ABSTRACT
Throughout much of Western intellectual history, the relationship between religion and the study of natural history was relatively serene, untroubled by the spectacular displays that were provoked by advances in astronomy. Indeed, during the two millennia after Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), there was little to spark significant controversy until the secular implications of biological evolution became apparent following the publication of Charles Darwin’s (1809-82) Origin of Species (1859). Nevertheless, the many theories of natural history and the rationales underlying its practice were perennially intertwined in complex ways with the theological assumptions of the cultures in which it developed.
