Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-07T22:26:23.896Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Bentley to the Victorians: The Rise and Fall of British Newtonian Natural Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

John Gascoigne
John Gascoigne
Affiliation:
School of HistoryThe University of New South Wales
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article explores the reasons for the rise to prominence of Newtonian natural theology in the period following the publication of the Principia in 1687, its continued importance throughout the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, and possible explanations for its rapid decline in the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the career of Newtonian natural theology cannot be explained solely in terms of internal intellectual developments such as the theology of Newton's clerical admirers or the impact of the work of Hume or of Charles Darwin. While such intellectual movements are undoubtedly of considerable importance in accounting for the rise and fall of Newtonian natural theology, they do not of themselves explain why British society was more receptive to particular bodies of thought in some periods rather than in others. Hence this article – in common with a number of recent studies – attempts to draw some connections between the growth of Newtonian natural theology and the character of Augustan society and politics; it also attempts to link the decline of this tradition with such nineteenth-century developments as the growing separation between church and state and the secularization of the universities and of scientific and intellectual life more generally.

Type
Three Hundred Years of Newton's Principia
Information
Science in Context , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1988 , pp. 219 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

[Abercrombie, J.], 1883. “Review of W. Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, Astronomy and General Physics… (1833),” British Critic n.s. 14: 72–113.Google Scholar
Alexander, H. G., 1956. The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Anon., 1835. “Review of H. Brougham's A Discourse of Natural Theology”, Tait's Edinburgh Magazine n. s. 2: 806–19.Google Scholar
Anon., 1848. “Chemistry and Natural Theology” British Quarterly Review 7: 204–38.Google Scholar
Anon., 1855. “Review of John Tulloch, Theism …(1855)”, Westminster Review 64: 319–53.Google Scholar
Anon., 1856. “Review of D. Brewster, Memoirs of… Sir Isaac Newton (1855)”, Leisure Hour 5: 156.Google Scholar
Anon., 1882. “Newton and Darwin”, Knowledge 1: 545–46.Google Scholar
Ault, D. D., 1974. Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton. Chicago:The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bentley, R., 1724. Eight Sermons at the Hon. Robert Boyle's Lectures. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Bowler, , 1983. The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowles, G., 1976. “The Place of Newtonian Explanations in English Popular Thought 1687–1727” D. Phil. thesis, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1831. The Life of Sir Isaac Newton London.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1836–1837. “Review of Brougham's Discourse of Natural Theology (1835) and his edition of Paley's Natural Theology” Edinburgh Review 64: 263–302.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1845. “Review of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” North British Review 3: 470–515.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1855. Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir isaac Newton 2 vols. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Brewster, D., 1867. More Worlds Than One. The Creed of the Philosopher and the Hope of the Christian. London.Google Scholar
Brinkley, R. F., ed., 1955. Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Brooke, J. H., 1977. “Natural Theology and the Plurality of Worlds: Observations on the Brewster-Whewell Debate” Annals of Science 34: 221–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooke, J. H., 1979 a. “The Natural Theology of the Geologists: Some Theological Strata”, in Images of the Earth. Essays in the History of the Environmental Sciences, ed. Jordanova, L.J. and Porter, R.S., British Society for the History of Science Monographs, no.1, 39–66.Google Scholar
Brooke, J. H., 1979 b. “Review of R. L. Numbers, Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought”, British Journal for the History of Science 12: 200–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brooke, J. H., 1985. “The Relations Between Darwin's Science and his Religion”, in Durant 1985, 40–75.Google Scholar
Brooke, J. H., Hooykaas, R., Lawless, C., 1974. New Interactions between Theology and Natural Science. Milton Keynes:Open University Press.Google Scholar
Brougham, H., 1835. A Discourse of Natural Theology London.Google Scholar
Brougham, H., 1858 Speech at Erection of Newton's Statue at Grantham, Littell's Living Age o.s. 59: 374–82.Google Scholar
Brown, F. B., 1986. “The Evolution of Darwin's Theism”, Journal of the History of Ideas 19: 1–45.Google Scholar
Buchdahl, G., 1961. The Image of Newton and Locke in the Age of Reason. London:Sheed and Ward.Google Scholar
Cannon, S. F., 1978. Science in Culture: the Early Victorian Period. New York:Science History Publications.Google Scholar
Cannon, W. F., 1964. “The Normative Role of Science in Early Victorian Thought”, Journal of the History of Ideas 25: 487–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chadwick, O., 1970. The Victorian Church, 2 vols. London:Black.Google Scholar
