Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite

Abstract

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews : the same came to Jesus by night … John 3 : 1-2 A lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered the religion of wise men. She asked, what was that ? He answered, wise men never tell. Diary of Viscount Percival (1730), i, 113 NEWTON AS HERETIC Isaac Newton was a heretic. But like Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, he never made a public declaration of his private faith -which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs." His one-time follower William Whiston attributed his policy of silence to simple, human fear and there must be some truth in this. Every day as a public figure (Lucasian Professor, Warden -then Master -of the Mint, President of the Royal Society) and as the figurehead of British natural philosophy, Newton must have felt the tension of outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church, while inwardly denying much of its faith and practice. He was restricted by heresy laws, religious tests and the formidable opposition of public opinion.Heretics were seen as religiously subversive, socially dangerous and even morally debased. Moreover, the positions he enjoyed were dependent on public manifestations of religious and social orderliness. Sir Isaac had a lot to lose. Yet he knew the scriptural injunctions against hiding one's light under a bushel. Newton the believer was thus faced with the need to develop a modus vivendi whereby he could work within legal and social structures,

Philosophy in Poland: Varieties of Anti-Irrationalism. A Commitment to Reason without the Worship of Reason

“…And several writers, including Frycz Modrzewski (see Ulam 1946;Huber 2014;Ptaszyński 2015) and members of the Polish Brethren, had, in turn, a notable influence on the development of religious (therefore political, too) thought in Europe, especially on Newton and Locke (see e.g. McLachlan 1941;Snobelen 1999;Dixon 2003;Hewett 2004;Muslow and Rohls 2005; more recently, Wagner and Briggs 2016 also make a note about it; see Chapter 32 on Newton). The Polish Brethren created in 1602 the Racovian Academy in a small town named Raków, near Kielce in Poland, which was the main center of their thought and publishing activity (see Hewett 2004).…”

Steve Fuller and Intelligent Design

“…Cf. his General Scholium to the Principia: http://hss .fullerton.edu/philosophy/GeneralScholium.htm; and, for some discussion, Stewart (1996) and Snobelin (1999).…”

Halley and the London Queen Anne Churches

“…The current study adds a twist to the tale because quite beyond the matter of church orientation we see Halley working, albeit for a short period, with a high‐profile government‐sponsored commission and a team of architects whose objective was to create visible symbols of a “purer primitive form of Christianity”. It is therefore possible that in the early‐to‐mid‐1710s Halley sympathized with this movement – perhaps his views as a late middle‐aged man were then closer to those of his associate Sir Isaac Newton (Snobelen 1999, Mandelbrote 2002).…”