- eISBN:
- 9780191711985
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199296446.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
One of the driving ideas behind many of the various movements in 17th-century natural philosophy was that of the unity of knowledge. There were two principal ways of establishing this in its most ...
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One of the driving ideas behind many of the various movements in 17th-century natural philosophy was that of the unity of knowledge. There were two principal ways of establishing this in its most general form. The first was politico-theology: Spinoza undermined the claims of Christianity to supply satisfactory notions of wisdom and happiness, and to set out to develop a novel account of how a mechanised natural philosophy can lead to wisdom and happiness. The general unqualified rejection of the Spinozean model does not mean that in a struggle between legitimacy, which the Spinozean conception effectively abandoned, and autonomy, which it established beyond doubt, natural philosophers favoured legitimacy over autonomy. They wanted both, and the answer was deemed to lie in physico-theology: revelation and natural philosophy were treated as being mutually reinforcing, there being a process of triangulation towards the shared truth of revelation and natural philosophy.Less
One of the driving ideas behind many of the various movements in 17th-century natural philosophy was that of the unity of knowledge. There were two principal ways of establishing this in its most general form. The first was politico-theology: Spinoza undermined the claims of Christianity to supply satisfactory notions of wisdom and happiness, and to set out to develop a novel account of how a mechanised natural philosophy can lead to wisdom and happiness. The general unqualified rejection of the Spinozean model does not mean that in a struggle between legitimacy, which the Spinozean conception effectively abandoned, and autonomy, which it established beyond doubt, natural philosophers favoured legitimacy over autonomy. They wanted both, and the answer was deemed to lie in physico-theology: revelation and natural philosophy were treated as being mutually reinforcing, there being a process of triangulation towards the shared truth of revelation and natural philosophy.
Stephen Gaukroger
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- January 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199594931
- eISBN:
- 9780191595745
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199594931.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, General
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries there was a concern to reconcile Christianity, the traditional humanistic disciplines, and natural philosophy. There are two principal ways in ...
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In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries there was a concern to reconcile Christianity, the traditional humanistic disciplines, and natural philosophy. There are two principal ways in which the reconciliation between religion and natural philosophy was attempted: metaphysics and physico‐theology. The Leibniz/Clarke correspondence encapsulates many of the questions at issue.Less
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries there was a concern to reconcile Christianity, the traditional humanistic disciplines, and natural philosophy. There are two principal ways in which the reconciliation between religion and natural philosophy was attempted: metaphysics and physico‐theology. The Leibniz/Clarke correspondence encapsulates many of the questions at issue.
CATHERINE OSBORNE
- Published in print:
- 1998
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198269427
- eISBN:
- 9780191683640
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198269427.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter examines the mystical critique of rational religion in England during the 1800s. In 1820, clerical historians elucidated and criticised the heterogeneity of mysticism. It is shown that ...
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This chapter examines the mystical critique of rational religion in England during the 1800s. In 1820, clerical historians elucidated and criticised the heterogeneity of mysticism. It is shown that the mystics were never incorporated into a distinct sect and that while some professed high-wrought piety, others delighted in allegorizing the Scripture. The most notable mystics who opposed metaphysical rationalism were William Law, George Horne, and John Wesley. They lambasted the complacencies of Newtonian physico-theology just as others anathematized the impious systematization developed in its wake.Less
This chapter examines the mystical critique of rational religion in England during the 1800s. In 1820, clerical historians elucidated and criticised the heterogeneity of mysticism. It is shown that the mystics were never incorporated into a distinct sect and that while some professed high-wrought piety, others delighted in allegorizing the Scripture. The most notable mystics who opposed metaphysical rationalism were William Law, George Horne, and John Wesley. They lambasted the complacencies of Newtonian physico-theology just as others anathematized the impious systematization developed in its wake.
Charlotte Lee
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474442282
- eISBN:
- 9781474476904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474442282.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter discusses Barthold Heinrich Brockes, a prolific German poet of the eighteenth-century, as a precursor of theories of distributed cognition. It argues that developments in anti-dualist ...
