 In this way Whewell suggested a view of scientific understanding which is, perhaps not surprisingly, grounded in his conception of natural theology. Since our ideas are “shadows” of the Divine Ideas, to see a law as a necessary consequence of our ideas is to see it as a consequence of the Divine Ideas exemplified in the world. Understanding involves seeing a law as being not an arbitrary “accident on the cosmic scale,” but as a necessary consequence of the ideas God used in creating the universe. Hence the more we idealize the facts, the more difficult it will be to deny God’s existence. We will come to see more and more truths as the intelligible result of intentional design. This view is related to the claim Whewell had earlier made in his Bridgewater Treatise (1833), that the more we study the laws of nature the more convinced we will be in the existence of a Divine Law-giver. (For more on Whewell’s notion of necessity, see Fisch 1985; Snyder 1994; Morrison 1997; Snyder 2006; Ducheyne 2009.)