Allen, I won't bore you with quotes either. Before I get ready to head off to synagogue, I'll just say that I gave you a few key sources. Read Nicolson, Koyre, and Koestler for starters. Of course, you can go to the correspondence of Leibnitz, Newton, Hobbs, Tindal, Clark, Hooke, Haley, Boyle, etc. You'll see that things were not as simple and neat, cut and dry, or either/or as some have made it seem. When Newton said he was standing on the shoulders of giants, from the classical Greeks to his contemporaries, he knew from whence he spoke. He didn't ponder that supposed falling apple out of the blue because he had nothing else to do. The quest to find out why things, from the cockroach to man to the heavenly bodies, moved, what did the falling apple had in common with the orbiting planters was at the center of all pondering of the time. It was, and still is, critical in the micro/macro view of the universe and man's place in it. And, not all these classical, hellenistic, medieval, renaissance, and reformation giants agreed with each other, and certainly he disagreed with many of his contemporary giants, especially over the perceived implications of both his mathematical and biblical work. Ultimately, Newton may have gotten all the PR as expressed in Alexander Pope's eulogy, but it was the inference Leibnitz' drew from Newton's laws of a mechanical universe devoid of Divine involvement and intervention that went far beyond where Newton was willing to go that Voltaire really promoted into what I'll call the 18th century "Enlightenment Creed." It wasn't that Newton was or became irreligious. He wasn't and did not. It was that he rejected ecclesiastic structure and authority, the divinity of Jesus, the Trinitarian Doctrine, biblical infallibility, papal supremacy, maybe immortality. He may have toyed with Arianism, latitudinalism, occultism, millennialism, soscinianism, Cartesian dualism, English deism (unlike French deism, English deism was not anti-religious, agnostic, or atheistic), nicodemism, and a lot of other ideas that were swirling about.
Make it a good day -Louis- Louis Schmier http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org Department of History http://www.therandomthoughts.com Valdosta State University Valdosta, Georgia 31698 /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ (O) 229-333-5947 /^\\/ \/ \ /\/\__ / \ / \ (C) 229-630-0821 / \/ \_ \/ / \/ /\/ / \ /\ \ //\/\/ /\ \__/__/_/\_\/ \_/__\ \ /\"If you want to climb mountains,\ /\ _ / \ don't practice on mole hills" - / \_ --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=4952 or send a blank email to leave-4952-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
