Cambridge in the Age of the Enlightenment: Science, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 2002 M07 18 - 372 pages
This book attempts to defend the use of the term 'English Enlightenment' by using late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Cambridge as an illustration of the widespread diffusion of some of the chief characteristics of the Enlightenment within the Church of England and the English 'Establishment' more generally. It also seeks to provide a social context for the dissemination of such ideas by indicating how the political and ecclesiastical consequences of such events as the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution and the French Revolution helped either to facilitate or to impede that linkage between Anglicanism and science which is sometimes referred to as 'the holy alliance'. In summary, the book argues that in the period 1660-88 there was little political or ecclesiastical encouragement for such an alliance while the period 1688-1760 was, by contrast, its heyday.
 

Contents

Restoration religion and reaction
27
Cambridge and the latitudemen
40
Restoration Cambridge and the new philosophy
52
THE HOLY ALLIANCE PROCLAIMED 16891768
69
The creation and consolidation of whig Cambridge
71
The clash of creeds
115
Newtonian natural philosophy established
142
THE HOLY ALLIANCE QUESTIONED 17691800
185
The eclipse of whig Cambridge
187
The revival of revealed theology
237
Mathematics ascendant
270
Epilogue
300
Bibliography
309
Index
335
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information