Bishop John Wilkins, F.R.S. (1614-72): Analogies of Thought-Style in the Protestant Reformation and Early Modern Science

John Wilkins (1614-72) is remembered as a principal founder both of the first enduring scientific society, the Royal Society of London, and of a revelation-free natural religion with a utilitarian ethic, designed to accommodate a broad range of Protestant opinion in a ‘latitudinarian’ Church of England. The projects promoted by Wilkins and his contemporaries formed the later stages of a revolution in European cosmology, with linked theological and scientific elements, culminating in the Newtonian world system. The three-tier Universe of the Middle Ages, with its graded ranks of creatures ruled by hierarchies of spirit-governors, underwent a transformation (initiated by medieval precursors of Copernicus and the Protestant Reformers) into a two-tier cosmos, where material entities formed an ordered array of self-running clockwork engines, wound up at their creation, whereas the spiritual domain came to be represented by a detached all-seeing Power, whose omnipotence was manifest in the awesome design perfected in the creation.