Natural Theology

In February 1829 the Reverend Francis Henry, earl of Bridgewater, died. His will made provision for £8000 sterling to be held at the disposal of the president of the Royal Society in London and used to finance the publication of one thousand copies of a work on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation. The result, eventually, was not one but eight such works. These works of natural theology were written by leading religious and scientific figures of the day and were published between 1833 and 1836 (see Addinall; Topham):

1. Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man (1833).
2. John Kidd (1775–1851), On the Adaptation of External Nature to the Physical Condition of Man: Principally with Reference to the Supply of His Wants and the Exercise of His Intellectual Faculties (1833).
3. William Whewell (1794–1866), Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1833).
4. Charles Bell (1774–1842), The Hand: Its Mechanism and Vital Endowments in Evincing Design (1833).
5. Peter Roget (1779–1869), Animal and Vegetable Physiology: Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1834). 6. William Buckland (1784–1856), Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1836).
6. William Kirby (1759–1850), On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Creation of Animals and in Their History, Habits and Instincts (1835).
7. William Prout (1785–1850), Chemistry, Meteorology, and the Function of Digestion: Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (1834).

In 1837 Charles Babbage (1791–1871), the creator of the famous "difference engine" (a calculating machine often cited as the earliest forerunner of the modern computer), wrote an unsolicited Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, which argued that a system operated entirely by mathematical laws could result in the appearance of unexpected novelties. Babbage's suggestion that divine intervention could thus be replaced by the operation of natural laws was explicitly taken up in the evolutionary work Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, published anonymously in 1844 (the author was later revealed to have been the Edinburgh journalist and publisher Robert Chambers), and, more tacitly, in Darwin's Origin of Species (1859).