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HIDDEN behind the title, not one that sends my blood racing or my wallet gaping, is a book of sheer pleasure. Beautifully written and epigrammatic, it is full of characters of talent, disputatious skill and wit. The “watch” represents William Paley’s famous argument for the existence of God: if you stumbled on a watch, abandoned on heathland in Paley’s example, and investigated its moving parts and what they did in measuring time and date, you would reasonably conclude that someone must have made it.

Before Darwin, some clerics were also scientists. Darwin himself flirted with the idea of becoming a clergyman. These men engaged in what was termed natural theology. Their enquiries were tributes to creation, based on the belief that the Earth was 6000 years old and immutable.

But there were also puzzles. Discoveries made in the 18th century, especially in geology, appeared to show the Earth was far older and had always been changing, and that the biblical story of creation was suspect. Thomson ranges over the strenuous attempts of many thinkers to reconcile the results of observation and experiment with the story of Genesis and the growing scepticism of other philosophers, such as David Hume, in brilliant style.

The upheaval is fascinating and the contemporary language of the antagonists is a delight. The elegant line portraits of these characters add to the book’s attractions. The arguments rage on: creationists continue to cite Paley today.