Isaac Newton and Intelligent Design
David A. Larrabee
East Stroudsburg University
Presented at
American Association of Physics Teachers, Central Pa Section meeting
held on April 8, 2006
held at The Pennsylvania College of Technology, Williamsport, PA
Abstract
Behind today’s debate of evolution and Intelligent Design (ID) is a view of Science and Religion in conflict. This view of the relationship between science and religion dates to John William Draper (ca 1874) and Andrew Dickenson White (ca 1869). Today this position is recognized as poor scholarship in the History of Science. The idea ID goes back to at least Plato, long before the “principle of falsification”. ID has played an important role in the development of the physical sciences (including Newton’s Principia). We will review how one such argument was handled in the past, long before the “Principle of Falsification” was regarded as a fundamental principle in the philosophy of modern science. In fact, this process is at work today within the biological community. Newton saw his theory as requiring that God must have intervened in the creation of the solar system. This was countered by Kant (ca 1765) and Laplace (1796) by the creation of the Nebular hypothesis. Today this hypothesis has proved increasingly useful and is generally accepted (although modified). Consequently, Newton’s original argument is no longer considered a legitimate ID argument