Re: I.D. & Isaac Newton

Much can be said about Newton and design, and I haven't either the time or
the space to say most of it here. I will however point out, at the risk of
repeating some things I've sometimes said in the past, that Newton did not
believe the clockwork model of the universe that he is so often wrongly
associated with. He expressly rejected this in the Leibniz-Clarke
correspondence--well, OK, his protege Samuel Clarke rejected it on Newton's
behalf, but manuscript evidence shows unambiguously that Clarke served
simply as Newton's mouthpiece on this particular point (as on many others
also).

In fact, Newton believed that God is active always, at all times and places
throughout the universe. During the years he was writing his Principia
(1684-7), it is likely that he conceived of gravitation as something caused
*directly* by God, without intermediate agency (action at a distance has
always given physicists hesitation, then and since), as God literally moves
the planets through God's own sensorium (which we call "space"). This
happens in a lawlike manner b/c of God's own regularity, but there is no
secondary causation: the law is not some entity in and of itself, and bodies
do not inherently attract one another (see Newton's famous letters to
Bentley from 1692 on this latter point). Rather, God moves things around
and we simply do our best to describe how they move.

In the General Scholium to the Principia, Newton covertly alludes to these
views, which he was most reluctant to discuss openly since he feared that if
too much of his (anti-Trinitarian) theology were to become known, he would
lose his position at Cambridge and in society. The clearest (such as it is)
allusion to it, IMO, is his statement about the cause of gravitation
reaching to the centers of bodies--he's speaking here about God's
omnipresence, not some material agency. Compare this to other statements
about God's dominion and sensorium, and you'll start to get the picture.

For more on aspects of his theology of nature, see my essay "Newton's
Rejection of the Newtonian World View," in Science & Christian Belief and
other places.

Ted
Received on Thu May 5 11:29:37 2005