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This chapter discusses Barthold Heinrich Brockes, a prolific German poet of the eighteenth-century, as a precursor of theories of distributed cognition. It argues that developments in anti-dualist and radical Protestant thought around 1700, together with Brockes’ own commitment to the ‘mixed-science’ of physico-theology, cause his poetry to resonate with modern approaches to cognition. Through close readings of individual poems from the collection Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott, the chapter examines Brockes’ presentation of the flux between mind, body and world, and of the productive use which, through what we might call ‘epistemic engineering’, humankind can make of its environment. It also remarks on the compatibility of this religious work, geared towards the celebration of God, with modern, essentially secular understandings of our world.Less
This chapter discusses Barthold Heinrich Brockes, a prolific German poet of the eighteenth-century, as a precursor of theories of distributed cognition. It argues that developments in anti-dualist and radical Protestant thought around 1700, together with Brockes’ own commitment to the ‘mixed-science’ of physico-theology, cause his poetry to resonate with modern approaches to cognition. Through close readings of individual poems from the collection Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott, the chapter examines Brockes’ presentation of the flux between mind, body and world, and of the productive use which, through what we might call ‘epistemic engineering’, humankind can make of its environment. It also remarks on the compatibility of this religious work, geared towards the celebration of God, with modern, essentially secular understandings of our world.
Alexander Wragge-Morley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226680729
- eISBN:
- 9780226681054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226681054.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter reassesses the relationship between physico-theology—the main body of works in which philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, and John Ray advanced claims about how nature ...
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This chapter reassesses the relationship between physico-theology—the main body of works in which philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, and John Ray advanced claims about how nature should be experienced—and their empirical approach to the study of nature. For the most part, physico-theology has been interpreted as an apologetic discourse, intended to deflect accusations of religious impropriety leveled against practitioners of the new philosophy. By contrast, this chapter shows that physico-theology and natural philosophy had a lot in common. Moreover, it shows that Ray and his contemporaries saw the two practices as components of a broader project of empirical knowledge production. The chapter concludes by suggesting that it is time to take the affective and moral claims of physico-theology more seriously, considering the possibility that they were integral to the aims of the empirical natural philosophy practiced by many of the Royal Society’s leading members. In addition, it proposes that the rhetoric characteristic of much physico-theology was crucial to the representational practices of natural philosophy. The chapter suggests, in other words, that the pleasurable rhetoric of physico-theology had a far greater role in the explanatory practices of empiricism than has so far been recognized.Less
This chapter reassesses the relationship between physico-theology—the main body of works in which philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Nehemiah Grew, and John Ray advanced claims about how nature should be experienced—and their empirical approach to the study of nature. For the most part, physico-theology has been interpreted as an apologetic discourse, intended to deflect accusations of religious impropriety leveled against practitioners of the new philosophy. By contrast, this chapter shows that physico-theology and natural philosophy had a lot in common. Moreover, it shows that Ray and his contemporaries saw the two practices as components of a broader project of empirical knowledge production. The chapter concludes by suggesting that it is time to take the affective and moral claims of physico-theology more seriously, considering the possibility that they were integral to the aims of the empirical natural philosophy practiced by many of the Royal Society’s leading members. In addition, it proposes that the rhetoric characteristic of much physico-theology was crucial to the representational practices of natural philosophy. The chapter suggests, in other words, that the pleasurable rhetoric of physico-theology had a far greater role in the explanatory practices of empiricism than has so far been recognized.
Alexander Wragge-Morley
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226680729
- eISBN:
- 9780226681054
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226681054.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter 2 explores a difficulty that links the natural philosophy and physico-theology of the early Royal Society—the challenge of making imperceptible entities accessible to sensory experience. In ...
