Théologie naturelle et géologie à l'époque de William Buckland
Résumé
The Revd William Buckland was among Britain's foremost geologists from the time of his appointment as Reader in Geology at the University of Oxford in 1819 until illhealth forced him to withdraw from serious work in the later 1840s. Throughout this time, he pursued an ideal of the unity of science and religion. In accordance with the principles of natural theology, he found proof of divine providence everywhere he looked in the natural world. In his early writings, which contemporaries often accused of extravagance, he even maintained that the sedimentary deposits and other debris that were found in Northern Europe had been left by Noah's Flood, as described in the Old Testament. Like AdamSedgwick, Buckland abandoned his belief in the Flood as a significant geological event in the 1830s, but natural theology remained a common element of the Anglican tradition,though one that changed its character as the social and intellectual pressures which led Buckland and others to use the evidence of nature to demonstrate God's providence and goodness in the 1820s and 1830s became less marked. Once the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859 had made available a convincing alternative explanation of the adaptation of living creatures (including man) to their environment,providentialist interpretations retreated from the heart of Anglican apologetics to the margins of British intellectual life.
Depuis sa nomination en 1819 au poste de " reader " en géologie à l'université d'Oxford, et jusque dans les années 1840, époque à laquelle sa mauvaise santé lui rendit tout travail sérieux impossible, le révérend William Buckland, en tant que personnage éminent de la géologie britannique, poursuivit son idéal d'union de la science et de la religion. En adepte typique de la théologie naturelle, il trouvait partout dans la nature des preuves de la providence divine et, dans ses premiers écrits, il soutint que les dépôts de sédiments et autres débris trouvés dans le Nord de l'Europe étaient des restes datant du déluge de Noé décrit dans l'Ancien Testament. Bien que la théologie naturelle restât un élément commun de la tradition anglicane, les conditions qui, dans les années 1820 et 1830, avaient conduit Buckland et d'autres à mettre en avant ce type d'argument en faveur de la bienfaisance de Dieu, devinrent moins fortes au milieu du siècle. En 1859, le livre de Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, offrit une explication de l'adaptation des créatures vivantes (l'homme y compris) à leur environnement qui relégua les interprétations providentialistes aux marges de l'histoire intellectuelle britannique.
Origine : Accord explicite pour ce dépôt