Time&Eternity

Time in the Formulation of Scientific Theory 131
comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent
and powerful Being.” 61 This being is God in the sense that it rules over
everything. The word “God” is understood relationally, 62 as Lord over servants:
“It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God.” 63
God’s duration lasts from eternity to eternity and God’s presence from
infinity to infinity; however, “he is not duration or space, but he endures
and is present.l.l.l. [H]e constitutes duration and space.” 64 God is omnipresent,
not only virtually, but also substantially. 65 God necessarily exists
forever and everywhere. All bodies move in God without suffering resistance
from the divine omnipresence. 66 From a human perspective, three attributes
should be given to God, namely, “dominion, providence, and final
causes.” 67 Should God also therefore be identified as the cause of the gravity
that determines the phenomena of heaven and earth? Newton expresses
himself cautiously on this matter. Up to this point, he says that he has not
been able to derive the causes of the properties of gravity empirically, and he
rejects hypotheses. Here, one finds the sentence that is often cited out of
context: “Hypotheses non fingo.” (I do not manufacture hypotheses). 68
Newton had already expressed the same thoughts towards the end of
Query 28 in Opticks, where he described the main task of natural philosophy
as being “to argue from Phenomena without feigning Hypotheses, and
to deduce Causes from Effects, till we come to the very first Cause, which
certainly is not mechanical .l.l.” 69 Even if natural philosophy does not provide
direct access to this first cause, it does lead to close proximity and is
therefore quite valuable. The consideration of natural phenomena suggests
that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite
Space, as it were in his Sensory, sees the things themselves intimately, and throughly
[sic] perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate Presence
to himself: Of which things the Images only carried through the Organs of Sense
into our little Sensoriums, are there seen and beheld by that which in us perceives
and thinks. 70
There is a similar reflection at the end of Query 31. In a clear allusion to
the biblical story of creation, Newton considers it to be probable that God
“in the beginning form’d Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable
Particles, .l.l. no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself
made one in the first Creation.” 71 These particles can indeed be combined
into new shapes, but their stability is the basis for all continuity of natural
phenomena. The particles are controlled by forces of natural laws, thanks to
which the world is able to maintain itself, with the exception of a few irregularities
that can increase “till this system wants a reformation.” 72 God can