Newton begins by telling us that all particles have a force of inertia and from that force move. He then claims that some active Principles, like Gravity and Fermentation are not supernatural qualities of a being but are Laws of nature. These laws of nature he says are caused by the supernatural and differ from the Aristotelian sense of occult qualities that lie hid in the body, because these supernatural qualities are carried out and therefore not hidden. He says that in order for philosophy to move on someone must come up with general laws of motion that all corporeal things follow. Ironically, Newton does not answer this for us because it is just too lengthy for him, so he instead tries to answer what the cause of motion is.
He says it is not blind fate that creates this motion it is the act of higher being or God. Newton says that God is more able to move all the living beings he created than we are able to move our bodies. Despite this we are not part of God's body. all of his creatures including us are simply his little puppets that he likes to play with. Newton declares that we are completely subservient beings to God's will and God is able to create particles of any shape and density thus being able to create many different worlds in our universe that he can control.
Newton's explanation of the cause of why things are and why they move is not complicated at all or really new. Its pretty much the book of Genesis mixed in with the fact that we are completely subservient to God and don't think at all on our own.
Katie, you bring up an interesting interpretation of Newton that I didn't gleam at first. I understand how Newton's argument would allow you to focus on the issues of movement and free will; however, I took creation as one of the main points of the reading. Newton argues that astounding uniformity of the natural world cannot be attributed merely to chance. He insists that in order for such regularity to persist across so many aspects of the universe, choice, not chance, must have been the driving factor. I think that the alternative to creation by an "intelligent Agent", or creation by natural forces and materials alone, would require much more than simply chance in order to be successful. The formation of our universe must require specific interactions, forces, attractions, repulsions, and combinations. All of these in conjunction with one another, once properly understood, would attribute the formation to more than chance. Also, all of the above examples of interactions within the natural world have all been shown to both exist and cause substantial effects within nature. Although eliminating chance from the picture entirely is impossible, I think that reducing the entire natural world to chance is a simplistic view.
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