a. Dolnick,
7—The word scientist didn’t come
about until the 1800s. These were natural philosophers in the 1600s.
b. Austin,
522—“for Newton ‘Philosophy’ includes what we would call natural science.” Natural philosophy is what they used to
call what we now call science.
2.
Who
was Newton?
a. Born/died
i. Manuel,
4—Born Christmas Day, 1642
ii. Manuel,
5—Buried in Westminster Abbey
b. Relationship with God
i. Manuel,
6—“He occasionally skipped chapel as an undergraduate in Cambridge”
ii. Austin,
522—“None of Newton’s primary theological writings were published in his
lifetime.”
iii. Austin,
523—“Newton’s main theological concerns were the promotion of ecclesiastical
peace and correct biblical interpretation, and[...]he conceived of
religion as a set of duties, all of which could be known from biblical
revelation and some by the light of
natural reason.”
iv. Manuel,
40—“‘And though every true Step made in the Philosophy brings us not
immediately to the knowledge of the first Cause, yet it brings us nearer to it,
and on that account is to be highly valued’”
c. Relationship between God and science
i. Austin,
521-522—“Does he regard his scientific and theological studies as bearing on
each other—and, if so, how? Or does he
consider them mutually irrelevant—and, if so, why? His interpreters disagree. According to his most authoritative
biographer, ‘Newton’s philosophy and religion were two separate things,
and he does not seem to have concerned himself with the problem of recounciling
them.’ But R. H. Hurlbutt finds it
‘clear...that Newton’s science was intrinsic to practically all of his
considerations on theology.’ R. S.
Westfall finds ‘a complex network of mutual influence’ between Newton’s
religious belief and his scientific work; like all the ‘Christian virtuosi’ of
the seventeenth century, he strove for a harmony between the two, though ‘he
went a step beyond the others in forcing Christianity into conformity with
science.’”
ii. Dolnick,
18— “The Bible was not a literary work to be interpreted according to one’s
taste, but a cipher with a single meaning that could be decoded by a meticulous
and brilliant analyst.” To Newton, this
concept also applies to science.
Newton in McLuhan’s context:
McLuhan, 146—“The Newtonian God—the God who made a clock-like universe,
wound it, and withdrew—died a long time ago.
This is what Nietzsche meant and this is the God who is being
observed. Anyone who is looking around
for a simulated icon of the deity in Newtonian guise might well be
disappointed. The phrase ‘God is dead’
applies aptly, correctly, validly to the Newtonian universe which is dead. The groundrule of that universe, upon which
so much of our Western world is built, has dissolved.”
1.
The
clock-like universe of the Scientific Revolution
a. Dolnick,
xvii—“at some point in the 1600s, a new idea came into the world. The notion was that the natural world not
only follows rough-and-ready patterns but also exact, formal, mathematical laws. Though it looked haphazard and sometimes
chaotic, the universe was in fact an intricate and perfectly regulated
clockwork.”
b. Manuel,
29—“The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century is for us so
decisive that it tends to overshadow the simultaneous upheaval in Christian and
Jewish scriptural studies.”
i. Dolnick,
xv—A taste for the times...Dolnick describes the “Age of Genius,” the late
1600s: “Disease was a punishment
ordained by God. Astronomy had not yet
broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens.”
ii. Dolnick,
14—“‘Books on the Second Coming were written by the score during this
period,’ one eminent historian observes, ‘and members of the Royal Society
were preoccupied with dating the event.’”
iii. Dolnick,
18—“The seventeenth century believed in a universe that ran like clockwork,
entirely in accord with natural law, and also in a God who reached down into
the world to perform miracles and punish sinners.”
2.
Interpreting
“God is dead” in terms of Newton’s time
a. Dolnick,
xviii—“God was a mathematician, seventeenth-century scientists firmly
believed. He had written His laws in
a mathematical code. Their task was to
find the key.”
b. To
understand science was to understand God and his creations, and it’s not
commonly understood that way anymore.
With new media, what has dissolved?
1. McLuhan—Perhaps
the authors of The Medium Is the Massage
suggest this dissolve occurred because of quantum mechanics (I would
assume) but, once again, their phrasing is too vague for me to tell.
2. McLuhan—But,
what if the “groundrule” referred to is God?
In that case, His role is certainly diminished due to a significant
recent separation between science and religion.