The Unity of Worlds and of Nature

Baden Powell (1796–1860) was a mathematician who held the Savilian Chair of Geometry at Oxford, and was also a priest in the Church of England. He was a defender of the claims of new scientific discoveries in the face of Christian orthodoxy well before Darwin published the theory of evolution, and drew a clear distinction in his thinking and writing between moral and physical phenomena, as being independent of each other and the fields of completely different study. Darwin himself wrote, in the 'Historical Sketch' at the beginning of the third edition of On the Origin of Species, 'The 'Philosophy of Creation' has been treated in a masterly manner by the Rev. Baden Powell, in his Essays on the Unity of Worlds, 1855. Nothing can be more striking than the manner in which he shows that the introduction of new species is 'a regular, not a casual phenomenon'.'