William Paley et la théologie naturelle – interpréter le vivant à la fi n du XVIII ème siècle

Abstract

The natural Theology, which tries, by the reason and the «reading» of the book of nature, to demonstrate the existence of God, reaches its height in the 18th-century before disappearing in the second half of the 19th-century. At this time it wasn't able anymore to face its own methodological problems and to contentedly fit the new Darwinian Paradigm. In an age of the very beginning of biology, natural theology is not only an attempt of translating the scientific language into an apologetic discourse, but also a comprehensive system of understanding as well as an explanation of the living world and its complexity. After a short introduction contextualizing the relations between faith and science, we shall sketch an Interpretation of the living nature, given by William Paley at the turn of the 18th-century. We shall particularly see that for him, the book of nature confirms the Bible through its observation and study, and that the author of the first is nobody else than the instigator of the second: a necessary «Inventor», prescient, but also good, almighty, omniscient