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6/25/2025, 10:59:47 AM
It is an interesting rabbit hole to start with John F. W. Herschel, and, how he studied philosophy and was influenced by John Locke - the major turn of events at the time was the trouble of having to equate God into the sciences.
It was Joseph-Louis Lagrange that considered unifying principles that governed diverse phenomena. His approach considers a philosophical undercurrent, seeking underlying order rather than simply describing isolated observations.
Pierre Simon de Laplace was the one that said to Napoleon, “Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.” Laplace’s apocryphal reply was, “This hypothesis, Sir, explains in fact everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions.” >>https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/09/16/there-is-no-need-for-god-as-a-hypothesis/#:~:text=Laplace%20presented%20his%20definitive%20work,need%20for%20the%20God%20hypothesis.
Philosopher Paul de Vries (same source) much later distinguished between "methodological naturalism" from "metaphysical naturalism".
Just a few pages into the prelude, and the battle rages here with "The ninth Bridgewater treatise; a fragment"
by Babbage, Charles, 1791-1871; Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), Sir, 1792-1871, (association)
Publication date 1837
Topics Natural theology
>>excerpt : "But if this respect and admiration are yielded to the mere interpreter of Nature's laws, how much more exalted must those sentiments become when applied to the Being who called such principles into living existence by creating matter subservient to their dominion - whose mind, intimately cognizant of the remotest consequences of the present as well as of all other laws, decreed existence to that one alone, which should comprehend within its grasp the completion of its destiny - which should require no future intervention to meet events unanticipated by its author, in whose omniscient mind we can conceive no infirmity of purpose - no change of intention!
_Charles Babbage
https://archive.org/details/ninthbridgewatai00babb/mode/2up
This is quite the ride.
It was Joseph-Louis Lagrange that considered unifying principles that governed diverse phenomena. His approach considers a philosophical undercurrent, seeking underlying order rather than simply describing isolated observations.
Pierre Simon de Laplace was the one that said to Napoleon, “Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains many things.” Laplace’s apocryphal reply was, “This hypothesis, Sir, explains in fact everything, but does not permit to predict anything. As a scholar, I must provide you with works permitting predictions.” >>https://www.quantumdiaries.org/2011/09/16/there-is-no-need-for-god-as-a-hypothesis/#:~:text=Laplace%20presented%20his%20definitive%20work,need%20for%20the%20God%20hypothesis.
Philosopher Paul de Vries (same source) much later distinguished between "methodological naturalism" from "metaphysical naturalism".
Just a few pages into the prelude, and the battle rages here with "The ninth Bridgewater treatise; a fragment"
by Babbage, Charles, 1791-1871; Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), Sir, 1792-1871, (association)
Publication date 1837
Topics Natural theology
>>excerpt : "But if this respect and admiration are yielded to the mere interpreter of Nature's laws, how much more exalted must those sentiments become when applied to the Being who called such principles into living existence by creating matter subservient to their dominion - whose mind, intimately cognizant of the remotest consequences of the present as well as of all other laws, decreed existence to that one alone, which should comprehend within its grasp the completion of its destiny - which should require no future intervention to meet events unanticipated by its author, in whose omniscient mind we can conceive no infirmity of purpose - no change of intention!
_Charles Babbage
https://archive.org/details/ninthbridgewatai00babb/mode/2up
This is quite the ride.
6/16/2025, 4:03:23 AM
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