The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms especially
the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics?
Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of design or
accident. In this book David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical
perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy and
science. Versions of what we call the creationist option were widely favored by the major
thinkers of classical antiquity including Plato whose ideas on the subject prepared the
ground for Aristotle's celebrated teleology. But Aristotle aligned himself with the
anti-creationist lobby whose most militant members-the atomists-sought to show how a world
just like ours would form inevitably by sheer accident given only the infinity of space and
matter. This stimulating study explores seven major thinkers and philosophical movements
enmeshed in the debate: Anaxagoras Empedocles Socrates Plato the atomists Aristotle and
the Stoics.
