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X - Earth's Alchemy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2010

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Summary

I want…finally to enquire whether any signs of unitary purpose can be found in History.

W. R. Inge, God and the Astronomers, p. 125.

The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature.

H. A. L. Fisher, Preface to The History of Europe.

Had I been present at the birth of this planet I would probably not have believed on the word of an Archangel that the blaming mass, the incandescent whirlpool there before our eyes at a temperature of 30 million degrees would presently set about the establishment of empires and civilisations, that it was on its way to produce Greek art and Italian painting.…

W. Macneile Dixon, The Human Situation, Gifford Lectures, Glasgow, 1935–7.

Our topic of last time asked if and how it is that our thinking is correlated with our brain. If Natural Theology argue from the facts of Nature to a Divine Scheme to which they may point, then that question seems germane to our theme. It lies at the threshold of human approach to the whole Natural Scheme. Especially does it do so when we occupy the viewpoint traditionally taken by the physician and the naturalist, thus by our physician-philosopher, Jean Fernel, and long before him by his master Aristotle, namely, that man is a part of Nature.

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Man on his Nature , pp. 293 - 322
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009
First published in: 1940

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