ABSTRACT
Isaac Newton's natural philosophy, based on induction and mathematical analysis, was able to explain in precise detail the behaviour of bodies endowed with gravitational attraction, and so reveal the regular laws which governed gravity. Newton's talk of space as the sensorium of God in which the people live and move and have our being, which is emphasized in these interpretations, was always presented as an analogy and R. S. Westfall and B. J. T. Dobbs are taking it too literally. Newton had believed that gravity was such a special part of God's creation that it required his particular attention, then Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's suggestion that Newton's gravity was "the effect of a miracle" would have been correct. Newton's method was also a positive defence of the concept of action at a distance, and therefore of the omnipotence of God. The chapter concludes that God was Newton's most favoured explanation for Gravity.
