Imagine a scene sometime in the 1750s in the depths of west Wales. This was wild country. Even a century later, George Borrow called it a ‘mountainous wilderness … a waste of russet-coloured hills, with here and there a black craggy summit’. Through this desolation rides the Reverend William Williams. As he rode, he read – and the book in his saddlebags on this occasion was William Derham's Astro-Theology, first published some twenty years earlier. Williams was a leading figure in the Methodist revolution that had been sweeping through Wales for the past two decades. Disenchanted with an Anglican Church that seemed increasingly disconnected – culturally and linguistically – from their everyday lives, and attracted by powerful and charismatic preachers like Williams himself, men and women across Wales turned to Methodism. They organized themselves into local groups worshipping in meeting houses rather than in their parish churches. Leaders like Williams usually had a number of such groups under their care, and spent much of their time on horseback, travelling between widely scattered communities to minister to their congregations. That Williams read in the saddle is well known. As shall become clear, he had certainly read Derham's book as well. It is not too much of an imaginative leap, therefore, to picture him reading about God's design of the cosmos as he rode through the Welsh hills – and it is a good image with which to begin a discussion about Wales, science and European peripheries.

想象一下1750年代某个时候在西威尔士深处的一幕。这是荒野的国家。甚至在一个世纪之后，乔治·波罗（George Borrow）都将其称为“山区荒野……浪费了褐色的山丘，到处都是黑色的崎summit山顶”。通过这次荒凉的旅程，威廉·威廉姆斯牧师。骑行时，他阅读–这次在马鞍包中放的书是威廉·德勒姆（William Derham）的天文神学，大约20年前首次出版。威廉姆斯是过去二十年来席卷威尔士的卫理公会革命中的领导人物。对一个英国国教教堂感到失望，该教会似乎在文化和语言上与日常生活越来越脱节，并受到威廉姆斯本人，威尔士各地的男人和女人等有影响力的，有超凡魅力的传教士的青睐。他们将自己组织成当地的团体，在集会场所而不是在教区教堂里敬拜。像威廉姆斯这样的领导人通常会受到许多这样的团体的照顾，他们将大部分时间都花在骑马上，在分散的社区之间旅行，为他们的会众服务。威廉姆斯在马鞍上读的书是众所周知的。显而易见，他当然也阅读了德勒姆的书。