Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) stands at the center of one of the first encounters between physics and Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church is commonly perceived to have put forward theological objections to the sun-centered, or heliocentric, account of planetary motion first developed by Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and later promoted by Galileo. However, historians now generally agree that the church's hostility toward heliocentrism resulted more from Reformation controversies over authority and biblical interpretation, as well as the various personalities involved in the encounter, than from any real theological difficulties stemming from the earth's motion. In retrospect, the lasting theological significance of physics' emerging worldview proved to be its comprehensive account of physical motion in terms of deterministic laws. If every moment in history had been completely determined by physical laws acting upon what came before it, could one still conceive of God's ongoing activity in the world? And equally important, in such a world could one still conceive of human thought and action as genuinely free?
Newtonian Mechanism
The deterministic worldview of early modern physics solidified around the grand synthesis of Isaac Newton (1642–1727), which united celestial and terrestrial motion into a single conceptual scheme.
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