Beringer, etc.
Ted Davis (TDavis@mcis.messiah.edu)
Mon, 26 Oct 1998 09:28:45 -0400
I just returned from the HSS meeting, where I heard Martin Rudwick give the
endowed HSS lecture, so it is ironic to find in my box this morning a series
of messages commenting/inquiring on Beringer. The book mentioned already,
from Univ of California Press, is indeed the one Glenn needs to see: it has
extensive notes in addition to a translationn of Beringer's treatise.
Overall, 17th and 18th century naturalists were hesitant to affirm the
organic origin of fossils for several reasons, incl. their belief that God
would not allow extinction of the things he had made and pronounced "good".
Indeed, the "modern" belief in the value of species isn't modern, it is
actually Greek. Aristotle and Plato endorsed it; see Lovejoy's Great Chain
of Beings. (The Beringer text does not detail this aspect.) It was the
diluvialists, however, who pushed for an organic origin, as evidence for the
biblical flood.
Ted Davis