...[T]he typical picture of Newton as a paragon of Enlightenment deism, endorsing the idea of a remote divine clockmaker and the separation of science from religion, is badly mistaken. In fact Newton rejected both the clockwork metaphor itself and the cold mechanical universe upon which it is based. His conception of the world reflects rather a deep commitment to the constant activity of the divine will, unencumbered by the "rational" restrictions that Descartes and Leibniz placed on God, the very sorts of restrictions that later appealed to the deists of the 18th century.
Newton's voluntarist conception of God had three major
consequences for his natural philosophy. First, it led him to reject Descartes'
version of the mechanical philosophy, in which matter was logically equated
with extension, in favor of the belief that the properties of matter were
freely determined by an omnipresent God, who remained free to move the
particles of matter according to God's will. Second, Newton's voluntarism moved
him to affirm an intimate relationship between the creator and the creation;
his God was acted on the world at all times and in ways that Leibniz and other
mechanical philosophers could not conceive of, such as causing parts of matter
to attract one another at a distance. Finally, Newton held that, since the
world is a product of divine freedom rather than necessity, the laws of nature
must be inferred from the phenomena of nature, not deduced from metaphysical
axioms -- as both Descartes and Leibniz were wont to do.
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