| Acknowledgements | 9 |
| Authors' Foreword | 15 |
| Introduction: The Problem Of Historical Inference | 17 |
| 1 MEMORIES AND MYTHS | 23 |
| Chronicles and Genealogies | 24 |
| Myths and Legend | 29 |
| 2 SCIENCE WITHOUT HISTORY | 33 |
| Historical Cosmology in Milctos | 33 |
| The Divorce of History from Philosophy | 38 |
| Plato's Creator-Craftsman | 42 |
| Aristotle's Eternal Universe | 44 |
| Stoics and Epicureans | 46 |
| The Limits of the Classical World-Picture | 49 |
| The Beginnings of Natural History | 50 |
| 3 THE AUTHORITY OF THE SCRIPTURES | 55 |
| Christianity and History | 55 |
| Fundamentalism and Allegory | 57 |
| The New Chronology | 59 |
| The Mediaeval World-Allegory | 65 |
| The Dream of the Millennium | 70 |
| 4 THE REVIVAL OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY | 74 |
| The Fall of thc World | 75 |
| Descartes' Mathematical Philosophy | 77 |
| The Theological Consequences of Cartesianism | 83 |
| The Blueprints of Creation | 87 |
| The Great Chain of Being | 96 |
| The EighteenthCentury Commonplaces | 101 |
| 5 THE REVIVAL OF CIVIL HISTORY | 103 |
| The Birth of Historical Criticism | 103 |
| Decay or Progress? | 106 |
| The Customs of the Ages | 110 |
| Human Nature and Social Change | 113 |
| The Myth of the Social Contract | 118 |
| Intimations of Progress | 121 |
| 6 TIME'S CREATIVE HAND | 125 |
| Vico: the Mendel of History | 125 |
| Kant and Cosmic Evolution | 129 |
| Herder and the Development of Nature | 135 |
| 7 THE EARTH ACQUIRES A HISTORY | 141 |
| The Epochs of Nature | 142 |
| The Fact of Geological Change | 150 |
| The Agents of Geological Change | 152 |
| The Perspective of Indefinite Time | 155 |
| The Historical Time-Barrier is Broken | 159 |
| 8 THE BACKGROUND TO DARWIN | 171 |
| Are There Fixed Species in Nature? | 172 |
| The Temporal Sequence of Forms | 177 |
| The Problem of Inheritance | 184 |
| The Final Impasse | 189 |
| 9 LIFE ACQUIRES A GENEALOGY | 197 |
| Darwin Recognizes His Problem | 199 |
| The Creation of the 'Origin' | 204 |
| The Structure of the 'Origin' | 206 |
| The Scientific Objections | 212 |
| Darwinism and Natural Theology | 224 |
| 10 HISTORY AND THE HUMAN SCIENCES | 232 |
| The Recognition of Progressive Change | 233 |
| Critical History and its Implications | 235 |
| The Evolution of Humanity | 238 |
| The Flux of Nature | 244 |
| 11 TIME AND THE PHYSICAL WORLD | 247 |
| The Evolution of Stars and Chemical Elements | 250 |
| Astronomy and the Problem of Creation | 254 |
| Truth, Hypothesis or Myth? | 257 |
| Are the Laws of Nature Changing? | 263 |
| EPILOGUE: NATURE AND HISTORY | 266 |
| The Evolution of Ideas | 269 |
| Index | 273 |