---
title: "Book of Nature"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:38:39.495700+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

From a single print shop in Mainz, Germany around 1440, the movable type printing-press had spread to no less than around 270 cities in Central, Western and Eastern Europe and had already produced more than 20 million volumes by the end of the 15th century. At the same time, the number of universities had grown to more than 60. By revealing a "New World" unknown to the ancients, the European encounter with the Americas specifically undermined the authority of Claudius Ptolemy, the 2nd-century scholar whose geographic and astronomical models had long been considered infallible. 
Tycho Brahe's unprecedentedly accurate astronomical observations in the late 16th century and Galileo Galilei’s early 17th-century telescopic observations combined to turn astronomy into the first modern science. Galileo's observations ended a millenium of pre-modern astronomical orthodoxy.  Johannes Kepler used Brahe's data to discover that planets have elliptical, not circular, orbits and develop the laws of planetary motion. Because of Kepler, astronomical phenomena came to be seen as being governed by physical laws, a kind of clockwork.
Ancient texts and doctrines were disputed, knowledge of the natural world was incomplete, interpretation of Christian Scripture was challenged, and Greek philosophy—which helped draft the Book of Nature—and Christian Scripture were viewed as fundamentally opposed. 
The Book of Nature was acquiring greater authority for its wisdom and as an unmediated source of natural and divine knowledge. Hands-on investigations, whether of the human body, horticulture, or the stars, were encouraged. As a source of revelation, the Book of Nature remained moored to the Christian faith and occupied a prominent location in Western culture alongside the Bible. Scientific philosophers such as Robert Boyle and Sir Isaac Newton believed that nature could teach humans the breadth of work which God had carried out; Francis Bacon told his readers that they could never be too well-versed in the book of God’s Scripture or the book of God’s nature. The Book of Nature was seen as a way of learning more about God.

== Two books - two worlds? ==
The view of nature as divine revelation and the need for scientific research continued for several centuries. When the word scientist began to replace the term natural philosopher in the 1830s, the most talked-about scientific books in the UK were the eight-volume Bridgewater Treatises. These books, funded by the last Earl of Bridgewater, were written by men appointed by the Royal Society to "explore the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of Gd [sic], as manifested in the Creation".
At that time, nature and the divine were seen to be parallel. However, the concern that the two books would eventually collide was becoming increasingly evident among scholars, natural philosophers, and theologians, who saw the possibility of two separate and incompatible worlds—one determined to possess nature, and the other determined to uphold Christian faith. Reacting to the works of scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace some popular authors began to show that nature may not reveal God, but may show that there is no god at all, but such conclusions did not follow from the theories of natural selection. In Fact, Russel Wallace was a leading scientist and an advocate of spiritualism at the same time, and strongly believed that evolution theories represented an advance in our understanding of the book of nature. Discoveries in paleontology led many to question the Christian scriptures and other divine beliefs. Scientists engaged in physical observation of nature separated themselves from spiritual issues. In contrast, the emerging disciplines of psychology and sociology led others to see religious belief as a temporary step in a society’s development rather than a central and essential element. By 1841, Auguste Comte proposed that empirical observation was the final culmination of human society.

== See also ==
The Assayer
Science and the Catholic Church
Natural theology – Theology reliant on rational and empirical arguments
Dogmatics – Theology of theoretical official truthsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets

== Notes ==

== Bibliography ==
Dear, Peter (2009). Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions, 1500-1700. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14206-7.
Evernden, Lorne Leslie Neil. The Social Creation of Nature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Harrison, Peter (26 July 2001). The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00096-3.
Pedersen, Olaf (1992). The Book of Nature. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press. ISBN 0-268-00690-3.
Wootton, David (2015). The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-175952-9.

== Further reading ==
Acevedo, J. Alphanumeric Cosmology from Greek into Arabic: The Idea of Stoicheia Through the Medieval Mediterranean. Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck, 2020.
Binde, Per. "Nature in Roman Catholic Tradition". Anthropological Quarterly 74, no. 1 (January 2001): 15-27.
Blackwell, Richard J. Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991.
Blumenberg, Hans. The Readability of the World. Trans. Robert Savage and David Roberts. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-1-5017-6661-9.
Eddy, Matthew, and Knight, David M. Introduction. Natural Theology. By William Paley. 1802. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ix-xxix.
Eisenstein, Elizabeth L. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Henry, John. The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Kay, Lily E. Who Wrote the Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.
Kosso, Peter. Reading the book of nature: an introduction to the philosophy of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Nelson, Benjamin. "Certitude, and the Books of Scripture, Nature, and Conscience". In On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science, and Civilizations. Selected Writings by Benjamin Nelson, edited by Toby E. Huff. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.
Seibold, J. “Liber naturae et liber scripturae: doctrina patrística-medieval, su interpretación moderna y su perspectiva actual.” Stromata, 40(1/2), 2019, pp.59-85. External link.