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Full Description
Specialising in optics and the motion of fluids, physicist George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903) was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge for over fifty years, President of the Royal Society, Master of Pembroke College and the most prominent religious scientist of his age. First published in 1893, Natural Theology contains the text of ten lectures he gave at Edinburgh. Stokes favoured the design argument for the existence of a Christian god, arguing against Darwinism. He believed the Bible to be true, though at times metaphorical. The lectures move from substantive observations on cosmology, electricity, gravity, ocular anatomy and evolution through to non sequiturs regarding providential design, human exceptionalism, the supernatural, spiritual immortality, and Christ's dual materiality and divinity. Fossilising a moment of impending shift in the history of ideas, these lectures highlight an intellectual dissonance in the Victorian scientific establishment.
Contents
1. Freer introduction of scientific subjects and Christian doctrines; 2. Conception suggested by the properties of the ether of instantaneous transmission of intelligence; 3. General system of nature conducive to welfare; 4. Evidence of deign afforded by the minute structure of the retina; 5. Contrast between the structure of living things and general physical laws; 6. Structure of the eye and formation of chemical substances by combination; 7. Introduction of some points belonging to the Christian religion; 8. Importance of a frank recognition of difficulties which are beyond the power of natural theology to explain; 9. Man's craving after a closer approach to God satisfied through Christ; 10. Fuller examination of the influence of the theory of evolution; Appendix; Index to both courses.
