Previous articleNext article FreeSecond Look: Reijer Hooykaas, Natural Law and Divine MiracleFour Books for the Price of OneAbraham (Ab) C. FlipseAbraham (Ab) C. Flipse Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe first time I came across Natural Law and Divine Miracle: A Historical-Critical Study of the Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology, and Theology was during my study of the discussions about religion and science in Reformed (neo-Calvinist) circles in the Netherlands.1 Since the late nineteenth century there had been in those circles debates about themes like miracles, causality, the relation between God and the world, and the influence of worldviews on science. A great deal of energy was put into opposing the view that religion and science were necessarily in conflict. On the other hand, some conservative theologians sympathized with Young Earth creationism, which instead reinforced the idea of conflict. In this environment Calvinist scientists organized, as late as 1950, a congress to convince their fellow believers that the Earth was really very old.2In this context—and more in particular in reaction to that congress—Reijer Hooykaas, at the time a professor at the Calvinist Vrije Universiteit (Free University) in Amsterdam, began his study of the history of geology. He was convinced that the contemporary discussion would be improved by a clarification of the concepts involved and that the best way to achieve this was by acquiring more insight into their origin and historical use. During the following decades Hooykaas’s research would result in numerous publications on the history of geology, one of the first among them being the present book.3When I first read the book I interpreted it primarily as part of the discussion in Calvinist circles. But it is much more than that. It actually played very little role in the discussion in the Netherlands, perhaps largely because Hooykaas had published it in English. It was certainly noticed internationally among historians of science, particularly among the first generation of historians of geology. Reading and rereading the book, I was overwhelmed by its breadth, its erudition, the diversity of themes, and the abundance of main characters. It is a complex and also compactly written book, one that on repeated reading and consultation yields up more and more secrets. It is not a simple, straightforward account. The people who are discussed are barely introduced—which, given their large number, wouldn’t easily be possible. Not only are many nineteenth-century scientists and their views discussed, but there are excursions into the natural philosophy of antiquity and the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Newton, and others. And, in addition, themes are followed into the twentieth century.As a “classic,” Natural Law and Divine Miracle is particularly known as a pioneering work in the historiography of geology; witness the many references to it in that field.4 In the second edition, in 1963, the subtitle was promoted to be the main title—after Martin Rudwick had remarked, in an essay review in History of Science, that the original title was “misleading.” The “new” title brings geology as the main theme even more to the fore. A French edition was published in 1970 under yet another title, Continuité et discontinuité en géologie et biologie, which shows that the book cannot be easily pinned down to a single subject.5The book begins with a “classic” theme in the history of geology. It aims at clarification of the concept of “uniformity”: Hooykaas makes it clear that this was interpreted in a variety of ways by the early geologists. In his precise analysis, Hooykaas refutes the traditional view of the origin of geology in which two opposing camps were distinguished: uniformitarians versus catastrophists. Surely uniformity, as a methodological principle, is needed as a guarantee against pseudo-scientific fantasies, but when it degenerates into narrow dogmatism it can thwart new vistas. This part of the book remains intriguing (even for those who are aware of the general claim and the multitude of studies that have since been published on this topic), particularly because of the careful analysis of the views of individual geologists (Von Hoff, Moro, Scrope, Desmarest, Hutton, Playfair, Cuvier, Lyell, Fleming, Buckland, Sedgwick, Cuvier, and others).However, this theme features in just the first sixty-six pages of the book. I realize now that the book is much more than a contribution to the historiography of the Earth sciences. It fans out so widely that its four parts can almost be viewed as four books, dealing respectively with the origin of geology, evolutionary theories, a (philosophical) analysis of the method of geology, and the role of metaphysical (religious) convictions in the development of scientific theories in general. Each part is so full of sharp analyses that by itself it provides a great deal of food for thought.The second part is an analysis of the origin of the various theories about evolution in the organic world in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hooykaas argues that it is not true that evolutionism is simply uniformitarianism applied to the organic world, as has often been claimed (p. 70). Uniformitarians in geology, for example, often did not favor uniformitarianism in biology. And however much Darwin owed to Charles Lyell, he derived the idea of real progress in nature from the catastrophists instead. In this analysis of the wider context in which Darwin’s theory was developed, Hooykaas was also a pioneer in the field of Darwin studies, which exploded only later.Building on Parts 1 and 2, Hooykaas continues in Part 3 with an analysis of the structure of the thought of the early geologists, including the intellectual background and the sources from which they derived their approach. This part is somewhat less well organized, although it contains interesting ideas. What I particularly noticed here is that, in his analysis of the “historical character” of the method of geological science (which was actually derived from the humanities), Hooykaas emphasizes that our modern idea of history—including its role in geology—stems from the Judeo-Christian tradition (pp. 146–148). This is interesting in light of the Calvinist context in which Hooykaas’s book was written, in which the text of Genesis was still occasionally used as an argument against geology. Hooykaas is, as far as I can see, one of the first to point out this influence.Although by the time of the second edition it no longer features in the main title, the topic of “law and miracle”—or, more