Newton Vs Darwin

Both buried in Westminster Abbey, close to each other, Charles Robert Darwin and Isaac Newton were known as two giants of British science with their own master works. In the most influential work of Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, the theory of evolution has been put forward. For Isaac Newton, the Newtonian Mechanics was praised by the posterity. It inevitably gives rise to a debate of the relative importance of those two theories when they are mentioned together. From my perspective, with a mass of difference and similarities, they are equally important for the development of modern science.

Let’s firstly make a comparison between those two theories.

Undeniably, both of theories were somewhat based on the

Almost all people praised Newton’s contribution. “Many a scientist has echoed the sentiment that Halley expressed in the ode he wrote as a preface to Newton’s Principia.” (Cohen 6) The difference between the responses of those two theories could attribute to two factors. Firstly, when Darwin totally abandon the god in his work, Newton still admit the significance of god in his theory. He used the statement that if the planets had not received a push to give them an inertial component of motion, the planet would move toward the sun itself, to prove the existence of god. Since at that time, most people respected the god, it was too risky to defile that faith. Secondly, Newton’s system was based on the theories from generation to generation, which was progressive. Therefore, the public had the opportunity to get used to his thought. Nevertheless, Darwin’s thought was relatively new, and it just totally overturned the traditional view of the origin of human. Last but not least, when Newton’s theory showed them the power of science, and gave people a confidence of future life because they were able to make predictions (Cohen 62), the natural selection theory made people doubt about where they came from. It stated that we might have single parent with other species, when people at that time were still regarding human-beings as supreme. All factors I concluded above led to difference social feedback of those two theories, but we could not deny the contribution of natural selection theory, since it enables people to open their mind, to foster their innovative