How scientific geniuses birthed the modern world.
on: The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick.
on: The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World by Edward Dolnick.
As new generations of scientists probed the universe, they found that it ran even more smoothly than Newton and his contemporaries thought. In one of the great ironies of science, the men who sought to honor God with their research ended up destroying him in the minds of many who followed. These later generations concluded that the universe was a giant clock. Maybe God wound it up, maybe not. In any case, he certainly no longer played a role in keeping it running.
The French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simon Laplace summarized the workings of the cosmos in his masterpiece "Celestial Mechanics." After examining the book, Napoleon asked him why there was no reference to God in it. "I had no need of that hypothesis," Laplace replied.
