The rhetoric and science of William Paley's natural theology

Literature and Theology

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 1-22

  Eddy, M D ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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EID: 33748545711     PISSN: 02691205     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/litthe/18.1.1     Document Type: Article

References (125)

1. Cicero, De Natura Deorum, trans. H. Rackham (London: William Heinmann, 1932), §2.6.18.
2. J.H. Brooke and G. Cantor, Reconstructing Nature, the Engagement of Science and Religion (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998), pp. 176-206.
3. D.M. Knights has recently treated the currency of Paley's argument in Science and Spirituality: The Volatile Connection (London: Routledge, 2003).
4. Paley's life is also treated in D.L. LeMahieu, The Mind of William Paley: A Philosopher and His Age (London: Nebraska UP, 1976)
5. and M.L. Clarke, Paley: Evidences for the Man (London: SPCK, 1974).
6. W. Paley, The Works of William Paley, D.D. Archdeacon of Carlisle (Edinburgh: Peter Brown and T.& W. Nelson, 1825), p. xv.
7. The Latin title was: utrum civitati perniciosior sit Epicuri an Zenonis philosophia. E. Paley, An Account of the Life and Writings of William Paley (London: 1825; Westmead: Gregg International, 1970), p. 40.
8. E. Paley, Account of the Life, details this argument and how his father used Cicero on pages 49-62.
9. See Brooke and Cantor, Reconstructing Nature.
10. In fact, Archbishop Richard Whatley uses Evidences as an illustration in his Elements of Logic (New York: William Jackson, 1836), pp. 344-5.
11. Paley, An Account of the Life, p. 43.
12. B. Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988)
13. and G. Kennedy, The Art of Persuasion in the Roman World (300 BC-AD 30o) (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972).
14. For more on the definition and development of these categories, see Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric; A. Grafton, Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in the Age of Science 1450-1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991);
15. Q. Skinner, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996).
16. For instance, all of these books are cited by Adam Smith in his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres Delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith, Reported by a Student in 1762-63 (London: T. Nelson, 1963).
17. Colson also treats the popularity of Quintillian's work at the end of the eighteenth century, although the influence of Quintillian is not as dismal as he avers. F.H. Colson (ed.), M. Fabii Quintiliani: Institutionis Oratoriae Liber I (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1924), pp. lxxxiii-lxxxix.
18. W.S. Howell, Poetics, Rhetoric, and Logic: Studies in the Basic Discipline of Criticism (London: Cornell UP, 1975), pp. 163-90.
19. Colson briefly comments on this change in the introduction of his edition of Institutionis: pp. lxxxvi-lxxxix.
20. For a related treatment of rhetoric and science see P. Dear (ed.), The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1991).
21. N.S. Struever emphasises the role rhetoric played within the world of Britain's social elite in 'The Conversable World: Eighteenth- Century Transformations of the Relation of Rhetoric and Truth' in D.H. Bialostosky and L.D. Needham (eds), Rhetorical Traditions and British Romantic Literature (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995), pp. 233-49.
22. Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric.
23. Also see his 'Territorial Disputes: Philosophy versus Rhetoric' in Vickers (ed.), Rhetoric Revalued: Papers from the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1982), pp. 247-66.
24. For instance, see A. Potkay, The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume (London: Cornell UP, 1994).
25. Relatedly, see J.C. Hilson, 'Hume: the Historian as Man of Feeling' in J.C. Hilson, M.M.B. Jones and J.R. Watson (eds), Augustan Worlds (Bristol: Leicester UP, 1978), pp. 205-22.
26. I. Thomson, 'Rhetoric and the Passions, 1760-1800' in Rhetoric Revalued, pp. 143-8.
27. Many studies that investigate rhetoric's usage in the communication of science often place it under the larger rubric of 'language'. See J.V. Golinski, 'Language, Discourse and Science' in R.C. Olby, G.N. Cantor, J.R.R. Christie and M.J.S. Hodge (eds), Companion to the History of Modern Science (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 110-23.
28. Golinski also treats the role of language, particularly metaphor, throughout his Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998).
29. Also see A.E. Benjamin, C.N. Cantor and J.R.R. Christie (eds), The Figural and the Literal: Problems of Language in the History of Science and Philosophy, 1630-1800 (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1987).
30. 'Chapter XXIV, Of the Natural Attributes of the Deity'. In his analysis of Paley's argument, Nuovo treats this 'eulogistic' from philosophical perspective but fails to associate it with rhetoric. V. Nuovo, 'Rethinking Paley', Synthese 91 (1992) 41.
31. H. Blair, Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres, 3rd edn, Vol. I (London: A. Strahan, T. Cadell, 1787), pp. 75-83.
32. Regarding the audience, Blair states that the orator must 'render them benevolent'. Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric, Vol. II, p. 371.
