Theodicy and nature's economy / Antonello La Vergata.
Abstract:
Ever since the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, the ideas of the abundance, variety and necessary imperfections of created things played an important role in vindications of God's design, physico-theologies and theodicies. The views of naturalists writing on nature's economy and the balance of species through destruction cannot be separated from those of philosophers and natural theologians discussing the problem of evil. The economy of nature was, properly speaking, the moral economy of nature. The paper also deals with the bearing of these ideas on early studies of quantitative demography, and, in particular, on the natural theology that characterizes the first edition of Malthus' Essay on the principle of population
Nuncius A. 3, fasc. 1 (1988), p. 139-152