Time&Eternity

notes to chapter 3 283
37. Newton, Mathematical Principles, 17: “.l.l. partly from the forces, which are the
causes and effects of the true motions.”
38. Cf. Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, 182 (end of Query 31).
39. The close connection between theology and science is also emphasized by Brooke
in Science and Religion, 7, 12, 18, and 144ff. For a brief description of Newton’s works and
theological world of ideas, see Petry, “Newton, Isaac,” 425ff. For a detailed biography, see
Westfall, Never at Rest; on Newton’s theological studies, see esp. 309–34.
40. For insight into the intellectual climate in England between 1640 and 1700—particularly
the “Cambridge Platonists” and their disciples or epigones, the Latitudinarians—
see Kroll, Ashcraft, and Zagorin, Philosophy, Science, and Religion.
41. Newton, Mathematical Principles, 15f. (example of a body in motion on a sailing
ship); Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations, 255.
42. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations, 256f.
43. Ibid., 258.
44. Ibid., 261.
45. In his essay of 1967, which attracted attention at the time, the philosopher and historian
Lynn White Jr. made the Christian understanding of nature—in terms of the dominium
terrae—responsible for the ecological crisis. The reception and criticism of White’s
thesis stimulated the development of ecological theology; see Hübner, Der Dialog zwischen
Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, 361ff. On this topic, cf. also Krolzik, Umweltkrise; Merchant,
The Death of Nature, and Bergmann, Geist, der Natur befreit.
46. Brooke, Science and Religion, 159.
47. Ibid., 7, 144–51, etc.
48. Ibid., 12. Koyré feels some discord with this idea (From the Closed World, 1ff.). He
maintains that, over the course of the seventeenth century, the conception of the cosmos
(the world as a finite, closed, and hierarchically structured totality) was replaced by the
idea of an unlimited and even infinite universe determined by the identity of its components
and laws, whereby all of these elements were on the same ontological level. As a result,
he claimed, a separation between the world of values and the world of facts took
place, transcendental goals were replaced by immanent ones, and the emphasis shifted
from theory to practice, from the vita contemplativa to the vita activa.
49. Brooke, Science and Religion, 144f.
50. Ibid., 118.
51. Ibid., 160.
52. Westfall, Never at Rest, 311ff.; and Petry, “Newton, Isaac,” 427.
53. Newton certainly used traditional descriptive titles for Christ over and over in his
writings, but “[m]it Christus, dem Erlöser von Sünde und Tod, dem Heilbringer, hat
Newton offenbar nichts anfangen können” (evidently Newton did not know what to do
with Christ, the Redeemer from sin and death, the Savior), Buchholtz, Isaac Newton als
Theologe, 53.
54. Brooke, Science and Religion, 146.
55. Ibid., 149.
56. Ibid., 137, 19.
57. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations, 261.
58. Ibid., 262.
59. Ibid., 262f.
60. An example of the attempt to understand Newton in light of his theology can be
found in Achtner, Physik, Mystik und Christentum, 51–72. Achtner identifies the influence
of the Platonizing church fathers, on the one hand, and a biblical theism, on the other
hand, as the philosophical and theological background for Newton’s natural philosophy.