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Newton's mechanistic view of the universe, again, an idea that derives from Greek atomism, however, was to have far-reaching consequences not just for science but for modern Western culture in its totality. According to Newton, the universe was like a massive clock built by a creating god and set into motion. Actually, even though Newton was a devout Christian, this argument has a philosophical basis. For Newton based his entire view of the universe on the concept of inertia: every object in motion stays in motion until redirected or stopped by another object; every object remains at rest until moved by another object. No object has the ability to move or stop itself. The universe, then, becomes a vast billiard ball table, in which everything moves because something else has just knocked into it. But that leads to a problem: who moved the first object? How did it get going if no object can move itself? The Greek atomists, who believed that the universe consisted of atoms (in Greek the word atoma means "indivisibles") which created all phenomenon by colliding into and combining with each other, explained this with the concept of "swerve": somewhere at the beginning of time, one atom swerved all by itself and knocked into another and hence the universe came into being. Aristotle, on the other hand, who also based his thought more or less on a mechanistic view of the universe, solved the problem by positing an "Unmoved Mover": somewhere at the beginning of time, an "Unmoved Mover" (which he calls God), was able to set things in motion without having to be moved itself. This idea was appropriated in the Middle Ages by the Scholastics, who, like Aristotle, believed the universe functioned in a rational and mechanistic way and was set in motion and ruled over by a rational and unmoving mover, God. Newton adopts this idea whole-cloth: although the universe is a vast machine of objects moving and colliding into each other, still it requires some original thing that set it all in motion in the first place. That thing, for Newton, was God.
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