Pope lived during a period of intense and varied scientific
activities — the development of the microscope, and Newton's
formulation of a theory explaining the gravitational basis of
the universe, for example — which revealed a great deal about
the nature of things: for Pope, these discoveries seemed to
provide scientific corroboration for a crucially important
concept which he expressed in various ways, but which can be
expressed as the fundamentally conservative notion that the
physical universe itself, and man's place in it, are aspects of
an orderly Divine scheme of things which, though it is too vast
for the merely human intellect to comprehend, is nevertheless
both majestic and meaningful. Pope's acceptance of this concept,
and the ways in which he managed to incorporate it into his
work, are revealing: contemporary scientific discoveries, that
is, seemed to him to provide acceptable answers to questions
which had previously been matters of religious faith or
philosophical belief. With what questions do