Editors: Ann Blair (Harvard University) and Kaspar von Greyerz (University of Basel)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020
This first book-length study of physico-theology questions the widespread notion of a steadily advancing early modern separation of religion and science.
Beginning around 1650, the emergence of a number of new scientific concepts, methods, and instruments challenged existing syntheses of science and religion. Physico-theology, which embraced the values of personal, empirical observation, was an international movement of the early Enlightenment that focused on the new science to make arguments about divine creation and providence. By reconciling the new science with Christianity across many denominations, physico-theology played a crucial role in diffusing new scientific ideas, assumptions, and interest in the study of nature to a broad public. In this book, sixteen leading scholars contribute a rich array of essays on the terms and scope of the movement, its scientific and religious arguments, and its aesthetic sensibilities.
Contents
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction – Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz
Part I. Terms and Purview of Physico-theology
Was Physico-theology Bad Theology and Bad Science? – John Hedley Brooke
What’s in a Name? “Physico-theology” in Seventeenth-Century England – Peter Harrison
The Form of a Flower – Jonathan Sheehan
Part II. National Traditions
What Was Physico-theology For? – Scott Mandelbrote
Physico-theology in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic: The Case of Willem Goeree (1635–1711) – Eric Jorink
Back to the Roots? J. A. Fabricius’s “Register of Ancient and Modern Writers” of 1728 – Kaspar von Greyerz
Part III. Styles of Religiosity
Miracles, Secrets, and Wonders: Jakob Horst and Christian Natural Philosophy in German Protestantism before 1650 – Kathleen Crowther
“Rather Theological than Philosophical”: John Ray’s Seminal Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation – Katherine Calloway
Matters of Belief and Belief That Matters: German Physico-theology, Protestantism, and the Materialized Word of God in Nature – Anne-Charlott Trepp
Pascal’s Rejection of Natural Theology: The Case of the Port-Royal Edition of the Pensées – Martine Pécharman
Part IV. Engagement with the New Science
Physico-theology or Biblical Physics? The Biblical Focus of the Early Physico-theologians – Rienk Vermij
Maxima in minimis animalibus: Insects in Natural Theology and Physico-theology – Brian W. Ogilvie
What Abbé Pluche Owed to Early Modern Physico-theologians – Nicolas Brucker
Antonio Vallisneri between Faith and Flood – Brendan Dooley
Part V. Aesthetic Sensibilities
A Language for the Eye: Evidence within the Text and Evidence as Text in German Physico-theological Literature – Barbara Hunfeld
A Hybrid Physico-theology: The Case of the Swiss Confederation – Simona Boscani Leoni
Bibliography
Index
Source: https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/physico-theology