Reviews
The essays provide good examples of the role that physico-theology played in the development of the sciences with which it was in conversation.
This volume presents the subject with excellent variety, yet editorially holds together well, serving as an introduction to the intellectual phenomenon of physico-theology.
Physico-theology: Religion and Science in Europe, 1650-1750, therefore, is a helpful and horizon-widening collection, which successfully adds something to an already rich, abundant, well-studied period in the history of science and religion.
Physico-theology contributes significantly to ongoing debates about religion and the emergence of the new science of the seventeenth century, the character of the Enlightenment, and, more broadly, the historical relations between religion and science or, to put it more accurately, between divine and natural knowledge. The contributors are extremely qualified, some of the very best in their fields.
A groundbreaking book. There is no other comprehensive work on physico-theology, nor on the associated enterprise of a posteriori natural theology. This collection of finely grained studies of individuals, topics, texts, and textual traditions is essential to understanding the broader field.
This volume provides an excellent introduction to the general topic of physico-theology. Its sixteen solid and imaginative essays reveal how scholars across Europe actively learned from and argued with each other. As a guide to recent work on this major early modern religious and intellectual movement, this collection is invaluable.
For a long time, physico-theology has been neglected by both theologians and scientists. Finally, bringing together the contributions of leading experts in English, French, German, Italian, and Dutch intellectual history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this ambitious volume overcomes the narrow boundaries of disciplines and national traditions.
This stimulating read reimagines the place of physico-theology in the intellectual history of the early modern period. It brings together fine-grained analyses of different intellectual and national contexts in a way that will prove highly rewarding to historians of culture, theology, and science alike.
Book Details
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz
Part I. Terms and Purview of Physico-theology
Chapter 1. Was Physico-theology Bad Theology and Bad Science?
John Hedley Brooke
Ch
Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Ann Blair and Kaspar von Greyerz
Part I. Terms and Purview of Physico-theology
Chapter 1. Was Physico-theology Bad Theology and Bad Science?
John Hedley Brooke
Chapter 2. What's in a Name? "Physico-theology" in Seventeenth-Century England
Peter Harrison
Chapter 3. The Form of a Flower
Jonathan Sheehan
Part II. National Traditions
Chapter 4. What Was Physico-theology For?
Scott Mandelbrote
Chapter 5. Physico-theology in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic: The Case of Willem Goeree (1635–1711)
Eric Jorink
Chapter 6. Back to the Roots? J. A. Fabricius's "Register of Ancient and Modern Writers" of 1728
Kaspar von Greyerz
Part III. Styles of Religiosity
Chapter 7. Miracles, Secrets, and Wonders: Jakob Horst and Christian Natural Philosophy in German Protestantism before 1650
Kathleen Crowther
Chapter 8. "Rather Theological than Philosophical": John Ray's Seminal Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation
Katherine Calloway
Chapter 9. Matters of Belief and Belief That Matters: German Physico-theology, Protestantism, and the Materialized Word of God in Nature
Anne-Charlott Trepp
Chapter 10. 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
Chapter 11. Physico-theology or Biblical Physics? The Biblical Focus of the Early Physico-theologians
Rienk Vermij
Chapter 12. Maxima in minimis animalibus: Insects in Natural Theology and Physico-theology
Brian W. Ogilvie
Chapter 13. What Abbé Pluche Owed to Early Modern Physico-theologians
Nicolas Brucker
Chapter 14. Antonio Vallisneri between Faith and Flood
Brendan Dooley
Part V. Aesthetic Sensibilities
Chapter 15. A Language for the Eye: Evidence within the Text and Evidence as Text in German Physico-theological Literature
Barbara Hunfeld
Chapter 16. A Hybrid Physico-theology: The Case of the Swiss Confederation
Simona Boscani Leoni
Bibliography
Index