Editing Charles Babbage (section)

===Natural theology===
In 1837, responding to the series of eight ''[[Bridgewater Treatises]]'', Babbage published his ''[[Ninth Bridgewater Treatise]]'', under the title ''On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation''. In this work Babbage weighed in on the side of [[uniformitarianism]] in a current debate.<ref>{{cite book|title=Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PKERMZkA9A0C&pg=PA247|year=1996|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-34481-5|page=247}}</ref> He preferred the conception of creation in which a God-given [[natural law]] dominated, removing the need for continuous "contrivance".<ref>{{cite book|author=John G. Trapani|title=Truth matters: essays in honor of Jacques Maritain|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I6S6dxBhMAIC&pg=PA109|year=2004|publisher=CUA Press|isbn=978-0-9669226-6-0|page=109}}</ref>

The book is a work of [[natural theology]], and incorporates extracts from related correspondence of Herschel with [[Charles Lyell]].<ref>Note I, in [http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/Ancillary/1838_Bridgewater_A25/1838_Bridgewater_A25.html darwin-online.org.uk, ''Babbage, Charles. 1838. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. 2d edn. London: John Murray.'']</ref> Babbage put forward the thesis that God had the omnipotence and foresight to create as a divine legislator.  In this book, Babbage dealt with relating interpretations between science and religion; on the one hand, he insisted that "there exists no fatal collision between the words of [[The Bible|Scripture]] and the facts of nature;" on the other hand, he wrote that the [[Book of Genesis]] was not meant to be read literally in relation to scientific terms. Against those who said these were in conflict, he wrote "that the contradiction they have imagined can have no real existence, and that whilst the testimony of [[Moses]] remains unimpeached, we may also be permitted to confide in the testimony of our senses."<ref>Babbage, ''[http://www.victorianweb.org/science/science_texts/bridgewater/b4.htm Ninth Bridgewater Treatise]''. Chapter V. Further View of the same Subject. The Victorian Web.</ref>

The ''Ninth Bridgewater Treatise'' was quoted extensively in ''[[Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation]]''.<ref>{{cite book|author=James A. Secord|title=Victorian Sensation: The Extraordinary Publication, Reception, and Secret Authorship of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6LL9PGRhlXYC&pg=PA107|year=2000|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-74410-0|page=107}}</ref> The parallel with Babbage's computing machines is made explicit, as allowing plausibility to the theory that [[transmutation of species]] could be pre-programmed.<ref name="Chambers1994">{{cite book|author=Robert Chambers|title=Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and Other Evolutionary Writings|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nqyVl1ji7SAC&pg=PR16|access-date=19 April 2013|date=15 August 1994|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-10073-9|pages=xvi–xvii}}</ref>

[[File:Babbage curve singular points.png|thumb|Plate from the ''Ninth Bridgewater Treatise'', showing a parametric family of [[algebraic curve]]s acquiring isolated real points]]
Jonar Ganeri, author of ''Indian Logic'', believes Babbage may have been influenced by Indian thought; one possible route would be through [[Henry Thomas Colebrooke]].<ref name="Ganeri">{{cite book|author= Jonar Ganeri|title=Indian Logic: A Reader|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t_nOiqFmxOIC&pg=PA7|year=2001|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-7007-1329-5|page=7}}</ref> Mary Everest Boole argues that Babbage was introduced to Indian thought in the 1820s by her uncle George Everest:
<blockquote>Some time about 1825, [Everest] came to England for two or three years, and made a fast and lifelong friendship with Herschel and with Babbage, who was then quite young. I would ask any fair-minded mathematician to read Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise and compare it with the works of his contemporaries in England; and then ask himself whence came the peculiar conception of the nature of miracle which underlies Babbage's ideas of Singular Points on Curves (Chap, viii) – from European Theology or Hindu Metaphysic? Oh! how the English clergy of that day hated Babbage's book!<ref name="MaryBoole">{{cite book |author=Boole, Mary Everest |chapter=Indian Thought and Western Science in the Nineteenth Century |editor1=Cobham, E.M. |editor2=Dummer, E.S. |title=Boole, Mary Everest "Collected Works" |publisher=Daniel |location=London |year=1931 |pages=947–967 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-5wyxULAKpsC}}</ref></blockquote>