May 30, 2008
“I Recognized the Claw of the Lion…”
VisionViewPoint
(Yep… It’s that time again.
The Newsletter from a Christian “perspective”)
“I Recognized the Claw of the Lion…”
“I cannot teach you a thing…”
When you get a whole era named after you (“The Age of Newton” – Will Durant), I suppose you’re entitled to some recognition. After all, just how many people really do change the world?
All of us aspired to something like that in high school. After all, most of us “over the age of …” had teachers in the government school system who ingrained such life-changing ideals as…
- “There are no absolute truths.” (absolutely?)…
- “I cannot teach you a thing. There is no truth.” (Up to, but not including the point where a student sued that college professor for opening his course with this statement. The professor was being paid to teach, the college collected tuition, and the student sued for falsely advertising a course which would teach him something.). As a result, everyone learned something from the course.
- “God is dead.” (Nietzsche). “Nietzsche is dead.” (God)
However, Sir Isaac Newton never once dreamed the universe was devoid of absolute truths. His accomplishments were numerous:
- He discovered the laws of the calculus. (along with Liebnitz)
- He discovered the laws of optics in his famous prism experiments.
- He discovered and described the law of gravity.
- He codified Galileo’s three laws of motion (he gave them depth and exact description for practical use).
- He wrote the greatest scientific text in history describing the laws of physics from a mathematical perspective (Principia Mathematica)
Once Edmund Halley (yes, that Halley - of Halley’s Comet fame) was perplexed about a mathematical description of astronomical bodies. Not impressed with other attempts at solving this issue, he stopped to talk to his friend Isaac on an occasion and asked him,
How would planets move if there was a force of attraction between bodies that weakens as the square of the distance?
Newton answered immediately, “In Ellipses.”
Wow.
When was the last time you did lunch with a friend and the answer to a scientific issue, never answered accurately in all of about 5000 years of history, came out correctly in two words?
How’s that for “no absolute truths”?
“When your I.Q. rises to 28, sell.”
Professor Irwin Corey once had a heckler who wouldn’t stop interrupting his speech. The professor got everyone’s attention with this statement cited above. The point is a valid one. Most of those, in like manner, who “heckle” the Christian worldview, know little of the basis for such truths to begin with. They just assume such things to be “myth”, without the slightest study into the powerful contributions made by the Christian worldview throughout history.
Did you notice in the brief list of Newton’s accomplishments there was one word which kept coming to the forefront?
In a word, “law.”
The Christian faith is the only religion or philosophy which postulates “law” as the fundamental organizing principle for all of life and the world around us. Newton knew that the guiding, consistent, predictable behavior in the activity of the world around us, was actually a testimony to the universal, immaterial, and invariable (fixed) laws of the universe (referred to as the pre-conditions of intelligibility).
The same is true of all aspects of the world created by the Triune God of the Bible.
- There are “Laws of Logic” universally built into the thought patterns of the human mind (Having taught them for three decades to my students in Logic classes throughout the country, I am amazed constantly at the architecture of “excuses for not getting assignments finished.” They are always predictable, consistent, and genius. (On a more serious note, see also The Debate Strategies of Jesus Christ, in which the principles used for critical thinking/effective debate and effective persuasion in Christ’s use of logic in the Gospels are identified in detail.)
- There are laws of science – chemistry, physics, mathematics, medicine, etc.
- There are laws of morality (God has given us the Bible which is Absolute Truth, not to mention the 10 Commandments as a basis for morality).
- There are laws of history (Yes, history is not a random series of events – a topic to be discussed in future VisionViewPoint newsletters).
- There are laws of economics, i.e. laws of human action (such as, If you increase the money supply drastically, you will see gas prices – and many other prices – soar, always.)
Newton knew that to be the case. For a world in which there’s “no absolute truth”, he sure seemed to find plenty to do.
In 1696, for example, a Swiss mathematician challenged all of Europe’s scientific and mathematical scholarship by posing two problems for their solutions. The problems circulated throughout Europe for months. Newton, as usual, was absorbed in his research and didn’t know there was such an issue raised. So a friend brought them to his attention.
The day after being apprised of the existence of the problems, Newton forwarded the solutions anonymously (he truly was a shy man). The challenger at once knew who the author of the solutions really was. He said, “I recognized the paw of the Lion.”
Newton astounded his generation with his discoveries, all the while asserting that the key to the universe around us was embedded in the Laws of the God of Scripture. He loved and quoted the Bible constantly, both in his lectures and his writings (like the Principia for instance).
He was a firm believer in the existence of truth… truth that awed him and humbled him before the God who made heaven and earth.
He once declared,
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
The glory of “law”…
Everyone admired Newton. You see, a belief in absolute truths astounded the whole world. Everywhere he traveled, people wanted to get a glimpse of “the greatest scientist in history.”
He was elected to Parliament (1687) because he defended the rights and freedoms of his people against the tyranny of King James II Stuart (supporting his position from a Scriptural vantage point).
He never spoke to any issue presented before that august body.
However, on one occasion, he rose and, in the middle of an intense debate, the whole House of Commons fell silent so as to hear the great words of the illustrious scientist. Surprised, he paused for a moment. Then Newton asked that a window be closed because there was a draft.
A few decades later, Voltaire, the raging atheist of French infamy, once traveled to England. He was amazed to find that England honored a mathematician as other nations honored kings. Indeed, the Latin inscription on his tomb in Westminster Abbey reads,
Mortals … Rejoice at so great an ornament to the human race.
The renowned poet, Alexander Pope, wrote this famous couplet concerning the impress of Isaac Newton upon the world of that day:
Nature and Nature’s laws lay his in night:
And God said, “Let Newton be, and all was light.”
Even the poet understood the genius of discovered “law” as foundational to all of life and glory.
May God bless you,
Wayne C. Sedlak, ICHR