widely, the relation between God and the world—remains an important and perhaps even the main theme of the book. This becomes clear in Part 4, “The Principle of Uniformity in Theology.” Here the origin of the book in the context of neo-Calvinism is most apparent; in this tradition the influence of (religious or metaphysical) worldviews on science was always strongly emphasized.6 Hooykaas distinguishes several metaphysical positions: naturalism, deism, semi-deism, and what he calls the biblical view of nature—that is, theism. Scientists are sometimes categorized in surprising ways. His aim is to analyze how science and worldview influence each other.Hooykaas is able to show in this way that the catastrophists were not guided by a metaphysical worldview in a more direct or basically different fashion than the uniformitarians. Most interesting in this context is his analysis of James Hutton’s uniformitarianism: it becomes clear that this cannot be understood without considering his deism. Semi-deists are for Hooykaas those who think of God as active only at exceptional moments in a world that is usually governed by natural laws (Hooykaas places orthodox Christians like Buckland and Sedgwick in the same category). In the end the semi-deists have, in Hooykaas’s view, basically no different conception of the relation of God and Nature than the deists. This is entirely different from what Hooykaas called the biblical view, in which God’s activity is viewed as equally present in both the miraculous and the regular course of nature. Law and miracle, natural and supernatural, are considered on the same level. This view of miracle goes back to Augustine and Calvin, and Hooykaas also observes it in, for example, Beeckman and Newton and, in the nineteenth century, in the botanist Asa Gray and the clergyman Charles Kingsley, among others. On the basis of this conviction, Kingsley could embrace Darwin’s evolutionary theory without hesitation, for he believed that “below all natural phenomena we come to a miraculous ground” (p. 217).Particular attention is paid to the Scottish stonemason-geologist and Christian Hugh Miller, apparently because Hooykaas recognized in him a “poetic mind” and a “religious intensity” that appealed to him personally. Miller’s faith was not built on natural theology but, rather, on a different way of looking at things. He was a scientist and had at the same time “a poetical view of nature.” Darwin had lost such an attitude over the course of his life, Hooykaas remarked; witness his complaint about “a lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes” (p. 224). On the last pages of the book Hooykaas criticizes Auguste Comte’s view of history, according to which a theological, a metaphysical, and a scientific “stage” would have succeeded each other. According to Hooykaas, these stages do not replace but are superposed upon each other. A purely scientific worldview cannot exist by itself, Hooykaas claimed; it will always be expanded into a “pseudo-scientific philosophy” or a “pseudo-scientific religion.” What he wants to achieve in the book, Hooykaas says in his concluding, more personal, remarks, is a critical analysis of the ways scientific theories are influenced by nonscientific factors, such as their philosophical and religious background (pp. 228–229).As a study of the role of background beliefs in the development of science, the last part of the book is in my view more successful than Hooykaas’s later Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, in which he investigates the influence of the “biblical worldview” on the origin of modern science.7 The complexity and interaction between “worldview” and “science” is more clearly treated in the first book. That means that it is also an early contribution to the field that would later take shape under the name of “science and religion.”I hope that Natural Law and Divine Miracle will also be (re)discovered outside the historiography of geology. Unfortunately, the book is no longer available from the publisher and secondhand copies are fairly pricy. If you do find a copy, however, you’ll have acquired four books for the price of one.NotesAbraham (Ab) C. Flipse is a historian of science and the university historian at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. His research focuses on the history of universities in the twentieth century and the historical relationship between science and religion. Department of History, Faculty of Humanities, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands; [email protected].1 R. Hooykaas, Natural Law and Divine Miracle: A Historical-Critical Study of the Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology, and Theology (Leiden: Brill, 1959) (hereafter references to this book will appear in the text in parentheses); and A. C. Flipse, “Against the Science-Religion Conflict: The Genesis of a Calvinist Science Faculty in the Netherlands in the Early Twentieth Century,” Annals of Science, 2008, 65:363–391.2 A. C. Flipse, “The Origins of Creationism in the Netherlands: The Evolution Debate among Twentieth-Century Dutch Neo-Calvinists,” Church History, 2012, 81:104–147; and G. J. Sizoo et al., De ouderdom der aarde (Kampen: Kok, 1951).3 On Hooykaas see, e.g., H. F. Cohen, “Eloge: Reijer Hooykaas, 1 August 1906–4 January 1994,” Isis, 1998, 89:181–184; and A. C. Flipse, “Reijer Hooykaas (1906–1994),” Studium, 2013, 6(3/4):287–291.4 Already in the mid-1970s Martin Rudwick called it a pioneering work, one that “like all good pioneer works … raised as many problems as it tackled”: Martin J. S. Rudwick, “Historical Analogies in the Geological Work of Charles Lyell,” Janus, 1977, 64:89–107, on p. 89.5 Martin J. S. Rudwick, “Essay Review: The Principle of Uniformity,” History of Science, 1962, 1:82–86, on p. 86; R. Hooykaas, The Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology, and Theology: Natural Law and Divine Miracle, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1963), p. v; and Hooykaas, Continuité et discontinuité en géologie et biologie (Paris: Seuil, 1970).6 J. M. van der Meer, “European Calvinists and the Study of Nature: Some Historical Patterns and Problems,” in Calvinism and the Making of the European Mind, ed. Gijsbert van den Brink and Harro M. Höpfl (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 101–130, esp. pp. 114–115.7 R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972). Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Isis Volume 109, Number 1March 2018 Publication of the History of Science Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/697067 © 2018 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.