his works, because all creatures and things and ideas flow from and back to one divine source, [and] there is an unlimited network of correspondences binding together the physical and the spiritual, the earthly and the human and the celestial. Everything, concrete or abstract, is related, directly or by analogy, to everything else. The physical world, with its rivers and grass, is reflected in the microcosm, man, with his veins and hair. The basic unity of all things was presupposed (Bush, 1950, p. 11).
Elsewhere, Bush notes the "general belief in the divine unity of all creation, natural objects were not seen so much in themselves but as emblems or allegories of moral, religious, and metaphysical truth" (Bush, 1950, p. 11). This is a point to which we shall return, for the reason that such beliefs were to be resurrected in the debate over Darwinian theory.
The material, unavoidable shift in the perception of natural objects and phenomena that occurred with the advent of the work of Galileo and Kepler in the early seventeenth century, and culminated with Newton, "radically altered man's view of his position in the universe. No longer was he the centre of things, the uniquely chosen manifestation of God. The telescope freed man to look at himself and the world about him. Since nothing was certain any more, and the 'new philosophy called all in doubt,' everything could and should be investigated" (Burke, 1978, p. 136). Sagan observes that although Kepler never quite dissociated himself from Christian mysticism and the orthodox Ptolemaic conception of the universe, he sought "to understand the motions of the planets, to seek a harmony in the heavens" (Sagan, 1980, p. 67) based on scientific explanations and observations rather than on the heritage of faith. Sagan also says that Kepler's work directly influenced Newton, whose achievement was to quantify the scientific theories that had previously arisen from direct observa...