The article deals with the issue of the socalled physico‑theology of the Early Modern age and its relationship to contemporary natural science. It serves as a background for one of the representatives of Christian natural science, Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). An outline of the concepts, characteristics and period of physicotheological thought is followed by an analysis of Mercator’s main work, Atlas, sive cosmographicae meditationes, against marked features of the physicotheological method. Although known to the world as a geographer and cartographer whose inductive methodical approach ranks him among protagonists of natural science, in particular modern geography, Mercator himself places the focal point of his activities in cosmographic texts. They are clearly marked by a teleological way of thinking. All of Mercator’s (specialist) cognitive endeavours are doxologically aimed at a praise of God’s omnipotence, wisdom and goodness.
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The article deals with the interpretation of nature in the writings of two early modern Lutheran theological thinkers, Johann Arndt and Samuel Fabricius, and this against the background of the significance of these theological concepts for an (empirical) understanding of nature, at the time an issue of ever increasing importance. The authors’ approach and reasoning are analysed in the context of the then status of nature, showing in what way and to what extent the theologians’ ideas related to the distinct trend of natural scientists to study nature not (primarily) as creation. The concluding synthesis argues for a principal difference between teleological and causal reasoning of that time, which requires a different type of cognition. This study, however, dismisses polarising thinking. What the article points out as positive is the heuristic function of these concepts on the way to scientific knowledge.
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