Experiments were conducted with detailed measurements based on reproducible observations, with further experiments to test the theories formulated. He set out demonstrable theories of gravity, planetary motion and optics, creating a framework for modern science. Newton’s approach to science altered how the world was observed and understood. This is the Cement which unites Men of the most different Principles in one sacred Band and brings together those who were most distant from one another. The idea would become part of the Masonic mainstream:Īs Masons we only pursue the universal Religion or the Religion of Nature. Natural Philosophy is that Science which gives the Reasons and Causes of the Effects and Changes which naturally happens in Bodies… We ought to call into question all such things as have an appearance of falsehood, that by a new Examen we may be led to the Truth. Opticks was published in 1704-6 and a second, revised edition of Principia Mathematica in 1713.įrom a theological perspective, Newton saw no inherent conflict between a belief in God, ‘the All-wise and Almighty Architect of the Universe’, and the natural order, a world interpreted through rational observation. The same view was held by Desaguliers, who wrote in his Foreword to Lectures in Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy (London, 1717), that He was elected President of the Royal Society in 1703 and gained a knighthood two years later, the first scientist in Europe to be so honoured. Sinecures as Warden, then Master of the Royal Mint followed, with Newton choosing to take an active role in both positions. He was awarded the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge in 1669, one of only eight named chairs in the university at the time, and Principia Mathematica, his opus, was published in 1687. His genius was recognised by contemporaries. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), one of the most influential mathematicians and natural philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if not of all time, was not a freemason but his philosophical approach to understanding the natural world, a methodology centred on reason, would become a keystone of Modern Freemasonry.ĭescartes’s Geometry, Franz van Schooten’s Miscellanies, William Oughtred’s Clavis, and the works of other leading European thinkers gave Newton an intellectual platform from which he launched his studies into mathematics, optics, and mechanics.
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