Section 4: Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica, 1687

Section 4: Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica, 1687 /Shaping of the Modern World/Brooklyn College


[GOD AND THE UNIVERSE)

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One, especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun and from every system light passes into all the other systems; and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another.

This Being governs all things not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God" . . . or "Universal Ruler." . . . It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God....

Moral Certainty - A Point of View

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to reinforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in others."

- H.L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956