33. 'Analysis of Archdeacon Paley's Charge to the Clergy of the Diocese of Carlisle', in 1790, on The Use and Propriety of Local and Occasional Preaching, first printed in Seckler's Works, Vol. IV, Charge III. Reprinted in G.W. Meadley, Memoirs of William Paley, D.D. (Sunderland: J. Graham, 1809), pp. 94-101.
34. P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727-1823 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992), p. 4.
35. Orreries, thermometers, telescopes and barometers often functioned as 'polite' pieces of conversation. For the latter, see J. Golinski, 'Barometers of Change: Meteorological Instruments as Machines of Enlightenment' in W. Clark, J. Golinski and S. Schaffer, The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (London: Chicago UP, 1999), pp. 69-93.
36. A. Blackwall, An Introduction to the Classics (London: C. Rivington, 1728), p. 56.
37. The scientific conversation of a late eighteenth-century coffee house club is discussed in J. Golinksi, 'Conversations on Chemistry: Talk about Phlogiston in the Coffee House Society, 1780-1787' in T.H. Levere and G. L'E. Turner, Discussing Chemistry and Steam: The Minutes of a Coffee House Philosophical Society 1780-1787 (Oxford, Oxford UP, 2002), pp. 191-205.
38. For more on this scientific context, see M.D. Eddy, 'Geology, Mineralogy and Time in John Walker's University of Edinburgh Natural History Lectures, 1779-1803', History of Science 39 (2001) 95-119;
39. P.R. Sloan, 'Buffon, German Biology, and the Historical Interpretation of Species', British Journal for the History of Science 22 (1979) 109-53
40. and his 'John Locke, John Ray, and the Problem of the Natural System', Journal for the History of Biology 5 (1972) 1-53.
41. 'Analysis of Mr Paley's Admonitory Sermon to the Young Clergy of the Diocese of Carlisle, Preached at a General Ordination Holden at Rose Coasted on Sunday, July 29, 1781', Meadley, Memoirs, pp. 83.
42. The Edinburgh Review (1802-1803) also comments on Paley's clarity. See F. Jeffrey, 'Art. III. Natural Theology; or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, collected from the appearances of Nature. By William Paley, D.D. Archdeacon of Carlisle, London. 1802,. 8vo. pp. 586'.
43. Edinburgh Review (Edinburgh, 1803), p. 288.
44. P.J. Bowler, Evolution: A History of the Idea (Berkeley: California UP, 1989);
45. L.S. Jacyna, Philosophical Whigs: Medicine, Science, and Citizenship in Edinburgh. 1789-1848 (London: Routledge, 1994).
46. A. Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1989), pp. 110-24.
47. The process of updating Paley's science is briefly treated in the preface of Thomas Smibert's edition (Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers, 1837).
48. J. Gascoigne, 'Rise and Fall of British Newtonian Natural Theology', Science in Context 2 (1988) 219-56. The cultural position of natural theology in Britain allowed it to play a prominent role in the popularisation of scienceas was pointed out over forty years ago
49. in C.C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology: A Study of the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850 (New York: Harper, 1959).
50. Also see the chapter entitled 'The Rise and Fall of Natural Theology' in D.M. Knight, Natural Science Books in English 1600-1900 (London: B.T. Batsford, 1972), pp. 47-62.
51. The context of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century interactions between rhetoric, theology and science are treated in L. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1650-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992).
52. N.C. Gillespie further addresses mechanical terminology in relation to Britain's industrialisation in 'Divine Design and the Industrial Revolution: William Paley's Abortive Reform of Natural Theology', Isis 81 (1990) 214-29.
53. J.H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991). The Hegelian critique of Newton has also skewed the importance of Newtonian philosophy (and hence Newtonian natural theology) in general.
54. On this matter, see B. Gower, 'Gravity, Polarity and Dialectical Method' in M.J. Perry (ed.), Hegel and Newtonianism (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1993), pp. 41-60.
55. For a historical introduction to the larger contours of European natural theology, see W. Philipp, 'Physicotheology in the Age of Enlightenment: Appearance and History' in T. Besterman (ed.), Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Vol. LVII (Geneva: Institute et Musee Voltaire les Delices, 1967), pp. 1233-67.
56. F. Jeffrey, Art. III, Natural Theology, p. 287.
57. Interestingly, Blair places the cosmological argument in this category. Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric, Vol. II, p. 402.
58. Lectures on Rhetoric, Ibid., p. 403.
59. R. Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings, J. Secord (ed.), (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1994), p. 324. Italics added.
60. De Natura Deorum, §2.65.163.
61. Both of Paley's quotations in the paragraph are taken from 'Chapter III: "Application of the Argument" '. Such blatant admissions make one wonder why Nuovo holds that Paley 'barely mentions' the 'principle of analogy' . Nuovo 'Rethinking Paley', p. 36.
