文档介绍：oxford world’s classics
NATURAL THEOLOGY
William Paley was born in Peterborough in 1743. His father was a
clergyman who became a headmaster. In 1759 he went to Christ’s College,
Cambridge, where he won scholarships and prizes, and graduated as Senior
Wrangler, the best student of his year in the prestigious mathematical course.
He was ordained deacon in 1766, and elected a fellow of his college. There
with his friend John Law he undertook teaching, especially of moral phil-
osophy. In 1775 Law’s father, Edmund, Bishop of Carlisle, offered Paley
a post as a vicar. In 1776 he left Cambridge, and married Jane Hewitt. In 1785
he published The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, based on his
Cambridge lectures. It sold very well, and made his name as a clear and
accessible writer. He was promoted to be Archdeacon of Carlisle. In 1791 his
wife died, leaving him with eight children to bring up, and in 1795 he married
Catherine Dobinson as his second wife. They moved to Bishop Wearmouth, a
well-endowed parish, where he spent the rest of his life.
Paley published Evidences of Christianity in 1794 and it rapidly became a
classic, dealing with the fulfilment of prophecy, miracles, and the reliability of
the Bible. Natural Theology appeared in 1802. As a classic statement of the
argument for intelligent design, it was a huge ess, and a major spur to
Charles Darwin’s thinking. Paley died in Lincoln in 1805.
Matthew D. E ddy is Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science
and an associate of the Centre for the History of Medicine and Disease at the
University of Durham. He has most recently held fellowships at the Dibner
Institute (MIT), Harvard University, the Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science (Berlin), and with the University of Notre Dame’s
Erasmus Institute. He has written numerous articles on eighteenth- and
eenth-century intellectual history. Most recently he has edited (with
David M. Knight) Science and Beliefs: From