The new science rode in on the shoulders of theological ideas.
Peter Harrison | posted 10/01/2002 12:00AM
What caused the scientific revolution? How did science advance from the relatively static medieval philosophies of nature to the dynamic technologies of modern science? Secular historians have argued that the church opposed this progress at every turn. But in fact a set of new theological ideas ushered in the scientific innovations of men like Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.
First, Christian thinkers applied God's sovereignty to the natural realm in a new way, asserting that nature was governed by God-designed mathematical laws. Then, concerned to protect that sovereignty against Aristotle's notion that natural entities possessed intrinsic drives, Christians began to strip nature of her divinity, positing instead mechanical processes.
"Laws he himself fix'd"
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night God said: "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
Alexander Pope's famous couplet gives the impression that Newton's genius lay in his discovery of previously hidden laws of nature. This disguises ...
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