ABSTRACT
Thomas Dick's writings eased the discomfort because they so obviously praised and glorified God while also promoting knowledge of the world. Because they glorified God and helped to inhibit secularization of science, Dick's writings allayed suspicions and persuaded many evangelicals that the pursuit of natural knowledge was rightful, even righteous. Dick's efforts to make natural knowledge tributary to God—to develop an alternative to the gentlemanly and 'objective' ideal of science then being constructed by the British Association—were also contested. Clearly, Dick's evangelical beliefs and sense of mission shaped his pursuit of natural knowledge, and informed his decisions as to what constituted 'valid' knowledge. He embraced the provocative and contentious nebular hypothesis, for example, because he believed it showed God's continuing activity in and supervision of His creation. Dick, in essence, was engaged in a diachronic contest between competitive ways of seeing and knowing the world.
