James Hutton, Theory of the Earth.
Sir Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology.
John Playfair, Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory.
K. A. v. Zittel, History of Geology and Palæontology.
[CHAPTER XI]
SCIENCE AND RELIGION—KANT, LAMBERT, LAPLACE, SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL
Hutton had advanced the study of geology by concentrating attention on the observable phenomena of the earth's crust, and turning away from speculations about the origin of the world and the relation of this sphere to other units of the cosmos. In the same century, however, other scientists and philosophers were attracted by these very problems which seemed not to promise immediate or demonstrative solution, and through their studies they arrived at conclusions which profoundly affected the science, the ethics, and the religion of the civilized world.
Whether religion be defined as a complex feeling of elation and humility—a sacred fear—akin to the æsthetic sense of the sublime; or, as an intellectual recognition of some high powers which govern us below—of some author of all things, of some force social or cosmic which tends to righteousness; or, as the outcrop of the moral life touched with light and radiant with enthusiasm; or, as partaking of the nature of all these: it cannot be denied that the eighteenth century contributed to its clarification and formulation, especially through the efforts of the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Yet it is not difficult to show that the philosophy of Kant and of those associated with him was greatly influenced by the science of the time, and that, in fact, in his early life he was a scientist rather than a philosopher in the stricter sense. His General Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, written at the age of thirty-one, enables us to follow his transition from science to philosophy, and, more especially, to trace the influence of his theory of the origin of the heavenly bodies on his religious conceptions.