Thus, in the General Scholium of the Principia, Newton argued that these laws could preserve the stability of the planetary orbits in the solar system, but only the design of “an intelligent and powerful Being” could have at first established the “position of the orbits.”24 Newton made similar design arguments in a later book, the Opticks, based upon the qualities of light and the exquisite functional integration of the many parts of the eye.25 Thus, in his work Newton affirmed what theologians since the Middle Ages had conceived of as two complementary but distinct powers of God: (1) the
...more
