Abstract

To understand the radical transformations brought about by modern science concerning the order of nature, it is necessary first to mention the significance of the traditional sciences of the cosmos and the fact that they shared, in contrast to modern science, the same universe of discourse with the religion or religions of the civilization in whose bosom they were cultivated. In fact, modern science not only eclipsed the religious and traditional philosophical understanding of the order of nature in the West, but it also all but destroyed the traditional sciences. The divorce of the meaning of order in nature from its traditional sense and the substitution for it of laws governing the running of a machine—an idea so central to the rise of the Scientific Revolution and the eclipse of the traditional religious understanding of nature—is closely related to the modern idea of “laws of nature” that appeared at this time and became widely held in the 17th century.