closed by the scientists of the Age of Reason. Before the Enlightenment and scientific revolutions virtually everyone, Catholic and Protestant, believed God created and controls the universe and that supernatural powers and forces keep it going. By the time of Laplace’s publication of Méchanique céleste (often translated “Cosmology”) in several volumes from 1799 to 1805, many devoutly religious men and women believed science can explain much but could not by itself explain everything about the world