The Scotsman George Combe (1788 1858) was an energetic and vocal promoter of phrenology, natural philosophy, and secularism, who rose from humble origins to tour widely in Europe and the United States and become a best-selling author. His most famous book, The Constitution of Man, was published in 1828, and had sold approximately 350,000 copies, distributed by over 100 publishers, by 1900. It put forward Combe's version of naturalism, and was hugely influential perhaps more so even than Charles Darwin in changing popular understanding of the place of humanity in the natural order, as subject...

A Victorian account of how God's providence permeates the world in an external (physical) as in an internal (moral) sense.

Henry George Atkinson (c.1812 c.1890), a free thinker and supporter of naturalism, published extensively on phrenology, mesmerism, and spiritualism. He became acquainted with the professional writer, political activist and radical philosopher Harriet Martineau (1802 76) in the 1840s, when she attributed her recovery from a long illness to mesmerism. Their correspondence was published in 1851, and promotes a radical form of atheistic naturalism, more extreme than that found in George Combe's best-selling Constitution of Man (also published in this series). It ranges widely over topics...

A leading nineteenth-century American evolutionist explores the possibility of reconciling his scientific convictions with his religious faith.

These lectures delivered in 1858 explore the limitations of human knowledge and apply metaphysical agnosticism to Christian theology.

William Whewell's controversial 1853 essay arguing against the possible existence of life elsewhere in the universe.

In this 1837 book, Babbage, the 'father of the computer', argues that science and religion are not diametrically opposed.

Baden Powell (1796 1860) was a mathematician who held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford, and was also a priest in the Church of England. He was a defender of the claims of new scientific discoveries in the face of Christian orthodoxy well before Darwin published the theory of evolution, and drew a clear distinction in his thinking and writing between moral and physical phenomena, as being independent of each other and the fields of completely different study. Darwin himself wrote, in the 'Historical Sketch' at the beginning of the third edition of On the Origin of Species, 'The...

An influential book from 1894 on the need for a comprehensive science of human society and human progress.

William Paley (1743 1805) argues for the existence of God as the intelligent creator of the world in this, his last book, published in 1802. He builds on early modern natural theology including the works of John Ray, William Derham, and Bernard Nieuwentyt, and most of his examples are taken from medicine and natural history. Paley uses analogy and metaphors, including a particularly well-written version of the 'watchmaker analogy', to prove that the world is designed and sustained by God. This sixth edition also contains a detailed bibliography, appendices on Paley's courses, and background...