The Hydrologic Cycle and the Wisdom of God: A Theme in Geoteleology

This is the first volume of a new series of research publications in geography which is published for the Department of Geography, University of Toronto. The Hydrologic Cycle and the Wisdom of God traces the development of the idea of the hydrologic cycle in the context of natural theology. The notion that "all creation exhibits the wisdom of the Creator" was once a widely held belief in the Western world. However, unlike stars and biological organisms, the physical features of the earth, with their evident lack of pattern, were difficult to reconcile with God’s wisdom until scholars and scientists, at the end of the seventeenth century, found a satisfactory solution in the concept of the hydrologic cycle. The concept served to explain the earth’s features so well that in the process it explained away one of them—the great deserts. This work shows the growth and eventual decay of a concept which attempts to relate the broad range of seemingly little-connected phenomena that physical geographers, in their several capacities, are still committed to study. It will be of interest to physical geographers and all scholars who are concerned with historical attitudes towards man’s physical environment.

(University of Toronto Department of Geography Publications No. 1)