The Unseen Universe, or Physical Speculations on a Future State

Originally published anonymously, The Unseen Universe is a bold attempt to bring scientific and religious readers together in harmony. Themselves both accomplished scientists, Steward and Tait hoped to calm those Christians who had come to see science as heretical and show scientists how they could reconcile the advances in their field with a belief in God and the immortality of the soul.

In this quest, they ask readers to consider the principle of Continuity, in which all the mechanics in nature have a cause that is also found in nature. And in following this chain of continuity backward, they inevitably come upon a prime mover, for if the universe is not eternal, then it must have been started, and this is where science and religion can share the same ground.

Readers of science and philosophy will be called to ponder the nature of the universe for themselves.


Scottish physicist BALFOUR STEWART (1828-1887) studied and wrote about the nature of radiation, meteorology, and magnetism.

Scottish physicist PETER GUTHRIE TAIT (1831-1901) is most famous for writing, with Lord Kelvin, the groundbreaking physics textbook Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).