Order, change and chance in the European perspective on nature (1600-1800)

This thesis deals with a major question that occupied most of the greater and also lesser known philosophers, naturalists and theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: does nature as we perceive it demonstrate a divine, wise and therfore immutable order and design, or is nature the outcome of (cosmological, geological and biological) change, and to a certain extent also the result of chance? The search for order and design in nature was massive; the discussion about natural dynamics was extensive; and the rejection of chance was obsessive.
The first part of this study examines ideas about providence, natural theology, natural history and the idea of 'the Great Chain of Being', and explains how these ideas contributed to the the idea of natural order (teleologically, functionally, morphologically and taxonomically; emphasising harmony, symmetry, proportion, etc.). The second part of this study deals with ideas about time, change and chance in nature. It is about the discovery of cosmological, geological and biological dynamics, and about materialist and atomist ideas within the 'Radical Enlightenment' that more or less ascribed a role to chance and the fortuitous coagulation of atoms in the formation of reality. Discussions between present-day proponents of 'intelligent design' and their opponents, demonstrate that problems such as are dealt with in Order, Change and Chance to some extent still capture the minds of many.

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