Abstract

The importance of the physico‐theological literature is underlined as its influence expands with Ray and Derham, flooding continental Europe in the first half of the 18th century. Until now the history of science, philosophy, and theology have either ignored or tended to underplay the influence of the concept of nature presented in the physico‐theological writings. The development of this concept, however, was a major historical precondition for the empirical investigations of nature which followed in the early Enlightment. Physico‐theology is characterized by the combination of belief in God's creation of the world, a rationalistic model of nature, an epistemology grounded in sensual perception and the primacy of observational science. It popularized a mechanical model of nature and reconciled this new model with the religious needs of the age by interpreting nature as the perfect order of a perfect Maker and by shifting emphasis from the construction of the machine to its functions by means of its search for and description of the wonderful utility of nature. The example of Albrecht von Haller helps clarify these claims.