The Last Magician: Sir Isaac Newton

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians..."

Newton was a wizard of fantastic wonders. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes was among the first to sift through Sir Isaac Newton’s private work. Keynes enjoyed this rare opportunity on the belated 300th Anniversary of Newton’s birth (the celebration was postponed because of WWII). Unexpectedly, Keynes appears to have been taken aback by what he discovered:

“I believe that Newton was different from the conventional picture of him…

In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason. 

I do not see him in this light. I do not think that anyone who has poured over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, though partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago.”

The Last of an Enchanted Era 

The scientific revolution and the age of rationalism grew in influence and popularity during the seventeenth century. This new wave of thought would eventually envelop and dominate the Western world up to this day. Contrary to what one might think, Sir Isaac Newton sometimes came into conflict with this new wave of change in the world. It may be surprising for some to realize that his peers often criticized him harshly for his theories. His critics would even go as far as to accuse him of “mysticism” or “occult” for his proposed theories. Essentially, they thought Newton was being unscientific. These facts are quite astonishing to us today, given that seemingly everyone considers Newton’s theories, such as gravity, to be just as obviously true as two plus two equals four. 

The rationalist elite who would drive the scientific revolution forward were unanimously unpersuaded by Newton’s theory of gravity. The idea that forces act invisibly across empty space everywhere in the universe smelled like superstitious nonsense, especially to the Cartesians. They viewed it as an idea only fit for the backward mysticism of the Dark Ages, not their vision of the scientifically enlightened, rational future. They criticized the “occult” theory of gravity Newton proposed primarily because of its problematic invisible qualities. Is it material or not? What were the mechanisms that made gravity possible? Because of the critical pressure by the scientific elite on Newton, he had to make a response in the next edition of his Principia; he confessed that:

“Hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses, for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis;”

It was true. He didn’t know what caused gravity per se, but this was not a problem in Newton’s mind. 

“ and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that the impenetrability, the mobility, and the impulsive force of bodies, and the laws of motion and of gravitation, were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account for all the motions of the celestial bodies, and of our sea.” 

For Newton, “Science could not, and need not, always uncover causes. It did describe natural phenomena and accurately predict the behavior of objects as confirmed by experimentation” (Cole, Symes, Coffin, & Stacey, Western Civilizations, 2012). He believed the critiques bolstered against his theories came from a misunderstanding of what science can do. Newton looked at science as the ability to describe the physical world as it is right now, not to figure out the causes of how gravity or any other objects fundamentally exist. Science simply can’t always do this, and in Newton’s opinion, we shouldn’t assume it ever will. For Newton, causes and existence were the domain of God. Science could only describe what God created, but only God knew how to bring things into existence. Newton’s mind dared to go where the rationalists forbade him to tread, and for this crime, he was marked a “Magician.”

Newton saw the physical world as another way in which God communicated with us if we were willing to listen. This doesn’t mean he didn’t study the scriptures; he did. Newton knew the Bible inside and out. Unlike the rational establishment, he viewed reality as physical and metaphysical. There wasn’t a separation between the spiritual and the scientific. Newton didn’t have the same anxiety between religious beliefs and rational inquiry that is so entrenched today. He was a creative and divergent thinker with an imagination open to many possibilities. Newton engrossed much of his time in theological matters (possibly ten times more so than on questions of math and science) than the scientific discoveries he is so famously remembered for today. Many, just like Keynes, found this fact embarrassing about their hero of reason. This revelation is what led Keynes and others to suggest:

“I believe that Newton was different from the conventional picture of him…Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians…”

The Need for Reflection

Even in his own time, Newton was experiencing the pressure of a rationalistic worldview that would eventually gain dominance over the Western World. Newton’s spiritual beliefs and metaphysical comfortability are seen as a blight upon his otherwise unblemished genius. However, I would like to subvert that narrative. Perhaps this very creativity and divergent thinking was the silver key that unlocked the prism door to so many of his discoveries. Discoveries that have forever changed our world. The colors of the rainbow lay hidden within every white beam of sunlight. Gravity has been tugging on humanity to recognize it since creation. Most of his famous “scientific” discoveries were lying right under their noses, in plain sight to those who could see. But that was just the problem. They couldn’t see. The problem was that many were blindly looking away because it didn’t fit the vision the rational elite believed in. I wish to propose that his “medieval thinking” was his strength, not his weakness—the very magic of the magician.

Who Shall Be the First of the New Order of Magicians?

In light of the radiant rainbow of this magician’s imagination, the question before us is who will be the first of the new order of magicians? Who will unlock the other doors we aren’t allowed to touch? Who will have the courage to gaze upon what God has written in plain sight? What discoveries lay still hidden, waiting to be found because of the divorce between religion and science? 

Maybe you are the next magician?

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The poet Alexander Pope:

“Nature and nature’s law lay hid in night;

God said, ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light”

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I created this blog to exercise the ideas that have haunted my mind. This blog will discuss and contemplate story, imagination, formation, Christian education, icons, symbols, pictures, and poetry. Journey with me as we delve into the deep cavernous thoughts of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Malcolm Guite, James K.A. Smith, N.T. Wright, Charles Taylor, and The Holy Scriptures. If you are interested in or hate this content, join the conversation, as I will blog about these subjects and authors every Sunday morning.