The World Makers

The seventeenth century witnessed the rise of many new forms of scientific research in fields as diverse as geography, geology, botany, and zoology. The "natural philosophers" of England's Royal Society, founded in 1660, were at the heart of these developments. Oxford scholar William Poole explores what intellectuals in Restoration England thought about the earth on which they stood, and their place on it. Where had it come from? What did the future hold for the earth? How could biblical events like the flood be reconciled with scientific inquiry?