Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 457 Craige's "mathematical" version of the wager as there is in Pascal's version. The difference between the two versions is more one of emphasis than of substance. Pascal emphasizes the fact that despite the lack of demonstrative evidence, theistic belief (and a moral life consistent with this belief) is more prudent than disbelief. Craige and Locke agree with Pascal that the afterlife cannot be demonstrated, but set this uncertainty aside and emphasize instead the certainty--implicit in Pascal's argument--that theistic belief and a virtuous life are more prudent than disbelief and a worldly life of pleasures. So, Nash's claim that Craige's rejection of Pascal's probability theory expresses his preference for "a more rationalist view" over Pascal's "essentially fideist view" (xvii) is at best misleading. As to the first part of the Principles, Nash shows that the traditional objection that the probability of an event does not decay over time does not apply to Craige's demonstration , which is about decay of the probability of accounts, not events. Craige's concept of probability, Nash argues, is Lockean: "it is determined by the individual--it corresponds to the degree to which an auditor believes a historical account" (4o). Nash claims that for Locke "belief is free, determined not by the text, but by the reader's judgment of the text" (45). But precisely because belief is free according to Locke, Locke thinks it must be constrained by the objective evidence of propositions. The thrust of the Essay is normative. Locke wants degrees of assent or denial to be proportional to the objective degree of probability of the objects of belief. Nash cites Locke: "no Probability can arise higher than its first Original" (38). Locke's point is one of right, not of fact. Because Locke is aware that credibility often rises higher than that of the first Original, he urges that we must examine the grounds of our beliefs. Is Craige's point one of right or of fact? I think Nash is correct in saying that it is of fact (as Nash shows, Craige uses his descriptive account of decrease of belief for a normative purpose , viz., against the enthusiasm of Millenarians who believed that the Second Coming was imminent), and that many critics misunderstood him on this issue. But then, against Nash, Craige's approach is not Lockean, and the objection--not applicable to Locke--that credibility of accounts often increases as time passes does apply to Craige. Nash says that "if one wishes to attribute Craige's argument to a species of individual folly, then a significant portion of that folly must be traced to Locke" (43). I submit that this portion is not as significant as Nash claims. Another important difference between Craige and Locke--a difference that partially explains why Craige, but not Locke, got the fame of being a fool--is that Locke, unlike Craige, did not attempt to provide the mathematical demonstration of morality that he thought possible. Jos~. R. M^IA NETO Washington University James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin. Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's Theology. International Archives of the History of Ideas, Vol. 129. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 199o. Pp. ix + 296. Cloth, $79.oo. The importance of Isaac Newton in the history of science is axiomatic, but it is becoming more apparent as research progresses that the received picture we have been given 458 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 30"3 JULY 1992 of the great pioneer has been sanitized so as to present him falsely as a scientist who managed early on to free himself of the shackles of religion and dogma. Newton has been traditionally painted as a clear-headed man of science whose interest in religion came late, during the period of his physical and mental decline, and that therefore we can easily disregard his metaphysics and millenarianism as unimportant to understanding his work as a whole. Newton's religion is therefore at best the irrelevant hobby of a tragically near-senile formerly great scientist, and its centrality in his own perspective on his life and work is expunged. The greatest...