the religious scientist

I don't actually have much comment on the article below, apart from the fact that I continue to be a little mystified by persons such as Newton, who must have been so scientifically brilliant, and yet despite his deep involvement in science he was also a devout Christian. Such people seem to shatter the concept of a conflict between science and religion.

The article is certainly an interesting read. Will the world really end in 2060, I wonder.. actually no, let's not wonder about that, I don't particularly like the thought of the world ending.
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Newton's Clockwork Universe

A rare exhibit of Isaac Newton's religious writing, on display at Israel's National Library in Jerusalem, has treated viewers to his interpretation of the Book of Daniel, a prediction that the world will end in 2060, and other biblical notations.

But nowhere in these manuscripts, or his other writings, does Newton speak of a "clockwork" universe, with which he is often associated.

The exhibit sheds light on two misinterpretations of Newton, who died 280 years ago and is considered the greatest scientist in history for his work in physics, astronomy, math, and optics.

The exhibit, for example, shows that Newton was not only a severe-minded scientist, but also an avid speculator in biblical religion. Other scholarship has recently suggested that, although he discovered the laws of motion and gravity, Newton never took the religious view that universe was like a clock set in motion by a distant "clockmaker."

"These documents show a scientist guided by religious fervor, by a desire to see God's actions in the world," curator Yemima Ben-Menahem told reporters at the exhibit's opening this summer. When Einstein saw these documents, he wrote that Newton's speculations "give us a most interesting look into the mental laboratory of this unique thinker," according to a 1940 letter in the Hebrew University archives.

The Jerusalem manuscripts, bought by a Jewish scholar in the 1930s and then housed in the museum, are being shown to the public for the first time. They show that, as a mathematician, Newton was not only interested in calculating Bible prophesy, but also hidden secrets in the dimensions of the ancient temple of Jerusalem.

"He believed there was wisdom in the world that got lost," said Ben-Menahem. "He thought it was coded, and that by studying things like the dimensions of the temple, he could decode it."

After the scientific revolution sparked by Newton, many historians argued that his machine-like universe presented a persuasive argument for the God of Deism, or a God who wound up the clock and then left the scene. The laws of gravity and motion by themselves operated the universe, an idea later applied to biological life. Newton's most famous biographer, the late Richard Westfall, called him a Deist.

But the Newton writings and more recent scholarship argue that Newton still believed that God operated in the details of the world, both in nature and in history.

"Newton's God was not the absentee clockmaker typical of the Enlightenment," says Edward B. Davis, a former student of Westfall who teaches the history of science at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. "Newton believed God was free to make the world, and alter it at times, in any way he pleased. Newton was serious about his belief in an active God who governs nature at all times."

The idea that Newton embraced the clockwork image, according to Davis and others, originated with the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, his rival in claiming to have been first to invent calculus. During Leibniz's debate with a friend of Newton, the philosopher Samuel Clarke, he said that Newton had discredited God's perfection by saying the deity adjusted the orbits of planets occasionally.

Leibniz said Newton had introduced a God that had "to wind up his watch from time to time" and lacked "sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion." This sort of God was cleaning and mending the universe "as a clockmaker mends his work," said Leibniz. The clock image became attached to Newton, even though Clarke emphatically rejected the idea on Newton's authority. The clock universe, Clarke wrote, "is the notion of materialism and fate, and tends ... to exclude providence."

The Jerusalem documents suggest Newton saw God as governing providential history and even hiding spiritual truths in the biblical commandments on the dimensions of the temple.

In one manuscript Newton uses the Book of Daniel to suggest the world would end no earlier than 2060. "It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," he wrote. "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."

Davis says that Newton's massive writings on alchemy, or the use of chemistry to seek spiritual knowledge, also illustrated that Newton was trying to find the "intermediate agents" and "active principles" of God's action in the world. As Newton wrote, "God doth nothing by himself which he can do by others."

Davis says that other leading figures, such as chemist Robert Boyle and philosopher John Locke, were also interested in alchemy. "For all the talk about magic and making gold," says Davis, "alchemy was ultimately about matter itself and how God governed it. It's fair to say that alchemy was the scientific theory of matter at that time. We need to look at science in its real context."