Newton Left Nothing For God To Do? w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson

The scary part of that timeframe was that the church thought they held all the knowledge of the human race. They didn't like being questioned, and Newton was fortunate to have a benefactor who would allow his methods. This created an enormous opportunity for all scientists to thrive.

Thinkers throughout history have been ostracized for thinking outside the box. I honestly think that Rome might have been the most open to thought and science. Even now, scientists claim that science is settled. Narcissistic nonsense, from wherever it comes. Science is all about questioning, and if you are either a narcissist or a coward, you don't want your findings debunked in your lifetime. That's not science.

Neil is a very smart guy but and he rightly attributes the fascinating equations of classical physics to Newton and that many jumped to the illogical conclusion that Newton had left nothing for God to do. But Newton and Gottfried Leibniz who independently developed the mathematical calculus saw their work as explaining relationships only. They were "merely" describing what they observed, which is all that scientists do. An area of common ground between Newton and Leibniz, and likely the stablest, was their shared belief in the existence of a single God whom they believed to be evident in the physical world. Their disagreements seem, to some degree, to have resulted from a sort of conceptual inertia; one that prevented each from grasping the unity of essences in God. And although Newton, perhaps more so than Leibniz, took care to avoid speculating about mathematical physics, each speculated quite freely about metaphysics. From Newton’s vantage point, divine will took priority over divine intelligence; but for Leibniz, divine intellect was of primary importance.

Very interesting.