Newton, the Lord God of Israel and Knowledge of Nature

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, the triumvirate of W.E.H. Lecky, John W. Draper, and Andrew D. White eagerly cataloged an all out “warfare” between modern science and religion, a “conflict” in which science “rose” and religion, generally categorized as superstitious and irrational, “fell.”¹ Today such Whiggish historiography is out of fashion given our inability to ignore the impact of the design argument and our ever widening understanding of the role religion played in the thinking of such private men as, for example, Isaac Newton. Basil Willey speaks for the majority of twentieth century historians when he writes of the “holy alliance between science and religion” in eighteenth century England.²