CHALLENGE OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE

Challenge of Modern Knowledge ~ 14 ~ Newton showed that God did not control the movements of the planets. Laplace in a famous aphorism affirmed that astronomy had no need of the god hypothesis; Darwin and Pasteur between them did the same for biology; and in our own century, the rise of scientific psychology and the extension of historical knowledge have removed gods to a position where they are no longer of value in interpreting human behaviour and cannot be supposed to control human history or interfere with human affairs.3 Physics, psychology and history have proved conclusively that all those events which man explained in terms of the existence of a God or gods, or some abstract ‘Power’ had entirely different causes, but that man, steeped in ignorance, continued to speak of them in terms of religious mystery. In the world of physics, Newton is the hero of this revolution. It was he who put forward the theory that the universe is bound by certain unchangeable principles, there being certain laws according to