Tyrrell_McAllister comments on Rationality Quotes: November 2010 - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 02 November 2010 08:41PM

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Comment author: Tyrrell_McAllister 03 November 2010 11:26:44PM *  6 points [-]

Here's another Newton ID quote. This one complements PeterS's because the true naturalistic explanation requires physics that was not implicit in Newton's mechanics.

But how the matter should divide itself into two sorts, and that part of it, which is fit to compose a shining body, should fall down into one mass, and make a sun, and the rest, which is fit to compose an opaque body, should coalesce, not into one great body, like the shining matter, but into many little ones; or, if the sun, at first, were an opaque body, like the planets, or the planets lucid bodies, like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opaque, or all they be changed into opaque ones, whilst he remains unchanged, I do not think more explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent.

—Isaac Newton, Four Letters From Sir Isaac Newton To Doctor Bentley Containing Some Arguments In Proof Of A Deity.