Hawley, John C., S. J. "Charles Kingsley and
the Book of Nature," Anglican and Episcopal History Vol. 61, No.
4 (December 1991): 461-479.
Hawley examines Kingsley as natural theologian and his views on the
“meaning” of nature. He discusses Kingsley’s attempt to bridge the
ever widening gap between the claims of science and religion and to establish
a vocabulary that would be intelligible to and supportive of both fields.
In this respect he provides a comparison of Kingsley’s views on the theological
beliefs of and the search for meaning in Arnold, Huxley, and Darwin.
Kingsley’s aim, according to Hawley, “was to circumvent fears and cynicism,
and to move his readers into a world of scientific endeavor and Christian
cooperation. In choosing the commitment of faith over strict empiricism
he became for many, in an age of increasing dichotomy between the realms
of science and religion, a model of a Christian who hoped that the truths
of both would ultimately coalesce” (479).
Nature; Science;
Religion;
Natural
Theology; Arnold, Matthew; Huxley;
Darwin.
Manlove, C. N. “Charles Kingsley
(1819-75) and The Water-Babies,” in his Modern Fantasy: Five
Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975): 13-54.
Manlove relates this examination of the major
themes, theories, and stylistic devices of The Water-Babies to Kingsley's
wider views. He contends that we should be tentative about categorically
assigning a specific idea to Kingsley. The one constant is the protean
nature, the multiplicity, the diversity, the volatility, and uncertainty
of his thought. Kingsley's many contradictions have "a natural home" in
The
Water-Babies (17). Manlove believes that the split in Kingsley's
depiction of Tom's character not only lies at the root of the difficulties
in The Water-Babies and Kingsley's other works but also mirrors
the manifest divisions in Kingsley's own personality and thought, for example
the divide between Kingsley the materialist and the mystic, between Kingsley
as scientist and Christian. Manlove concludes that "Kingsley was not more
of a materialist than a mystic: rather he was each with divided faculties.
About the only thing that unites the dualism in himself and his work is
his vigour" (53).
The Water-Babies;
Dualism
in Kingsley; Natural Theology.
Muller, Charles H. “Spiritual Evolution and Muscular
Theology: Lessons from Kingsley’s Natural Theology,” Studies in English
Vol. 15 (March 1986): 24-34.
Kingsley’s understanding of the relationship between science and religion
is quite straightforward according to Muller. The natural world for
Kingsley everywhere reveals the work of God; everything physical is but
a reflection of the Eternal Realities. The work of the scientist
is essentially a glorification of the Creator. “As a religious thinker,
Kingsley was deductive and intuitive in his logic; as a scientific thinker,
he was inductive, seeing the infinite in the finite, or maxima in minimis,
as exemplified by the wonders of creation in so lowly a creature as the
spider-crab. In seeing the divine mirrored in a pebble or spore,
however, he was combining a scientific and religious vision of life –
uniting the function of the microscope and the telescope, as it were” (31).
Science; Religion;
Nature;
Natural
theology; Glaucus.
Paradis, James G. “Satire
and Science in Victorian Culture,” in Bernard Lightman (ed.) Victorian
Science in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 143-175.
Paradis points out that though Kingsley was a
strong advocate of the scientific efforts of the likes of Lyell, Darwin,
and Huxley, he also eagerly sought a post-Darwinian equivalent to natural
theology. Kingsley considered that Victorian science was inadequate
in itself as a philosophy of life and caricatured its one-sided scientific
naturalist approach in The Water-Babies.
Science; Religion;
Natural
Theology; The Water-Babies.
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