A fascinating and timely history of how science developed via the achievement of pursuing only observation and experiment (not politics)
Isaac Newton had a problem. He didn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. Scriptural study had convinced him that Jesus was not equal to but created by God the Father. In 17th-century England, this was heresy. Newton’s conviction meant that he could not in good conscience be ordained as a clergyman, which was necessary if he wanted to remain a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and Lucasian professor of mathematics.
King Charles II made an exception for Newton, who was able to continue at Cambridge; he publicly conformed with Anglican precepts while privately thinking they were nonsense. This matters for philosopher Michael Strevens because Newton is the hero of science’s origin story. The genius who discovered gravity also set what Strevens calls the knowledge machine of science in motion. He writes: “If the human race was going to get its vaccines, its electric motors, its wireless communicators – the wellsprings of health, the armatures of industry, the filaments of human connectivity – something out of the ordinary would have to shatter the barrier.” Newton shattered the barrier by devising what Strevens calls the iron rule underpinning science’s claims to objectivity. It states that all scientific arguments must be conducted by empirical testing, excluding all subjective, philosophical, religious or aesthetic matters.
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