Endless Things: Jonathan Edwards, Puritanism, and the Art of the Infinite

FAIN: FT-279268-21

Rachel Trocchio
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

Research and writing to complete one chapter of a book examining various modes of thinking employed in developing American Puritan theology.

I apply for an NEH grant to complete research for the last chapter of my first manuscript, a study on Puritanism and cognition. Tracing how 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards plied the new science of infinity to explain religious “awakening,” this chapter revises our understanding of the circumstances and stakes of two disparate historical moments: the mass religious revivals in the Connecticut River Valley known as the Great Awakening (1730s-1740s), and the mathematical advancements that peaked with the introduction of calculus. “Jonathan Edwards, Puritanism, and the Art of the Infinite” argues that calculus gave Edwards a language for apprehending the heart of evangelical conversion: the experience of instantaneous change over time. I now solicit support for a final research trip to Connecticut archives, in order to discover whether application of the infinite was an art unique to Edwards.