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Chapter 2 explores a difficulty that links the natural philosophy and physico-theology of the early Royal Society—the challenge of making imperceptible entities accessible to sensory experience. In natural philosophy, those entities were imperceptibly small and almost infinitely numerous atoms. In physico-theology, meanwhile, the entity in question was an immaterial God, both immaterial and infinite. The chapter explores this difficulty by turning to crucial works of neurophysiology such as Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome (1664), and to texts by Robert Boyle exploring the possibility of learning about things beyond human understanding—his Discourse of Things Above Reason (1681) and Some Physico-Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection (1675). In so doing, the chapter shows that physico-theology was by no means only an apologetic discourse. Rather, it was one part of an empirical science deeply concerned with making the activity of imperceptible spirits accessible to the bodily organs of sensation and cognition. At the same time, it shows that Boyle and others believed that the representational strategies they used to make imperceptible entities accessible to the senses should provoke pleasure. For them, the provocation of sensory and imaginative pleasure was central to the work of empiricism.Less
Chapter 2 explores a difficulty that links the natural philosophy and physico-theology of the early Royal Society—the challenge of making imperceptible entities accessible to sensory experience. In natural philosophy, those entities were imperceptibly small and almost infinitely numerous atoms. In physico-theology, meanwhile, the entity in question was an immaterial God, both immaterial and infinite. The chapter explores this difficulty by turning to crucial works of neurophysiology such as Thomas Willis’s Cerebri Anatome (1664), and to texts by Robert Boyle exploring the possibility of learning about things beyond human understanding—his Discourse of Things Above Reason (1681) and Some Physico-Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection (1675). In so doing, the chapter shows that physico-theology was by no means only an apologetic discourse. Rather, it was one part of an empirical science deeply concerned with making the activity of imperceptible spirits accessible to the bodily organs of sensation and cognition. At the same time, it shows that Boyle and others believed that the representational strategies they used to make imperceptible entities accessible to the senses should provoke pleasure. For them, the provocation of sensory and imaginative pleasure was central to the work of empiricism.
Lea Ypi
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- October 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198748526
- eISBN:
- 9780191811074
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198748526.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
The conclusion explains why the price for the architectonic unity of the initially separate systems of nature and freedom is a transcendental theology which implicitly commits reason to metaphysical ...
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The conclusion explains why the price for the architectonic unity of the initially separate systems of nature and freedom is a transcendental theology which implicitly commits reason to metaphysical assumptions about the order of nature which its critical part has explicitly ruled out. This is useful to understand why Kant later retracted the defence of physico-theology and converted it to ethical theology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, a text where the problem of purposiveness is carefully distinguished from the use of ideas, and where we find a separate faculty responsible for the use of purposive principles: the faculty of judgment. Understanding the demand for systematic unity and its execution in the Architectonic of Pure Reason is crucial to make sense both of how that project developed in the first Critique, and of the need to return to a reconfiguration of the system in subsequent works.Less
The conclusion explains why the price for the architectonic unity of the initially separate systems of nature and freedom is a transcendental theology which implicitly commits reason to metaphysical assumptions about the order of nature which its critical part has explicitly ruled out. This is useful to understand why Kant later retracted the defence of physico-theology and converted it to ethical theology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, a text where the problem of purposiveness is carefully distinguished from the use of ideas, and where we find a separate faculty responsible for the use of purposive principles: the faculty of judgment. Understanding the demand for systematic unity and its execution in the Architectonic of Pure Reason is crucial to make sense both of how that project developed in the first Critique, and of the need to return to a reconfiguration of the system in subsequent works.
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226116396
- eISBN:
- 9780226116419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226116419.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is ...
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This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is on the figure of the inquirer into nature rather than on natural philosophical methodology and the natural theological argument. This chapter suggests that an approach from the point of view of the inquirer can add important dimensions to methodology and argument and evaluates how this concept applies to Robert Boyle and John Locke's general concern with the rightful conduct of the understanding. It also contends that experimental methodology and physico-theology are construed as transformative exercises for the inquirer's mind.Less
This chapter examines how regimen idea informs inquirers' positions relative to the study of nature, with its natural philosophical and natural theological dimensions. The focuses of the analysis is on the figure of the inquirer into nature rather than on natural philosophical methodology and the natural theological argument. This chapter suggests that an approach from the point of view of the inquirer can add important dimensions to methodology and argument and evaluates how this concept applies to Robert Boyle and John Locke's general concern with the rightful conduct of the understanding. It also contends that experimental methodology and physico-theology are construed as transformative exercises for the inquirer's mind.
Raphaële Andrault
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199987313
- eISBN:
- 9780199346240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199987313.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
In the physico-theologies of R. Cudworth and N. Grew, “Life” and vital phenomena are used to prove the excellency of God’s creation and to refute both Cartesian mechanism and atheism. This paper ...
