The Religious and Metaphysical Thought of Isaac NewtonThe Religion of Isaac Newton. Frank E. Manuel

Abstract

College in 1973. They deal with Newton's religious views and are in large measure based upon the Yahuda manuscripts in the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, the most important manuscripts on Newton's religious views so far discovered. The first two chapters of the book provide us with a lot of background information on Newton. In the first chapter called His Father in Heaven, we hear about the young Newton, his relation to the Church of England, his interest in the Bible, and the unorthodox religious views of many of his most intimate friends and disciples. Manuel's thesis is that from the beginning to the end of his life, Newton felt a close relationship to God and actually felt he was the one chosen for the unique mission of unveiling operations in the world. The aim is to establish an antimetaphysical bias in Newton. Manuel believes that Newton's God was a personal God, a God of commandments, a master, a father in heaven for whom Newton searched throughout his life since his own natural father had been dead when he was born, as Manuel tries to show in his wellknown psychologizing manner.1 In Manuel's opinion, this understanding of a personal God made Newton critical of all those who conceive God in rationalistic terms, in learned metaphysical assertions and propositions. The second chapter is entitled God's Word and Works. It focuses on the relation between science and religion in the seventeenth and early eighteenth century in England and on the continent. Manuel makes it clear that Newton appears to have adopted a positivistic self-understanding of the sciences by immunizing the sciences from religion, but that he also cast doubt on the positivistic self-understanding of the sciences by viewing the search for scientifically valid knowledge as the search for knowledge of operations in the world, and thus as a form of glorifying God. In addition, Manuel is careful to point out that Newton used the findings of science in his understanding of the Bible and that he was interested in alchemy. But when Manuel discourses on those and other topics, we have the impression that he is somehow putting together what we already know from the contemporary scholarship on Newton.