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  • Chapter 7 - The Text of Pitcairneana

  • Michael Hunter, Birkbeck College, University of London
  • Book:
    Atheists and Atheism before the Enlightenment
    Published online:
    06 July 2023
    Print publication:
    27 July 2023, pp 144-157

  • Summary

    Chapter 7 publishes the text of Pitcairneana, MS Eng 1114 in the Houghton Library, Harvard. In it, a spokesman for atheism, ‘Incredulous’, argues against ‘Credulous’, a spokesman for Christian orthodoxy, and makes various points, notably concerning the relationship between spiritual and non-spiritual bodies and the issue of motion being intrinsic to matter; he also argues in favour of the world’s being eternal rather than the result of a divine act of creation and offers a cyclical rather than progressive view of human development. The authors referred to in the dialogue include Samuel Clarke, Henry More, John Toland and Robert Hooke, while the treatise ends by invoking ‘axioms’ in an essentially Newtonian mode.