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by _xhok 3447 days ago
That's a very interesting insight, but isn't it also true that Newton decidedly left theology out of calculus and mechanics? What distinguished his three laws was that he chose not to explain, for example, the motion of something by its "ferver" or "jubilance," as his predecessors did. People at the time may not have treated the fields so separately, but Newton did.

Edit: I just ran the quote through Google Translate. Still, merely casting God as being ultimately responsible is a step forward from interweaving theology throughout your physical theories.

1 comments

Um. No, he definitely didn't leave theology out of his mathematics. See, for instance:

http://inters.org/Newton-Scholium-Principia-Mathematica

"This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all: And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God Pantokrator,or Universal Ruler...." and, like, this stuff is all over the place in the Principia. You cannot separate Newton the theologian from Newton the mathematician from Newton the physicist.

Oops, I didn't know that!