## Metadata - Author: [[David Dobbs]] - Full Title: Reef Madness - Category: #books ## Highlights - For the five centuries before the Victorian era, what we now call science– the analysis of how nature works–had been known as natural philosophy, and it held strong links to theology; for many, natural philosophy was simply the study of God’s natural works. It was only in the 1800s that the word scientist was coined, for it was only then that people began to think of science as an endeavor driven by its own, particularly rigorous set of rules. ([Location 66](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002DNZGDI&location=66)) - Thus Louis Agassiz sold a view of nature that seemed at once enticingly progressive and safely devout. Like the Covariant taxonomy from which it sprang, Louis’s plan of creation seemed to push science forward without threatening prevailing religious views about the world’s genesis. He appeared to resolve the tension between science and religion that had haunted scientists since Copernicus. Here was a rigorous science that not only tolerated belief in God but actually required it. ([Location 810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B002DNZGDI&location=810))