Theo(geo)logy. Planetary historicity and natural antiquities in the Baroque
Keywords:
Baroque, Deep Time, Earth History, Fossils, FloodAbstract
The article aims to problematize the relationship between theology and geology in the speculative natural philosophy of the seventeenth century. In particular, the article investigates the philosophical impact of the emergence of the deep time of the Earth and the appearance of material ruins –fossils– that transformed the way of conceiving planetary historicity. Therefore, one of the contributions consists of showing how the geological revolution that took place in the Baroque transformed the metaphysics of human time by modifying the terrestrial scales: a change from thousands of years according to the biblical theory of time to billions of years from the emergence of geology. The conjecture being tested is the epistemological continuity between theology and natural science in the Seventeenth Century, as some theologians and philosophers chose as a philosophical enterprise to explain empirically some assumptions of Christian Theology, whose ultimate aim is to prove how God proceeds according to natural causes. The novelty of the article, then, is to explain the emergence of geology from the philosophical theories and theological arguments of some baroque thinkers, in particular the Anglican theologian Thomas Brunet and the German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher.
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