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In the physico-theologies of R. Cudworth and N. Grew, “Life” and vital phenomena are used to prove the excellency of God’s creation and to refute both Cartesian mechanism and atheism. This paper examines first the comparison proposed by Bayle and discussed by Leibniz between Cudworth’s plastic natures or Grew’s principles of Life, on the one hand, and scholastic “substantial forms” on the other hand. By criticizing this comparison and by distinguishing a specific notion of life (life as vegetation) and a generic one (life as incorporeity), this paper shows how the polemical framework of those texts prevents from drawing a clear-cut line between animate and inanimate bodies.Less
In the physico-theologies of R. Cudworth and N. Grew, “Life” and vital phenomena are used to prove the excellency of God’s creation and to refute both Cartesian mechanism and atheism. This paper examines first the comparison proposed by Bayle and discussed by Leibniz between Cudworth’s plastic natures or Grew’s principles of Life, on the one hand, and scholastic “substantial forms” on the other hand. By criticizing this comparison and by distinguishing a specific notion of life (life as vegetation) and a generic one (life as incorporeity), this paper shows how the polemical framework of those texts prevents from drawing a clear-cut line between animate and inanimate bodies.
Philip Connell
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199269587
- eISBN:
- 9780191820496
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199269587.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Moving forward into the early Hanoverian era, this chapter analyses the political significance of Newtonian apologetic as it found expression in the poetry of James Thomson. The heterodox ...
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Moving forward into the early Hanoverian era, this chapter analyses the political significance of Newtonian apologetic as it found expression in the poetry of James Thomson. The heterodox inclinations of leading Newtonian divines, such as Samuel Clarke, William Whiston, and Thomas Rundle, compromised whiggish attempts to enlist the new science in the service of Hanoverian panegyric, despite Queen Caroline’s well-publicized Newtonian enthusiasms. But for those whigs—both court and opposition—who were disturbed by Robert Walpole’s alliance with the heresy-hunting bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, the ‘latitudinarian’ associations of Newtonian religion could hold a strong political appeal. This latter possibility is shown to inform the blend of Shaftesburean enthusiasm and Newtonian physico-theology in Thomson’s The Seasons (1730).Less
Moving forward into the early Hanoverian era, this chapter analyses the political significance of Newtonian apologetic as it found expression in the poetry of James Thomson. The heterodox inclinations of leading Newtonian divines, such as Samuel Clarke, William Whiston, and Thomas Rundle, compromised whiggish attempts to enlist the new science in the service of Hanoverian panegyric, despite Queen Caroline’s well-publicized Newtonian enthusiasms. But for those whigs—both court and opposition—who were disturbed by Robert Walpole’s alliance with the heresy-hunting bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, the ‘latitudinarian’ associations of Newtonian religion could hold a strong political appeal. This latter possibility is shown to inform the blend of Shaftesburean enthusiasm and Newtonian physico-theology in Thomson’s The Seasons (1730).
Joanna Picciotto
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198769774
- eISBN:
- 9780191822605
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198769774.003.0027
- Subject:
- Literature, Milton Studies, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
Milton’s account of creation is examined alongside the discourse of physico-theology, which read ‘the book of nature’ as a testament to the wisdom and benevolence of its divine author. To recover the ...
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Milton’s account of creation is examined alongside the discourse of physico-theology, which read ‘the book of nature’ as a testament to the wisdom and benevolence of its divine author. To recover the physico-theological tradition is to reveal continuities between revolutionary England and post-Restoration culture that scholars have long ignored, for although the physico-theological craze is a post-Restoration phenomenon, its founding texts date from the revolutionary period. Writing in the physico-theological mode always sets itself the same (impossible) task: leveraging the new natural history to do the work of theodicy. Instead of engaging the natural world through allegorical interpretation, physico-theology attempts to analyse a system, reconstructing and imaginatively inhabiting each subject position within that system. The project of physico-theology provides a bridge between the age of Milton and the age of the novel; the habits of thought it encouraged were precisely those suited to the new prose fiction.Less
Milton’s account of creation is examined alongside the discourse of physico-theology, which read ‘the book of nature’ as a testament to the wisdom and benevolence of its divine author. To recover the physico-theological tradition is to reveal continuities between revolutionary England and post-Restoration culture that scholars have long ignored, for although the physico-theological craze is a post-Restoration phenomenon, its founding texts date from the revolutionary period. Writing in the physico-theological mode always sets itself the same (impossible) task: leveraging the new natural history to do the work of theodicy. Instead of engaging the natural world through allegorical interpretation, physico-theology attempts to analyse a system, reconstructing and imaginatively inhabiting each subject position within that system. The project of physico-theology provides a bridge between the age of Milton and the age of the novel; the habits of thought it encouraged were precisely those suited to the new prose fiction.
