Nature, History and the Search for Order: The Boyle Lectures, 1730–1785

2010 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 276-292
Author(s):  
Robert G. Ingram

History supplanted nature as the most important apologetical language among English polemical divines during the mid-eighteenth century, but not for the reasons usually adduced. The triumph of history over nature owed everything to the power of orthodox patronage and to nature’s demonstrable apologetical efficacy, and nothing to natural theology’s supposed failure sufficiently to prove God’s existence. Put another way, by the late 1720s orthodox apologists had come to believe that the popular argument from design in nature applied equally to history. Moreover, the argument from design in history appears to have been an apologetical strategy which accorded more closely with the disposition of an increasingly orthodox episcopate during the mid-century period. Little evidences the mid-century historical turn — a shift either missed or ignored by most historians — more clearly than the second generation (1730–1785) of the Boyle lectures, a series of public sermons founded by Robert Boyle in order to defend Christianity from the attacks of unbelievers. For whereas the first generation of lecturers founded their defences of Christianity on natural theology, the second built on Christianity’s historical record.

1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-102
Author(s):  
Jolanta Koszteyn ◽  
Piotr Lenartowicz

Since more than hundred years the attempts to explain biological adaptations constitute the main current of evolutionary thinking. In 1901 C. LI. Morgan wrote: „The doctrine of evolution has rendered the study of adaptation of scientific importance. Before that doctrine was formulated, natural adaptations formed part of the mystery of special creation, and played a great role in natural theology through the use of the argument from 'design in nature’". The modem doctrine of biology stresses the importance of the environment in „shaping" the inner properties of every living being. This means an obvious although tacit refusal to assume or recognize any single, integrated agent in the origin of main functional biological traits and in the genesis of new kinds of life. The role ascribed to random mutations, and to „pressures of the environment" is just one aspect of the neodarwinian theory. Another aspect of this doctrine is the widespread conviction that all phenomena of life are a natural, both random and necessary result of interactions between constantly changing material objects.


1991 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kennard Bork

Elie Bertrand (1713-1797) was a Swiss pastor/naturalist whose geological writings are illustrative of the growth of eighteenth-century natural history. Describing, cataloguing, and classifying formed the core of his work, but he also proposed theoretical analyses based on observations in the field. Bertrand's intellectual roots included Cartesian rationalism, British natural theology, and the Linnacan system of classification. Trained as a theologian. Bertrand viewed the physical world as a proving ground for showing God's Wise Design in nature. He was also committed to empiricism, and repeatedly called for expanding the base of geological knowledge.Several of the published products of Bertrand's attempts to understand the natural world were brought together in the 1766 Recueil de divers traités sur l'histoire naturelle. By briefly considering each of the incorporated papers, it is possible to recognize the topics which interested eighteenth-century naturalists and to develop insight into the methodologies they used. In the Recueil we see Bertrand's eclectic epistemology attempt to deal with such topics as the interior of the earth, earthquakes, fossils, and the origin and Providential use of mountains.Celebrated in his day, Bertrand was a correspondent of Voltaire, a counselor to the Polish court, and a member of numerous learned societies. He published articles in the French Encyclopédic, and his 1763 Dictionnaire universal des fossiles was among the most-read scientific books of the century. The obscurity which enveloped Elie Bertrand seems related in large part to the fact that he was an accumulator of data and a commentator about past theories, rather than an innovator of new concepts. As the natural theology that undergirded his writing became obsolete, the cogency of his arguments diminished. In the context of his time, however, Bertrand is an instructive example of how geoscience matured during what has been termed a sterile period in the development of natural history.


2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Denis O. Lamoureux ◽  

Many assume that Charles Darwin rejected outright the notion of intelligent design. As a consequence, the term "Darwinism" has evolved to become conflated with a dysteleological interpretation of evolution. The primary historical literature reveals that Darwin's conceptualization of design was cast within the categories of William Paley's natural theology, featuring static and perfect adaptability. Once Darwin discovered the mechanism of natural selection and the dynamic process of biological evolution, he rejected the "old argument from design in Nature" proposed by Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the creation's revelatory activity. Darwin's encounter with the beauty and complexity of the world affirms a Biblical understanding of intelligent design and argues for the reality of a non-verbal revelation through nature. In a postmodern culture with epistemological fourmulations adrift, natural revelation provides a mooring for human felicity.


2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-480 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Mandelbrote

ArgumentThis essay describes two styles of natural theology that emerged in England out of a debate over the correct interpretation of divine evidences in nature during the seventeenth century. The first style was exemplified in the work of John Wilkins and Robert Boyle. It stressed the lawful operation of the universe under a providential order. The second, embodied in the writings of the Cambridge Platonists, was more open to evidence for the wondrousness of nature provided by the marvelous and by spiritual phenomena. Initially appearing to be alternative and complementary arguments for orthodoxy, these two approaches to natural theology underwent different transformations during the ensuing decades. In the process, a natural theology predicated on the intellectual demonstration of divine power through the argument from design came to predominate over alternative strategies that placed greater emphasis on the wondrousness of nature.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Anita Pugliese ◽  
Julie Ray ◽  
Neli Esipova

