Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Newton and Religion
After reading the Galileo trial, I cant help but think about how Newton's theories affected religion. Specifically, I think that the way that he is able to describe the world around him using calculus says something very definite about the order of the universe. But what is striking is not just that he does this, but that his explanations seem to leave room for God working in the world. He describes at length centripetal force, but he does not define a center of the force, or what is causing the force. We don't know yet how these forces are created. Is it the impetus of God? Or does this calculated description of the world leave no room for divine action in it?
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I was also thinking about Newton in relation to religion, especially in light of our treatment of Galileo's contributions to physics. Reading the chapter on Newton in Cohen I thought I would point to another way that Newton saw God as fitting into his system of universal gravitation. I also wanted to say that Newton seems pretty devoutly religious and his inclusion of God seems to be sincere. Perhaps his ideas of absolute space and time are something that only God has access to. From Cohen: "Newton once used this argument to prove the existence of God. If the planets had not received a push to give them an inertial (or tangential) component of motion, he said, the solar attractive force would not draw them into an orbit but instead would move each planet in a straight line toward the sun itself" (p.160).
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