While today we often hear it said (by me, for one) that the mixing of religion and science is best avoided, not so long ago, the intermingling of religious and early scientific thought was not only common, it was in some instances – if for no other reason than due to the conflict it inspired – productive of entirely new concepts and ways of thinking about the world. In the early modern period, one of these productive interminglings involved the Old Testament story of the world-encompassing flood as recounted in the book of Genesis.