On this episode of five minutes in church history, let's talk about a scientist, Sir Isaac Newton.

He was born in 1643. He died in 1727. He was actually born in the exact same year of the death of Galileo. He was

born in originally humble circumstances. His father died three months before he was born. In 1661 he went off to

Cambridge. He had a grasp of Latin and a very curious mind. He would pass the time sketching clocks and

windmills and other kinds of gadgets. Once he got to Cambridge he studied astronomy

this was the era of Copernicus and Kepler and

and of course he studied the classic philosophers Aristotle and Plato he kept his

notebooks and in one of them he wrote amicus

Aristotales magus amicaa veritas

Plato is my friend Aristotle is my friend

truth is my best friend.

And he also, while at Cambridge, embarked on studying mathematics.

In fact, he would come to lead the way in this field.

He is credited for inventing the study of calculus, as he called it,

the calculus of infinitesimals.

And it was also, while he was at Cambridge that he studied the motion of

the moon and the planets and he recognized this force that was acting on these planets

in their orbit.

He was discovering what would come to be called

the law of gravity.

He would go on to publish his books,

his famous book in 1704 the book called Optics and in there he puts

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