ABSTRACT
Physics, or natural philosophy, was traditionally an integral part of philosophy as a whole and, as such, closely linked with metaphysics and natural theology. Still, medieval natural theology had little recourse to the investigation of nature. Arguments that we would call religious were regarded as valid in physics. The various alternatives proposed from the sixteenth century onward to replace traditional Aristotelian natural philosophy were at least partly religiously inspired. On the other hand, the impact of physics on religious thinking was initially fairly limited. During the Scientific Revolution, however, natural philosophy developed into a discipline with a program of its own. This made the religious aspects of natural knowledge a pressing problem and led to a reformulation of the relation between science and religion. The several attempts in this field varied widely and made use of heterogeneous elements, so that only the bare outlines can be sketched here.
