… And God in physicis theological considerations of natural philosophy in modernity

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that during shaping of what we today know as “physics”, that is, the natural philosophy developed in European Modernity, far from there being a confrontation between “science” and “religion”, both were practically inseparable, to the extent that the former was founded in deep, rooted and consistent theological premises. Contrary to what is commonly accepted today, when the two fields are generally conceived
as mutual enemies, in the transition from the ancient —primarily Greek— worldview of the world to the modern worldview, many thinkers, such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes and Newton, understood that there was an indissoluble link between their own physical
theories and the divine attributes claimed by Christian theology and faith, such as perfection, omnipotence, omniscience or goodness. To illustrate this, I will explain the influence of their conceptions of God on their own systems of natural philosophy.