The brilliant Isaac Newton described the universal law of gravitation and the laws of physics and explained the elliptical orbits of the planets using calculus, a new form of math that he developed just to answer that question. Yet after describing the movements of the objects in the solar system with an astounding precision, he reached a point where he paused in awe of the stability of the motion of the celestial bodies, and stating that he could not see how his equations were able to explain the universality of gravity, he summarized in his monumental Principia, “This most beautiful system of the Sun, Planets, and Comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being, a God.”

Does this sound at all familiar?

Here’s the sad part: the Principia was written at the astoundingly young age of 35, and he went to his grave at the ripe old age of 84 without exploring the issue any further. About a century later, however, the French scientist Pierre-Simon Laplace, using Newton’s own calculus and the laws of physics and gravitation Newton first postulated, explained the stability of the motion of the celestial bodies described by Newton with a method of mathematics that was certainly well within Newton’s mathematical ability. What caused the difference? Why did the English genius not solve the problem in the fifty years between Principia and his death? Laplace saw a challenge and went for it; Newton thought he saw an intelligent design and stopped looking.

This is why the ID movement’s masquerade as science produces such a negative reaction among Christian scientists. Scientific research is harmed and hindered by those who say, “Our current scientific understanding has not explained X, therefore X lies outside the bounds of scientific inquiry.”

HT to elbogz on Steve Martin’s site, who referred me to a talk by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson that made this point about Newton.