ABSTRACT
The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the sublime science of astronomy discloses the wise and wonderful clockmaker.1 This was something that most people took for granted, notably in George III’s Britain; which meant that a little science would be good for everybody, and that popular science often took the form of religious apologetic. Natural history, the study of creatures great and small, was another source of wonder, and of faith: the microscope revealed the astonishing design and workmanship of the fly’s eye, while navigators like Cook reported whales as huge as any imagined leviathan. Animals and plants, exquisitely adapted to their ways of life and environments, were in well-planned equilibrium. New discoveries made sense of old beliefs.
