"When Darwin returned to Britain from the Beagle voyage in 1836, the most talked-about scientific books were the Bridgewater Treatises. This series of eight books was funded by a bequest of the last Earl of Bridgewater, and they were authored by leading men of science, appointed by the President of the Royal Society, and intended to explore "the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." Securing public attention beyond all expectations, the series gave Darwin's generation a range of approaches to one of the great questions of the age: how to incorporate the newly emerging disciplinary sciences into Britain's overwhelmingly Christian culture. Drawing on a wealth of archival and published sources, including many unexplored by historians, Jonathan R. Topham examines how and to what extent the series contributed to a sense of congruence between Christianity and the sciences in the generation before the infamous Victorian "conflict between science and religion." He does so by drawing on the distinctive insights of book history, using close attention to the production, circulation, and use of the books to open up new perspectives not only on aspects of early Victorian science but also on the whole subject of science and religion. Its innovative focus on practices of authorship, publishing, and reading helps us to understand the everyday considerations and activities through which the religious culture of early Victorian science was fashioned. And in doing so, Reading the Book of Nature powerfully reimagines the world in which a young Charles Darwin learned how to think about the implications of his theory"--

Explores the changing ways in which Pacific Islanders have been seen and represented by outsiders over the last 200 years. The Pacific Islands has been a testing ground for various Western ideas and ideologies and the author looks at this long intellectual history as an artifact of the Western imagination. Of particular concern is to see how concepts of nature, culture and history have defined Western perceptions of Pacific Islanders.

In the history of Western thought, men have persistently asked three questions concerning the habitable earth and their relationships toit. From the time of the Greeks to our own, answers to these questions have been and are being given so frequently and so continually that we may restate them in the form of general ideas.