Abstract

The ArgumentThe article explores the reasons for the rise to prominence of Newtonian natural theology in the period following the publication of thePrincipiain 1687, its continued importance throughout the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, and possible explanations for its rapid decline in the second half of the nineteenth century. It argues that the career of Newtonian natural theology cannot be explained solely in terms of internal intellectual developments such as the theology of Newton's clerical admirers or the impact of the work of Hume or of Charles Darwin. While such intellectual movements are undoubtedly of considerable importance in accounting for the rise and fall of Newtonian natural theology, they do not of themselves explain why British society was more receptive to particular bodies of thought in some periods rather than in others. Hence this article – in common with a number of recent studies – attempts to draw some connections between the growth of Newtonian natural theology and the character of Augustan society and politics; it also attempts to link the decline of this tradition with such nineteenth-century developments as the growing separation between church and state and the secularization of the universities and of scientific and intellectual life more generally.