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John Hutchinson's Critique of Newtonian Heterodoxy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John C. English
John C. English
Affiliation:
emeritus professor of history at Baker University.
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Extract

“Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, Let Newton be!—and all was light,” according to Alexander Pope. Other British subjects were not so sure. In recent years, historians have begun to take more seriously the persons who opposed Newton on either philosophical, scientific or theological grounds. Rival systems of natural philosophy were already in the field, including the scholastic, the alchemical, and especially the Cartesian. Newton had learned a great deal from Descartes, but he also set out to correct the errors in his system. Many Cartesians, at least in the period shortly after 1687, were not convinced by Newton's arguments. His methodology was suspect as well. The mathematics that Newton had invented was hard to follow and the role that it played in his system was unfamiliar. Political antipathies sometimes led to the rejection of Newtonianism. But the crux of the problem was theological. Newton's natural philosophy, as stated in his Principia Mathematica, seemed to undermine the traditional doctrines of the Christian religion.

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Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 1999 , pp. 581 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1999

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References

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