Well, did we know THIS? We knew his ancestor wrote a famous Chemistry text...

[Monte Davis]

A bit of Googling tells me that Butler's *Analogy of Religion, Natural and
Revealed* (1736) explored the argument from design that today is most often
identified with William Paley's "watchmaker" version of 1802: if you find a
watch on the beach, all its parts intricately cooperating, it's only
reasonable to posit a purposeful watchmaker. Still central in
creationist/"intelligent design" thinking today, whether explicitly cited
or updated to "what are the chances a tornado blowing through a junkyard
would assemble a 747?"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Butler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Theology_or_Evidences_of_the_Existence_and_Attributes_of_the_Deity

I think I've remarked before that given Pynchon's many uses of many
sciences, it's interesting how *little* there is about evolution or modern
biology -- which have certainly been woven into ideologies (e.g. social
Darwinism, "scientific" racism, and eugenics) as much as, say, control
theory and the psychologies of Freud, Pavlov, and Watson are woven into GR.
There will be glints, though (GR 5):

Now there grows among all the rooms, replacing the night’s old smoke,
alcohol and sweat, the fragile, musaceous odor of Breakfast: flowery,
permeating, surprising, more than the color of winter sunlight, taking over
not so much through any brute pungency or volume as by the high intricacy
to the weaving of its molecules, sharing the conjuror’s secret by
which—though it is not often Death is told so clearly to fuck off—the
living genetic chains prove even labyrinthine enough to preserve some human
face down ten or twenty generations . . .

On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 7:20 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> *Bishop Butler, a religious philosopher for all time : a sketch of his
> life with an examination of the Analogy*
> <https://www.worldcat.org/title/bishop-butler-a-religious-philosopher-for-all-time-a-sketch-of-his-life-with-an-examination-of-the-analogy/oclc/7373798&referer=brief_results>
> by Thomas Ruggles Pynchon
>
> *Trinity College, May 15th, 1865. : Dear Sir: The inauguration of the Rev.
> Dr. Kerfoot to the presidency of Trinity College, will take place on
> Wednesday of commencement week ...*
> <https://www.worldcat.org/title/trinity-college-may-15th-1865-dear-sir-the-inauguration-of-the-rev-dr-kerfoot-to-the-presidency-of-trinity-college-will-take-place-on-wednesday-of-commencement-week/oclc/437986412&referer=brief_results>
> by Thomas Ruggles Pynchon; Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.)
>
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