Natural Theology - The Bridgewater Treatises

The Bridgewater Treatises

Debates over the applicability of teleology to scientific questions came to a head in the nineteenth century, as Paley's argument about design came into conflict with radical new theories on the transmutation of species. In order to support the canonical scientific views at the time, which explored the natural world within Paley's framework of a divine designer, The Earl of Bridgewater, a gentleman naturalist, commissioned eight Bridgewater Treatises upon his deathbed to explore "the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation." They first appeared during the years 1833 to 1840, and afterwards in Bohn's Scientific Library. The treatises are:

1. The Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man, by Thomas Chalmers, D. D.
2. On The Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man, by John Kidd, M. D.
3. Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to Natural Theology, by William Whewell, D. D.
4. The hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments as evincing Design, by Sir Charles Bell.
5. Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference to Natural Theology, by Peter Mark Roget.
6. Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, by William Buckland, D.D.
7. On the History, Habits and Instincts of Animals, by William Kirby.
8. Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion, considered with reference to Natural Theology, by William Prout, M.D.

In response to the claim in Whewell's treatise that "We may thus, with the greatest propriety, deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority with regard to their views of the administration of the universe", Charles Babbage published what he called The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, A Fragment. As his preface states, this volume was not part of that series, but rather his own reflections on the subject. He draws on his own work on calculating engines to consider God as a divine programmer setting complex laws underlying what we think of as miracles, rather than miraculously producing new species on a Creative whim. There was also a fragmentary supplement to this, posthumously published by Thomas Hill.

The works are of unequal merit; several of them took a high rank in apologetic literature, but they attracted considerable criticism. One notable critic of the Bridgewater Treatises was Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote Criticism. Robert Knox, an Edinburgh surgeon and leading advocate of radical morphology, referred to them as the "Bilgewater Treatises", to mock the "ultra-teleological school". Though memorable, this phrase overemphasises the influence of teleology in the series, at the expense of the idealism of the likes of Kirby and Roget.