ABSTRACT
Newton was ultimately the leading figure in the struggle between science and religion or ultimately the conservative showing how belief in natural religion inspires the direction of physical research. Analysts of Newton have transgressed the divide between history and metaphysics more than is either necessary or desirable. Richard S. Westfall's study of the virtuosi and Cohen's general introduction to Newton's Papers both reveal an essential dualism that existed throughout the seventeenth century between the empirical requirements of natural science and the social and psychological attachments for revealed religion. Newtonian science was materialistic—verifying the private fears of the virtuosi and the exclamations of the outright enemies of natural philosophy. What distinguishes Newton from the rest of the virtuosi is the fact that, although he was son to the great dualism, he was no less father to the Enlightenment efforts to cope with and overcome this split between matter and spirit.
