ABSTRACT
The decades immediately prior to the present new millennium have seen some valuable reassessments of earlier assumptions about the significance of millenarian and eschatological expectations in the development of early scientific thought and methodologies. Of particular interest are the 1640s and 1650s in witnessing the final attempts by intellectuals under the influence of the new thinking, to incorporate its ideas of exploiting empirical knowledge of the created world within a larger and comprehensive programme of religious, or metaphysical, philosophy. Despite a prevailing acceptance of the theological dictum that, consequent upon the Fall, all human knowledge was necessarily tainted and partial, there were many at this time who for various reasons were anticipating the coming of a new historical age of divine reconciliation and redemption, when human understanding and management of the natural world would be enabled to achieve its final and full potential within a regained state of edenic harmony.
