ABSTRACT
The chapter begins with a definition of “natural theology” as known in the history of modern science and points out that its key conceptual domains are pervaded by causal questions that are common to both scientific and metaphysical quests. As such, natural theology can provide a framework for exploring children’s answers to the similar causal questions as those asked by the scientists of the 17th and 18th centuries as well as the earlier epochs in the history of ideas. Chapter 1 concludes with a proposal that natural- theological understanding is a psychological term for an early developing theory of the world as a whole.
