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The Principle of Plenitude and Natural Theology in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Richard R. Yeo
Richard R. Yeo
Affiliation:
School of Humanities, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia.
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Extract

In his classic study, The Great Chain of Being, Arthur Lovejoy delineated a complex set of concepts and assumptions which referred to the perfection of God and the fullness of creation. In attempting to distil the basic or ‘unit idea’ which constituted this pattern of thought, he focused on the assumption that ‘the universe is a plenum formarum in which the range of conceivable diversity of kinds of living things is exhaustively exemplified’. He called this the ‘principle of plenitude’. Lovejoy argued that this idea implied two others—continuity and gradation—and that together these reflected a pre-occupation with the ‘necessity of imperfection in all its possible degrees’, a concern which had pervaded Western thought since Plato and gave rise to the powerful ontology known as the ‘great chain of being’.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , November 1986 , pp. 263 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1986

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References

I would like to thank the referee (Dr J. H. Brooke) and the editor for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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