This paper reports the results from Gallup’s global analysis of the likelihood of first-generation migrants, second-generation migrants and the native-born to send financial help in the form of money or goods to others inside or outside their respective country of residence. The findings in this paper are based on more than 450,000 interviews conducted through Gallup’s World Poll in 157 countries in 2012, 2013 and 2014. The sample includes more than 26,000 first-generation migrants and more than 20,000 second-generation migrants. The large sample enables Gallup to analyze first-generation migrants by the duration of their stay in their adopted country and compare their remittance behaviors with second-generation migrants and the native-born.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Berry

Ray's most widely read book was his Wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation (1691), probably based on addresses given in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge 20 years previously. In it he forswore the use of allegory in biblical interpretation, just as he had done in his (and Francis Willughby's) Ornithology (1678). His discipline seeped into theology, complementing the influence of the Reformers and weakening Enlightenment assumptions about teleology, thus softening the hammer-blows of Darwinism on Deism. The physico-theology of the eighteenth century and the popularity of Gilbert White and the like survived the squeezing of natural theology by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises a century after Wisdom … , and contributed to a peculiarly British understanding of natural theology. This undergirded the subsequent impact of the results of the voyagers and geologists and prepared the way for a modern reading of God's “Book of Works” (“Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend”). Natural theology is often assumed to have been completely discredited by Darwin (as well as condemned by Barth and ridiculed by Dawkins). Notwithstanding, and despite the vapours of vitalism (ironically urged – among others – by Ray's biographer, Charles Raven) and the current fashion for “intelligent design”, the attitudes encouraged by Wisdom … still seem to be robust, albeit needing constant re-tuning (as in all understandings influenced by science).


Author(s):  
Asaad Abdullwahab AbdulKarim ◽  
Waleed Massaher Hamad ◽  
Salah Ibrahim Hamadi

Abstract     The Frankfurt School is characterized by its critical nature and it is the result of the Marxist socialist thought as it contributed to the development of the German thought in particular and the Western thought in general through important ideas put forward by a number of pioneers in the various generations of the school and most notably through the leading pioneer in the first generation, Marcuse, and the leading pioneer of the second  generation, Habermas, whose political ideas had an important impact on global thinking and later became the basis of the attic of many critical ideas. In spite of the belief of the school members in the idea of the criticism of power and community, each had his own ideas that distinguish him from the others.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-32
Author(s):  
Gerd Laux

Für die Therapie schizophrener Erkrankungen sind seit fast 60 Jahren Antipsychotika/Neuroleptika aufgrund ihrer antipsychotischen Wirkung von zentraler Bedeutung. Die Einteilung kann unter verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten erfolgen (chemische Struktur, neuroleptische Potenz, Rezeptorprofil), heute werden üblicherweise unterschieden typische (traditionelle, klassische, konventionelle) Antipsychotika der ersten Generation ‒ »First Generation Antipsychotics« (FGA) ‒ und sog. atypische (»neuere«) Neuroleptika bzw. Antipsychotika der zweiten Generation ‒»Second Generation Antipsychotics« (SGA). Hierzu zählen Aripiprazol, Asenapin, Cariprazin, Clozapin, Olanzapin, Quetiapin, Risperidon, Sertindol und Ziprasidon. Hierbei handelt es sich um keine homogene Gruppe – sowohl neuropharmakologisch (Wirkmechanismus), als auch hinsichtlich klinischem Wirkprofil und dem Nebenwirkungsspektrum bestehen z. T. erhebliche Unterschiede. Neben der Akut-Medikation ist eine Langzeitmedikation bzw. Rezidivprophylaxe mit Antipsychotika für die Rehabilitation vieler schizophrener Patienten im Sinne eines »Stresspuffers« von grundlegender Bedeutung. In Placebo-kontrollierten Studien trat bei Patienten, die über ein Jahr behandelt wurden, bei etwa 30% unter Neuroleptika ein Rezidiv auf, unter Placebo bei mehr als 70%. Für die Langzeitbehandlung bietet sich der Einsatz von Depot-Neuroleptika an, neu entwickelt wurden Langzeit-Depot-Injektionen mit Intervallen von bis zu 3 Monaten. Grundsätzlich ist die niedrigstmögliche (wirksame) Dosis zu verwenden. Im Zentrum der Nebenwirkungen (UAW) standen lange Zeit extrapyramidal-motorische Bewegungsstörungen (EPMS), mit der Einführung von Clozapin und anderen atypischen Antipsychotika der zweiten Generation gewannen andere Nebenwirkungen an Bedeutung. Hierzu zählen Gewichtszunahme, Störungen metabolischer Parameter und ein erhöhtes Risiko für Mortalität und zerebrovaskuläre Ereignisse bei älteren Patienten mit Demenz. Entsprechende Kontrolluntersuchungen sind erforderlich, für Clozapin gibt es aufgrund seines Agranulozytose-Risikos Sonderbestimmungen. Immer sollte ein Gesamtbehandlungsplan orientiert an der neuen S3-Praxisleitlinie Schizophrenie der DGPPN aufgestellt werden, der psychologische und milieu-/sozial-therapeutische Maßnahmen einschließt. Standard ist heute auch eine sog. Psychoedukation, für Psychopharmaka liegen bewährte Patienten-Ratgeber vor.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document