Chalmers, T., 1835–1841. The Works, 25 vols. Glasgow.Google Scholar
Colie, R. L., 1963. “Spinoza in England, 1665–1730”, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107: 183–219.Google Scholar
Cornell, J. F., 1986. Newton of the Grassblade? Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology, Isis 77: 405–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, C., 1958. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed.Barlow, N. London:Collins.Google Scholar
Darwin, C., [1859] 1968. The Origin of Species, ed. Burrow, J. W. Harmondsworth:Pelican.Google Scholar
Desmond, A., 1982. Archetypes and Ancestors. Palaeontology in Victorian London 1850–1875. London:Blond and Briggs.Google Scholar
Dick, T., 1846. The Christian Philosopher; or, the Connection of Science and Philosophy with Religion, 2 vols. Glasgow.Google Scholar
Dillenberger, J., 1961. Protestant Thought and Natural Science. London: Collins.Google Scholar
Durant, J., 1985. “Darwinism and Divinity: A Century of Debate”, in Durant 1985, 9–39.Google Scholar
Durant, J., ed., 1985. Darwinism and Divinity. Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Force, J. E., 1985 William Whiston. Honest Newtonian. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Freudenthal, G., 1986. Atom and individual in the Age of Newton. On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View Dordrecht:Reidel.Google Scholar
Gabell, J. H. L., 1847. The Accordance of Religion with Nature. London.Google Scholar
Gascoigne, J., 1989. Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gay, J. H., 1963. “Matter and Freedom in the Thought of Samuel Clarke”, Journal of the History of Ideas 24: 85–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillespie, N. C., 1987. “Natural History, Natural Theology, and Social Order: John Ray and the ‘Newtonian Ideology’”, Journal of the History of Biology 20: 1–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillispie, C. C., 1959. Genesis and Geology. The impact of Scientific Discoveries upon Religious Beliefs in the Decades Before Darwin. New York:Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Gordon, M. M., 1870. The Home Life of Sir David Brewster. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Hahn, R., 1986. “Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe”, in God and Nature. Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed. Lindberg, D.C. and Numbers, R.L., 256–76 Berkeley:California University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haskell, F., 1970. “The Apotheosis of Newton in Art”, in The Annus Mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton, ed. Palter, R. 302–21. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hay, D., 1975. “Property, Authority and the Criminal Law”, in Albion's Fatal Tree, ed. Hay, D., Linebaugh, P., and Thompson, E.P., 17–64. London:Allen Lane.Google Scholar
Heeney, B., 1976. A Different Kind of Gentleman. Parish Clergy as Professional Men in Early and mid-Victorian England. Hampden Conn.:Archon.Google Scholar
Heimann, P. M., 1973. “‘Nature is a Perpetual Worker’: Newton's Aether and Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy” Ambix 20: 2–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heimann, P. M.,1978. “Voluntarism and Immanence: Conceptions of Nature in Eighteenth- Century Thought” Journal of the History of Ideas 39: 271–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[Hemming, G. W.], 1861. “Newtbn as a Scientific Discoverer”, Quarterly Review 110: 401–;35.Google Scholar
Hooker, R., 1863. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, in The Works of Richard Hooker, ed. Keble, J. 3 vols. Oxford.Google Scholar
[Horne, R. H.], 1835. “Review of H. Brougham's Discourse of Natural Theology (1835) and Related Works”, estminster Review 23: 333–62.Google Scholar
Hoskin, M. A., 1977. “Newton, Providence and the Universe”, Journal for the History of Astronomy 8: 77–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Houghton, W. E., ed., 1966–1979. Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1900, 3 vols. Toronto:Toronto University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, A., 1951. “Science in English Encyclopaedias 1704–1875”, Annals of Science 7: 340 “Science in English Encyclopaedias 1704–1875,” Annals of Science, 8:323–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hurlbutt, R. H., 1965. Hume, Newton and the Design Argument. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Jacob, M. C., 1976. The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1720. Hassocks:Harvester.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[Jeffrey, F.], 1802–1803. “Review of W. Paley's Natural Theology”, Edinburgh Review 1: 287–305.Google Scholar
Jones, W. P., 1965. The Rhetoric of Science. London:Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Kubrin, D., 1973. “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy”, in Science and Religious Beliefed. Russell, C.A., 147–69. London:University of London Press.Google Scholar
McGuire, J. E., 1968. “Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible Realm”, Ambix 15: 154–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McPherson, T., 1972. The Argument from Design. London:Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
[Malkin, B. H.], 1832. “Review of D. Brewster, The Life of Sir isaac Newton (1831)”, Edinburgh Review, 56: 1–37.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, M., 1971. History, Man and Reason. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manuel, F., 1974. The Religion of Sir Isaac Newton. Oxford:Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Metzger, H., 1938. Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton. Paris:Hermann.Google Scholar