62. Cicero, De Oratore, §3.61.
63. 'Chapter II. State of the Argument Continued.'
64. This quotation is taken from Rackham's 'Introduction to De Natura Deorum, (1932), p. xvii.
65. Rhetorica ad Herrenium, §1.7.9.
66. A. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
67. Calvin's usage of rhetoric is outlined in S. Jones, Calvin and the Rhetoric of Piety (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995).
68. Calvin also used 'Nature' as a commonplace when he was arguing against opponents in political and doctrinal matters. S.E. Schreiner, The Theater of his Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of John Calvin (Durham: Labyrinth, 1991).
69. 53 See F. Bacon, Novum Organum (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1855)
70. and his Essayes: Religious Meditations-Places of Perswasion and Disswasion, 1527 (London: Haslewood Books, 1924).
71. The blending of Renaissance science and rhetoric is discussed by P. Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, trans. S. Rabinovitch (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968);
72. and A. Blair, The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1997).
73. Elements of this interaction are treated in L.M. Zeitz, 'Natural Theology, Rhetoric and Revolution: John Ray's Wisdom of God, 1691-1704', Eighteenth Century Life 18 (1994) 120-33.
74. See 'Lecture XXXVII', Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric, Vol. III, p. 58.
75. E. Paley, William Paley, p. 321.
76. Archbishop Whately once noted the similarity between the arguments offered by Nieuwentyjt and Paley. R. Whately, Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews (London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 1861), p. 94.
77. Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books, p. 258.
78. Oftentimes, the believability of an author's testimony came down to whether or not he was an upstanding gentleman. See S. Shapin, Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth- Century England (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1994).
79. 'Chapter VI. The Argument Cumulative.'
80. 'Chapter VIII. Of Mechanical Arrangement in the Human Frame.'
81. W. Paley, The Works of William Paley, D.D. (1825), pp. xx-xxi.
82. A. Fyfe, 'The Reception and Subsequent Transformation of Paley's Natural Theology', paper given on 19 March 1999, Braintree, Essex at the 'John Ray and His Successors: The Clergyman as Biologist' conference.
83. F. Jeffrey, 'Art. III. Natural Theology', pp. 304-5.
84. A. Guerrini, 'James Keill, George Chyne, and Newtonian Philosophy', Journal for the History of Biology 18 (1985) 247-66.
85. Considering that he was a well-known anatomist and surgeon, the lack of written information on Cheselden is surprising. He does not even merit an entry in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (although he is in the Dictionary of National Biography). For brief biographical details, see S.C. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996), pp. 84, 182;
86. L.L. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter and A. Wear (eds), The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to AD 1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995), pp. 436, 450.
87. E.W. Beth, 'Nieuwentyjt's Significance for the Philosophy of Science', Synthese 9 (1953-55) 447-53;
88. H. Freudenthal, 'Bernard Nieuwentyjt', Dictionary of National Biography.
89. A.D. Atkinson, 'William Derham, F.R.S. (1657-1735)', Annals of Science 7 (1952) 368-92. D.M. Knight, 'William Derham', DSB.
90. Keill and Cheselden both leaned toward iatroniechanism, the belief that various functions of the body could be reduced to mathematical principles. Keill's Account of Animal Secretion (1708) particularly demonstrates this proclivity. For this mathematical context of these texts, see T. Frängsmyr, 'The Mathematical Philosophy' in T. Frängsmyr, J.L. Heilbron and R.E. Rider (eds), The Quantifying Spirit in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: California UP, 1990), pp. 27-44.
91. Paley cites the third edition of Keills Anatomy of the Human Body (London: 1698)
92. and Cheselden's The Anatomy of the Human Body (London: 1713).
93. Paley cites Derham's Physico-Theology (London: 1696) and Nieuwentyjt's A Religious Philosopher, or the Right Use of Contemplating the Works of Creator, trans. (English) J. Chamberlayne (London: 1718). He also references an article published by 'Dr Nieuwentyt' in Leipsic Transactions but gives no date or publication information. See 'Chapter IX. Of the Muscles'.
94. W. Paley, Natural Theology or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature by William Paley D.D., Illustrated by a Series of Plates, and Explanatory Notes, by James Paxton, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1826).
95. These anatomical plates were also published as a book of their own: J. Paxton, Illustrations of Paley's Natural Theology with Descriptive Letter Press (Oxford: J. Vincent, 1826).
96. 'Chapter III. Application of the Argument.'
97. 'Chapter X. Of the Vessels of Animal Bodies.'
98. L. Spallanzani, Dissertations Relative to the Natural History of Animals and Vegetables, trans. T. Beddoes (London, 1784 and 1789).
