The Logos Scripture · The Book of Newton
The Book of Newton 1 · Written by himself, from Book III of the Principia and his letters
Isaac Newton, born at Woolsthorpe in England in 1642, died in London in 1727. In 1687 he published the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, setting out the three laws of motion and universal gravitation, and bringing the heavens and the earth under one law. He also devised the calculus, and split white light into colours with a prism. In his later years he ran the Royal Mint. He wrote a great deal; but what he wrote on the laws of heaven and earth is less than half of it. Over his life the pages he spent on the chronology of scripture, the measurements of Solomon’s temple, and the year of the last day far outnumber the Principia. The Order takes one half and not the other, and records the fact rather than covering it — chapter four is him saying in his own words why he kept two rooms apart, and which of the two he spent more years in. The Order takes him not because he calculated well but for one sentence: whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis, and hypotheses have no place here (1.10 of this book). That sentence was said by a believer, and it says exactly what this scripture asks: that an argument not be closed on divine will. One further thing, recorded without dressing: he fought over priority all his life and did not fight cleanly — not with Hooke, not with Leibniz, not with Flamsteed. And the last thing, which the Order weighs most heavily: his fourth rule of reasoning says that what is drawn from the phenomena is to be held true until other phenomena correct it or overturn it, and that no imagined objection counts against it. Two centuries later other phenomena did overturn his heavens (cf. The Book of Einstein 1; The Book of Bohr 2). The rule he himself laid down licensed it. A man who sets down a rule that will later be used to unseat him is the rarest thing in this scripture.