Niall O’Flaherty (KCL)

Throughout the enlightenment mainstream social, political and scientific thought in Europe was underpinned by a cosmology that attributed order in nature to divine design, and which accorded man a pre-eminent place in this divine scheme. But by the second half of the eighteenth century this view had come under increasing attack from a number of radical thinkers. The core aim of this course is to provide students with an advanced understanding of these debates about the origin of order in the universe and man’s place in nature in their historical and intellectual contexts, with particular emphasis being placed on the social, political and religious dimensions of such controversies. Students will become familiar with a number of key interventions in the debate through a detailed study of the primary texts, starting with David Hume’s devastating attack on the epistemological basis of natural theology and ending with Charles Darwin’s radical revisioning of the relationship between God, man and nature.