The clock metaphor’s autonomy forced theological debate over God’s intervention

Evidence

Robert Boyle, however, noted the problematical character of the clock as an autonomous machine for the image of God as a clock-maker. If the clock is truly autonomous, then once it is set in operation it will continue to do so forever and God as clockmaker will have no cause to intervene in its operation: “The world is like a rare clock such as that at Strasbourg, where all things are so skillfully contrived that the engine once being set going—all things proceed according to the artificer’s first design, and the motions … do not require the peculiar interposing of the artificer, or any intelligent agent employed by him.” By the early eighteenth century, the issue of God’s intervention and hence the exercise of his providential care in a clocklike mechanical world would come to a head in the debates between Leibniz and Newton. In England, because of the political tensions between order and freedom, the clock metaphor eventually became more convincingly articulated as a balance, symbolic of regulating the balance of power and balance of trade. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 851

Categorization

• XREF: English clock-to-balance shift mirrors the law-and-institutions course thread: constitutional metaphors tracking power balances. — connects to: The clockmaker God licensed human dominion over earth through engineering — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 849; Theologians object that subjecting God to the concept denies his creative freedom; Clocks symbolized cosmic order and governed town life before industrial use — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 843 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Theologians object that subjecting God to the concept denies his creative freedom #responds-to (0.85)
• Deism’s self-regulating world made God conceptually dispensable #expands (0.78) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 187
• Clocks symbolized cosmic order and governed town life before industrial use #qualifies (0.72) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 843