Book description
This edition does not include illustrations.
Galileo once wrote that 'the Bible tells us how to go to Heaven, but not
how the heavens go'. From the Greeks to the present day, thoughtful
people have struggled to reconcile the discoveries of science with
religious belief and authority.
In the age before Darwin many powerful clerics were also notable
scientific scholars and leading scientists were often at least
conventionally pious. Observing life ever more closely, an extraordinary
generation of English geologists, fossil hunters and naturalists were
compelled to accept that their planet was older, more complicated,
diverse and cruel than they had previously imagined. Questions about God
and the Bible inevitably began to arise. But for these men, unlike for
Darwin, science and religion could share a philosophical basis: a
careful, rational study of nature, instead of denying God, would confirm
that life is, after all, the product of God's unique creation. This
belief became known as natural theology.
Its greatest exponent was William Paley but the work of others such as
John Ray, Robert Plot, William Whiston, Thomas Burnet, John Woodward,
Erasmus Darwin and countless more writing between 1665 and 1800 gives us
an extraordinary glimpse into minds at the forefront of an epic enquiry.
Taking his title from Paley's famous analogy that as a watch requiried a
maker, so nature in all its intricacy had to be the creation of a
supreme designer, Keith Thomson's wonderful book brings to life their
dilemmas, and is a winning portrayal of intellectuals struggling with
their belief systems in an age of revolutionary science. 'Beautifully
told…[a] luminously clear account of the relation between faith and
science.' Independent on Sunday
'Combines his tales of the academic melodrama with scholarly assessment
of the growing momentum of evolutionary thought.' Financial Times
Keith Thomson has recently retired as Professor of Natural History and
Director of the Oxford University Museum. He has previously been
Professor of Biology and Dean at Yale University. He has written widely
on the history of science, including HMS Beagle: The Story of Darwin's
Ship and Living Fossil: The Story of Coelacanth.
