• Reef Madness opens up the world of nineteenth-century science and philosophy at a moment when the nature of scientific thought was changing, when what we call "science" (the word did not even exist) was spoken of as "natural philosophy" and was a part of theology, the study of "God's natural works." This is how what is now called science, until then based on the presence and hence the authority of God, moved toward reliance on observable phenomena as evidence of truth. At the book's center, two …Read more