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Newton’s most famous work includes gravitation, reflection and refraction of light, laws of motion, and calculus. Importantly, he understood these topics as essentially one topic: the total rational organization of the universe. He explained them mainly a book entitled “Principia Mathematica” that he published in 1687, from which are the following excerpts:

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful . And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One, especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun and from every system light passes into all the other systems; and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other, he has placed those systems at immense distances from one another.

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all … The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect … And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things and knows all things that are or can be done. He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever and is everywhere present; and, by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and nowhere … God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent … In him are all things contained and moved, yet neither affects the other; God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies, bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. Everyone agrees that the Supreme God exists necessarily, and by the same necessity he exists always and everywhere … As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen nor heard nor touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance anything is we know not. In bodies we see only their figures and colors, we hear

Isaac Newton – page 1 only the sounds, we touch only their outward surfaces, we smell only the smells and taste only the savors, but their inward substances are not to be known either by our senses or by any reflex act of our minds; much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things and final causes; we admire him for his perfections, but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion, for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things, which we find suited to different times and places, could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing … All our notions of God are taken from the ways of mankind by a certain similitude, which, though not perfect, has some likeness, however. And thus much concerning God, to discourse of whom from the appearances of things does certainly belong to a natural .

Newton, who taught at Cambridge, wrote letters to, and received them from, Richard Bentley, who was first at Cambridge, and later at Oxford. Newton offers additional explanation of his physics to Bentley, in particular the gravitational effect:

But how matter should divide itself into two sorts, and that part of it which is fit to compose a shining body should fall down into one mass and make a sun and the rest which is fit to compose an opaque body should coalesce, not into one great body, like the shining matter, but into many little ones; or if the sun at first were an opaque body like the planets or the planets lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body whilst all they continue opaque, or all they be changed into opaque bodies whilst he remains unchanged, I do not think explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary Agent.

… Why there is one body in our system qualified to give light and heat to the rest, I know no reason but because the Author of the system thought it convenient; and why there is but one body of this kind, I know no reason but because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest. For the Cartesian hypothesis of suns losing their light and then turning into comets, and comets into planets, can have no place in my system and plainly erroneous … the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent … there is no natural cause which could determine all the planets, both primary and secondary, to move the same way and in the same plane, without

Isaac Newton – page 2 any considerable variation; this must have been the effect of counsel … to compare and adjust all these things together, in so great a variety of bodies, argues that cause to be, not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry … And I am confirmed in this opinion by considering that the planets of Jupiter and Saturn, as they are rarer than the rest, so they are vastly greater and contain a far greater quantity of matter, and have many satellites about them; which qualifications surely arose, not from their being placed at so great a distance from the sun, but were rather the cause why the Creator placed them at great distance. For, by their gravitating powers, they disturb one another’s motions very sensibly, as I find by some late observations of Mr. Flamsteed; and had they been placed much nearer to the sun and to one another, they would, by the same powers, have caused a considerable disturbance in the whole system.

In his laboratory and office, Newton kept notebooks, in which he wrote various observations, experiments, and general conclusions. Reflecting on the uniformity of the laws of physics – that they apply to the entire universe, with the same equations applying in all situations – he commented:

Atheism … never had many professors … whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an Author? … For in God’s house (which is the universe) are many mansions, and he governs them … And by the same power by which he gave life at first to every species of animals he is able to revive the dead, and has revived Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

J.H. Tiner, a mathematician at Duke University, cites the following passages from Newton’s papers:

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done … When I look at the solar system, I see this did not happen by chance … I study the Bible daily.

Newton wrote about epistemology, i.e., about how we are able to know things. Because his new reflecting telescope was able to make more powerful observations than the previous refracting telescopes, he could make accurate observations of the motions of stars and planets, and then calculate backwards over hundreds and thousands of years. In this way, he could date events in the ancient world. Note that Newton uses Hebrew months, because he calculated that they were more astronomically accurate. These writings were published in 1733, after Newton’s death. He lists

Isaac Newton – page 3 several sources of knowledge, and then goes on to discuss the timeline of events during the Roman Empire’s domination of Jerusalem:

When a new truth was to be preached … God sent new prophets and teachers … their writings were also received and read in the synagogues of the Christians … We have Moses, the prophets, and apostles, and the words of Christ himself … the giving ear to the prophets is a fundamental character of the true church … The authority of emperors, kings, and princes, is human. The authority of councils, synods, bishops, and presbyters, is human. The authority of the prophets is divine … I take it for granted that the Passion was on Friday the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan, the great feast of the Passover on Saturday the fifteenth day of Nisan, and the Resurrection on the day following … Tiberius in the beginning of his reign made Valerius Gratus the governor of Judea, and after eleven years, substituted Pontius Pilate, who governed ten years. Then Vitellius, newly made governor of Syria, deprived him of his honor … Pilate was deposed before the Passover A.D. 36, and by consequence the Passion of Christ was before that Passover, for he suffered not under Vitellius, nor under Vitellius and Pilate together, but under Pilate alone.

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