99. E. Stevens, Dissertatio inaguralis de alimentlorum concoctine (1777) earned him the honour of being the first person to isolate gastric juice.
100. J. Hunter, 'On the Digestion of the Stomach after Death', Philosophical Transactions 62 (1772).
101. Many studies have addressed this situation. L. Stewart, This Rise of Public Science is a helpful introduction to the topic.
102. J. Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 238-55.
103. Davy did challenge various aspects of Paley's design argument. See D.M. Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998), pp. 174-5.
104. J.V. Grabiner, 'A Mathematician Among the Molasses Barrels: Maclaurin's Unpublished Memoir on Volumes', Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society 39 (1996) 193-240;
105. M. Harman, 'Dynamics and Intelligibility: Bernoulli and Maclaurin' in R.S. Woodhouse (ed.), Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Kluwer Academic, 1988), pp. 213-26.
106. 'Chapter XXII. Astronomy.' The following quotes about natural philosophy in the next two paragraphs come from this chapter.
107. D.B. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (London: Penguin, 1976).
108. See esp. Chapter II, 'The Rise to Fashion' and Chapter III, 'Wonders of the Past', pp. 26-72.
109. Paley mainly reference's Ray's Wisdom of God (London: 1691), which was still a respectable scientific source on certain topics even a century after his death. The definitive biography of Ray still remains C. Raven, John Roy Naturalist: His Life and Works (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1942).
110. O. Goldsmith, An History of the Earth and Animated Nature (London: 1774). Though neglected by historians, this book was one of the most popular natural histories in the later eighteenth century for both savant natural philosophers and university lectures alike. For instance, it is cited several times in the lectures of Professor John Walker, Regius Chair of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh (1779-1803).
111. See R. Anderson, 'Goldsmith's Life Viewed at the Turn of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries' in G.S. Rousseau, Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974);
112. S. Gwynn, Oliver Goldsmith (London: Thorton Butterworth, 1935).
113. esp. Chapter XIII, 'Animated History';
114. J. Prior, The Life of Goldsmith, M.B., from a Variety of Original Sources (London: John Murray, 1837) includes several interesting facts about Goldsmith's view of natural history, especially the introduction that he wrote for Richard Brooke's A new and accurate system of natural history, etc. (London: J. Newbery, 1763).
115. W. Withering, A Botanical Arrangement of all Vegetables Naturally Growing in Great Britain (London: 1776), which Paley cites as Botanical Arrangement. The third edition's title was slightly different: An Arrangement of British Plants: According to the Latest Improvements of the LINNAEN SYSTEM: To which is Prefixed an Easy Introduction to the Study of Botany (Birmingham: 1796).
116. Paley cites two of Erasmus Darwin's books: Phytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture and Gardening . . . (1800) and The Botanic Garden, Part I, Containing the Economy of Vegetation, A Poem with Philosophical Notes (London: 1791).
117. D. King-Hele touches on these books in his Doctor of Revolution: The Life and Genius of Erasmus Darwin, 2nd edn (London: Faber and Faber, 1977).
118. Also see J. Browne, 'Botany for Gentlemen: Erasmus Darwin and "The Loves of the Plants" ', Isis 80 (1989) 593-621.
119. The French Royal Academy, Memoirs for a Natural History of Animals; Paley cites the 1687 and the 1701 versions. Interestingly, Paley's anatomical source, Nieuwentyjt, cites the 1699 edition in his Religious Philosopher. Roger Hahn treats Memoirs in The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803 (London: California UP, 1971). In light of the political situation in France, it should be no surprise that Paley does not reference the newly formed French Institute (1793).
120. M. Frasca-Spada, 'The Many Lives of Eighteenth-Century Philosophy', British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9 (2001) 145-55.
121. Teologia Naturale . . . Tradotta nell'idioma Francese in Ginevra, ed ora . . . nell' Italiano (Rome, 1808);
122. Teologia Natural . . . Traducida á' la lengua Espanola por D.J.L. de Villanueva (London, 1825);
123. Natürliche Theologie/mit Bemerkungen und Zusätzen von Lord Brougham und Sir Charles Bell, Deutsch von Dr H. Hauff (Stuttgart: 1837).
124. Although Fyfe has challenged the role of Natural Theology in Cambridge's earlynineteenth- century curriculum, it was clearly recommended reading for those wishing to pass their ordination exams during the 1880s. See Outlines of Theological Study, Compiled and Published with the Approval of the Committee of the Conference upon the Training of Candidates for Holy Orders, 1881-1887 (Cambridge: Deighton Bell, 1887), p. 52;
125. A. Fyfe, 'The Reception of William Paley's "Natural Theology" in the University of Cambridge', British Journal for the History of Science 30 (1997) 321-35.