---
title: "Bridgewater Treatises"
chunk: 2/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgewater_Treatises"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:10:34.927628+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Medical practitioners: Kidd and Bell, Roget and Prout ===
The two medical professors John Kidd and Charles Bell wrote shorter and theologically lightweight contributions. Kidd's work, on the "physical constitution of man," was claimed to be "but a moderate thousand pounds worth," Like Bell, whose limited subject was "the hand," Kidd set out to show that modern developments in anatomy did not support either materialism or the transmutation of species, instead confirming belief in the reality of divine design. The two other medical authors, Peter Mark Roget and William Prout, wrote lengthier contributions considering how the emergence of physiological laws enhanced the belief in divine design, rather than diminishing it. In his treatise on "animal and vegetable physiology," Roget argued that the laws of "philosophical anatomy" provided a grander vision of divine action. Prout's rag-bag treatise on "chemistry, meteorology, and the function of digestion" was more ambivalent, arguing that God's action was strikingly evident in the laws of chemical action, but also that many phenomena seemed to subvert the general laws.

=== The Bible and science: Kirby and Buckland ===
The final two treatises, those of William Kirby and William Buckland, both addressed the relationship of the Bible to scientific enquiry, but from very different perspectives. High Churchman Kirby's treatise on the "history, habits, and instincts of animals" began with a quotation from German naturalist Heinrich Moritz Gaede stating: "It is Bible in hand that we must enter into the august temple of nature." A follower of the view of theologian John Hutchinson (1674–1737) that the Bible contains hidden symbolic meanings, he argued that modern naturalists such as the transmutationist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck had lost their way by failing to honour the Bible. In stark contrast, the University of Oxford's Professor of Geology, William Buckland, declared in his first chapter that there was nothing in the Bible to suggest that the earth may not be ages old. Accepting the facts of geology only strengthened Christianity, he claimed, by offering new evidence of design and disproving the idea of the transmutation of species.
Ranging across the sciences, the Bridgewater Treatises took different approaches to trying to demonstrate how science was supportive of Christianity. Taken as a whole, they tended to imply that neither natural laws nor a historical process of creation were inconsistent with Christianity. However, they were opposed to both materialism and transmutation of species.

== Reception and responses ==
The Bridgewater Treatises were published by London publisher William Pickering and while they were very expensive (they were priced between 9s.6d. and £1 10s.) they nevertheless sold very rapidly.  Buckland's treatise on geology sold a first edition of 5000 copies straight away and a second edition of the same size was immediately produced. The series was very widely reviewed and republished, and the treatises were also bought by a large number of libraries, including the libraries of the Mechanics' Institutes.  In 1836, Thomas Dibdin considered that the Bridgewater Treatises were set to "traverse the whole civilized portion of the globe." Sales tailed off in the 1840s, but the series was reissued in Henry Bohn's Scientific Library from the 1850s, with some of the treatises remaining in print in the 1880s. The Bridgewater Treatises were republished in the United States by both New York publishers Harper & Bros. and Philadelphia publishers Carey, Lea, and Blanchard.  They were translated into German by Stuttgart publisher Paul Neff, and some of the treatises appeared in French, Dutch, and Swedish.
The works are of unequal merit and they attracted criticism from a variety of standpoints. Some religious commentators criticized them for overemphasizing natural theology, for distracting readers from the claims of the Bible, or for undermining biblical authority. Some scientific commentators attacked their particular views on science. Robert Knox, an Edinburgh surgeon and major advocate of radical morphology, referred to them as the "Bilgewater Treatises", to mock what he called the "ultra-teleological school" of anatomy. Though memorable, this phrase overemphasizes the influence of teleology in the series, at the expense of the idealism of the likes of Kirby and Roget. The series nevertheless proved very successful in conveying the impression that modern science was in harmony with Protestant Christianity and it became an emblem of that harmony in Victorian Britain and beyond.
The great success of the series prompted authors to publish works in imitation. The most famous of these was by Charles Babbage and dubbed The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment (1836). As Babbage's preface states, this volume was not part of the series, but rather his own considerations on the subject written in response to the claim in Whewell's treatise that "We may thus, with the greatest propriety, deny to the mechanical philosophers and mathematicians of recent times any authority with regard to their views of the administration of the universe." Babbage drew on his own work on calculating engines to represent God as a divine programmer setting complex laws as the basis of what we think of as miracles, rather than miraculously producing new species by creative whim. A fragmentary supplement to Babbage's Fragment by Thomas Hill was published posthumously.

== See also ==
Relationship between religion and science
Natural theology

== References ==