| Popis: |
This chapter analyses the rise of the biblical Flood to an ideological pillar of European imperialism, since it guaranteed both the universality of the Christian Revelation and the common origin of humankind from the same sinful couple. Once a mainly moral and theological story that natural philosophy could bypass entirely, the Noetic catastrophe solidified in the course of the seventeenth century into a major physical event that must have left considerable traces of its passage. As the historical truth of the Revelation increasingly depended on natural evidence for the Noachian Flood and its chronology, authors who defended an ancient Earth and rejected the diluvial origin of fossils began to find themselves associated with materialism and irreligion. |