Lea Ypi
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- October 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198748526
- eISBN:
- 9780191811074
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198748526.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter develops the distinction between purposiveness as design and purposiveness as normativity in light of the transcendental deduction of ideas. It focuses in particular on the link between ...
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This chapter develops the distinction between purposiveness as design and purposiveness as normativity in light of the transcendental deduction of ideas. It focuses in particular on the link between ideas and the assumption of a purposive order of nature, and on the implications of the latter for the physico-theological proof of the existence of God. Focusing on Kant’s arguments in the Dialectic of Pure Reason and in the lectures on the philosophy of religion held around the same period, the chapter shows how Kant’s assessment of physico-theology combines his reluctance to fully endorse Hume’s critique of purposiveness, with his scepticism concerning Wolff’s attempt to revive Leibnizian theodicy. The chapter concludes that although Kant criticizes the validity of the physico-theological proof, his remarks on the theme remain ambiguous given the practical interest of reason, and the role the concept of God plays for the latter.Less
This chapter develops the distinction between purposiveness as design and purposiveness as normativity in light of the transcendental deduction of ideas. It focuses in particular on the link between ideas and the assumption of a purposive order of nature, and on the implications of the latter for the physico-theological proof of the existence of God. Focusing on Kant’s arguments in the Dialectic of Pure Reason and in the lectures on the philosophy of religion held around the same period, the chapter shows how Kant’s assessment of physico-theology combines his reluctance to fully endorse Hume’s critique of purposiveness, with his scepticism concerning Wolff’s attempt to revive Leibnizian theodicy. The chapter concludes that although Kant criticizes the validity of the physico-theological proof, his remarks on the theme remain ambiguous given the practical interest of reason, and the role the concept of God plays for the latter.
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190616694
- eISBN:
- 9780190616724
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190616694.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The evangelical attitude toward Newtonian science and devotional response to the natural world can be seen in a variety of individuals, all of whom drew upon the tradition of physico-theology but ...
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The evangelical attitude toward Newtonian science and devotional response to the natural world can be seen in a variety of individuals, all of whom drew upon the tradition of physico-theology but turned this into something more like a physico-doxology. William Romaine largely rejected Newtonian science, preferring the alternative Hutchinsonian cosmology, but Augustus Toplady celebrated science and used mechanical philosophy to support his Calvinist belief in necessity. Evangelical belletristic writing showed a keen appreciation of contemporary science and an attitude of devotional wonder, something especially evident in James Hervey, Moses Browne, Anne Steele, and Phillis Wheatley. In the last half of the century, Isaac Milner was a thoroughgoing Newtonian at Cambridge who closely united his science and his evangelical faith, and John Russell was an accomplished evangelical artist and amateur astronomer who combined art, science, and devotion in his exquisite lunar drawings.Less
The evangelical attitude toward Newtonian science and devotional response to the natural world can be seen in a variety of individuals, all of whom drew upon the tradition of physico-theology but turned this into something more like a physico-doxology. William Romaine largely rejected Newtonian science, preferring the alternative Hutchinsonian cosmology, but Augustus Toplady celebrated science and used mechanical philosophy to support his Calvinist belief in necessity. Evangelical belletristic writing showed a keen appreciation of contemporary science and an attitude of devotional wonder, something especially evident in James Hervey, Moses Browne, Anne Steele, and Phillis Wheatley. In the last half of the century, Isaac Milner was a thoroughgoing Newtonian at Cambridge who closely united his science and his evangelical faith, and John Russell was an accomplished evangelical artist and amateur astronomer who combined art, science, and devotion in his exquisite lunar drawings.