Newton's Beliefs

    Science in Newton’s time was based on the teaching of ancient Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle. Some of these ideas were: the earth was flat, heavenly bodies followed different laws than earthly bodies, white light was perfect, force was required to move objects at a constant velocity, and objects fell at different rates based on their masses. Public institutions and the scientific community accepted these teachings as truth without questioning them, instead of testing their ideas through experiments.

    Just before Newton’s birth, Galileo had challenged Aristotle's writings and shown them to be false through experimentation. Galileo’s career suffered greatly for it. As a student Newton studied Galileo’s work, as well as the work of Kepler and Descartes. He too concluded that the scientific community was wrong to accept human reasoning instead of the results of scientific experiments.

    Newton believed the universe was full of law and order. His expectation of law and order descended from his belief in God as the Creator of the universe. He strongly disagreed with the established scientific belief of a random and chaotic universe. It was this type of thinking that lead to his discoveries of the various scientific laws that govern bodies.

    Newton was a Christian who believed the Bible was God’s Word. He wrote strong papers refuting atheism and defending creation and the Bible. He once commented "I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever." These beliefs lead Newton to remain a humble man, even as he made discoveries no one else ever had.

    Like Galileo and others before him, Newton challenged the status quo and set out to prove their ideas false, using experiments and data. He fought to establish experiments and the scientific method as the way to reach scientific conclusions, rather than relying on philosophy and logic. He believed a single experiment carried out carefully was worth a dozen books filled with guesses.

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