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Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology

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William Whewell (1794-1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science.

The Earl of Bridgewater (1856-1829; he was an amateur naturalist) on his deathbed commissioned eight "Bridgewater Treatises" to explore "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." These eight volumes appeared between 1833 to 1840, and included such works as: On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man: Principally with Reference to the Supply of His Wants and the Exercise of His Intellectual Faculties by John Kidd; Animal and Vegetable Physiology: Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Volume 1 by Peter Mark Roget; Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Volume 1 by William Buckland; and Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion Considered with Reference to Natural Theology by William Prout.

He begins the book by saying, "(T)he views of the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, which natural science opens to us, harmonize with our belief in a Creator, Governor, and Preserver of the world. To do this with respect to certain departments of Natural Philosophy is the object of the following pages."

Here are some other representative quotations from the book:

"When indeed we come to see the vast number, the variety, the extent, the interweaving, the reconciling of such adaptations, we shall readily allow, that all things are so moulded upon and locked into each other, connected by such subtilty and profundity of design, that we may well abandon the idle attempt to trace the order of thought in the mind of the Supreme Ordainer."

"As the eye is made for light, so light must have been made, at least among other ends, for the eye."

"If the earth had no atmosphere ... all must be inert and dead. Who constructed these three extraordinarily complex pieces of machinery, the earth with its productions, the atmosphere, the ether? ... We conceive there can be but one answer; a most wise and good God."

"The Creator of the Heavens and of the Earth, of the inorganic and of the organic world, of animals and man, of the affections and the conscience, appears inevitably to be one and the same God."

"There can be no wider interval in philosophy than the separation which must exist between the laws of mechanical force and motion, and the laws of free moral action."