Moore, J., 1979. Post-Darwinian Controversies. A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrell, J. B., 1971. “Professors Robison and Playfair, and the Theophobia Gallica: Natural Philosophy, Religion and Politics in Edinburgh, 1789–1815”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society 26: 43–63.Google Scholar
Morrell, J. B., and Thackray, A., 1981. Gentlemen of Science. The Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Oxford:Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Odom, H. H., 1966. “The Estrangement of Celestial Mechanics and Religion”, Journal of the History of Ideas 27: 533–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogilvie, M. B., 1975. “Robert Chambers and the Nebular Hypothesis”, British Journal for the History of Science 8: 214–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Orange, A. D., 1975. “The Idols of the Theatre: the British Association and its Early Critics”, Annals of Science 32: 277–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ospovat, D., 1980. “God and Natural Selection: The Darwinian Idea of Design”, Journal of the History of Biology 13: 169–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ospovat, D., 1981. The Development of Darwin's Theory. Natural History, Natural Theology and Natural Selection, 1838–1859. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Paley, W., 1845. The Works. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Pope, A., 1963. The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed.Butt, J.. London:Methuen.Google Scholar
Porter, R. S., 1978. “Review of M. C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689–1720 (1976)”, Social History 3: 246–49.Google Scholar
[Baden, Powell], 1843. “Review of S. P. Rigaud's Historical Essay on the…;Principia (1838) and his Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth Century… (1841)”, Edinburgh Review 78: 402–37.Google Scholar
Proctor, R. A., 1882. “Newton and Darwin”, Contemporary Review 41: 994–1002.Google Scholar
Ruse, M., 1975. “The Relationship between Science and Religion in Britain, 1830–1870”, Church History 44: 505–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, S., 1980 a. “Herschel in Bedlam: Natural History and Stellar Astronomy”, British Journal for the History of Science 13: 211–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffer, S., 1980 b. “Newtonian Cosmology and theSteady State,” Ph.D. thesis. University of Cambridge.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, A., 1834. Discourse on the Studies of the University. London.Google Scholar
Shapin, S., 1981. “Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes”, Isis 72: 187–215.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sheynin, O. B., 1970–1971. “Newton and the Classical Theory of Probability”, Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences, 7: 217–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C., 1979. “From Design to Dissolution: Thomas Chalmers' Debt to John Robison”, British Journal for the History of Science 12: 59–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephen, L., 1962. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. London:Harbinger.Google Scholar
Thackray, A., 1970. Atoms and Powers. An Essay on Newtonian Matter-Theory and the Development of Chemistry.Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephen, L., 1974. “Natural Knowledge in Cultural Context: the Manchester Model”, American Historical Review 79: 672–709.Google Scholar
Thayer, H. S., ed., 1974. Newton's Philosophy of Nature: Selections from his Writings. New York:Free Press.Google Scholar
Tulloch, J., 1855. Theism: The Witness of Reason and Nature to an All-Wise and Beneficient Creator. Edinburgh.Google Scholar
Turnbull, H. W., Scott, J.F., Hall, A.R., and Tilling, L., eds., 1959–1977. The Correspondence of Sir Isaac Newton, 7 vols. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Turner, F. M., 1978. “The Victorian Conflict Between Science and Religion: a Professional Dimension”, Isis 69: 356–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turton, T., 1836. Natural Theology with Reference to Lord Brougham's Discourse— Cambridge.Google Scholar
Vince, S., 1806. Observations on the Hypotheses Which Have Been Assumed to Account for the Cause of Gravitation. Cambridge.Google Scholar
Wallace, W., 1898. Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics. Oxford.Google Scholar
Wallis, P., and Wallis, R., 1977. Newton and Newtoniana, 1672–1975. Folkstone:Dawson.Google Scholar
Whewell, W., [1833] 1862. Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology. London.Google Scholar
Wordsworth, C., 1842. The Correspondence of Richard Bentley, 2 vols. London.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1977. “Natural Theology and the Philosophy of Knowledge in Britain, 1819–1869,” Ph.D. thesis. University of Sydney.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1984. “Science and Intellectual Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Britain:Robert Chambers and Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation”, Victorian Studies 28: 5–31.Google Scholar
Yeo, R., 1985. “An Idol of the Market-place: Baconianism in Nineteenth-Century Britain”, History of Science 23: 25 1–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, R. M., 1980. “Natural Theology, Victorian Periodicals and the Fragmentation of a Common Context”, in Darwin to Einstein.Historical Studies on Science and Belief ed.Chant, C., and Fauvel, J.,69–106. London:Longman.Google Scholar