The Sleepwalkers (256 page)

Newton
was
a
crank
theologian
like
Kepler,
and
like
Kepler
addicted
to
chronology;
he
dated
the
Creation
from
4004
B.C.,
after
Bishop
Usher,
and
held
that
the
tenth
horn
of
the
fourth
beast
of
the
Apocalypse
represented
the
Roman
Church.
He
desperately
tried
to
find
a
niche
for
God
somewhere
between
the
wheels
of
the
mechanical
clockwork
–
as
Jeans
and
others
later
tried
to
find
it
in
Heisenberg's
principle
of
indeterminacy.
But,
as
we
have
seen,
such
mechanical
addings
together
of
two
fully
grown
specialized
disciplines
never
work.
The
Kant-Laplace
theory
of
the
origin
of
the
solar
system
showed
that
its
orderly
arrangement
could
be
explained
on
purely
physical
grounds,
without
recourse
to
divine
intelligence;
and
God's
alleged
duties
as
a
maintenance
engineer
were
derided
as
absurd
by
Newton's
own
contemporaries,
foremost
among
them
Leibnitz:

"According
to
their
[Newton
and
his
followers']
doctrine,
God
Almighty
wants
to
wind
up
his
watch
from
time
to
time,
otherwise
it
would
cease
to
move.
He
had
not,
it
seems,
sufficient
foresight
to
make
it
a
perpetual
motion.
Nay,
the
machine
of
God's
making
is
so
imperfect
according
to
these
gentlemen,
that
he
is
obliged
to
clean
it
now
and
then
by
an
extraordinary
concourse,
and
even
to
mend
it
as
a
clockworkmaker
mends
his
work...
And
I
hold
that
when
God
works
miracles,
He
does
not
do
it
in
order
to
supply
the
wants
of
Nature,
but
those
of
grace.
Whoever
thinks
otherwise
must
needs
have
a
very
mean
notion
of
the
wisdom
and
power
of
God."
¹³

In
a
word,
atheists
were
the
exception
among
the
pioneers
of
the
scientific
revolution.
They
were
all
devout
men
who
did
not
want
to
banish
deity
from
their
universe,
but
could
find
no
place
for
it
–
just
as,
quite
literally,
they
were
unable
to
reserve
sites
for
Paradise
and
Hell.
The
Chief
Mathematician
became
redundant,
a
polite
fiction
gradually
absorbed
into
the
tissues
of
natural
law.
The
mechanical
universe
could
accommodate
no
transcendental
factor.
Theology
and
physics
parted
ways
not
in
anger,
but
in
sorrow,
not
because
of
Signor
Galileo,
but
because
they
became
bored
with
and
had
nothing
more
to
say
to
each
other.

The
divorce
led
to
consequences
which
are
familiar
to
us
from
similar
occasions
in
the
past.
Cut
off
from
what
was
once
called
the
philosophy
of
nature
and
now
exact
science,
theology
continued
in
its
own
specialized,
doctrinaire
line.
The
age
of
Benedictine,
Franciscan,
Thomist,
Jesuit
leadership
in
research
was
past.
To
the
inquiring
intellect,
the
established
churches
became
venerable
anachronisms
–
though
still
capable
of
giving
sporadic
uplift
to
a
diminishing
number
of
individuals
at
the
price
of
splitting
his
mind
into
incompatible
halves.
Whitehead's
admirable
summing
up
of
the
situation
in
1926
is
even
truer
today,
a
generation
after
he
wrote
it:

"There
have
been
reactions
and
revivals.
But
on
the
whole,
during
many
generations,
there
has
been
a
gradual
decay
of
religious
influence
in
European
civilisation.
Each
revival
touches
a
lower
peak
than
its
predecessor,
and
each
period
of
slackness
a
lower
depth.
The
average
curve
marks
a
steady
fall
in
religious
tone...
Religion
is
tending
to
degenerate
into
a
decent
formula
wherewith
to
embellish
a
comfortable
life.

"...
For
over
two
centuries
religion
has
been
on
the
defensive,
and
on
a
weak
defensive.
The
period
has
been
one
of
unprecedented
intellectual
progress.
In
this
way
a
series
of
novel
situations
have
been
produced
for
thought.
Each
such
occasion
has
found
the
religious
thinkers
unprepared.
Something,
which
has
been
proclaimed
to
be
vital,
has
finally,
after
struggle,
distress,
and
anathema,
been
modified
and
otherwise
interpreted.
The
next
generation
of
religious
apologists
then
congratulates
the
religious
world
on
the
deeper
insight
which
has
been
gained.
The
result
of
the
continued
repetition
of
this
undignified
retreat,
during
many
generations,
has
at
last
almost
entirely
destroyed
the
intellectual
authority
of
religious
thinkers.
Consider
this
contrast:
when
Darwin
or
Einstein
proclaim
theories
which
modify
our
ideas,
it
is
a
triumph
for
science.
We
do
not
go
about
saying
that
there
is
another
defeat
for
science,
because
its
old
ideas
have
been
abandoned.
We
know
that
another
step
of
scientific
insight
has
been
gained.