How did Newton and Leibniz reconcile their scientific studies with their religion?
Newton and Leibniz and other people at the same time are struggling to come up with a system of understanding the world that lets them have their cake and eat it too. There are some holes in the system that Newton presents in “Principia Mathematica” that he’s aware of and wants to plug, and you can make a case that the reason he spent so much time on alchemy is that he saw it as a way to finish this grand project. It wasn’t like this nutty, eccentric, oddball thing. It was a carefully thought-out part of his grand strategy for his life’s work. He was going to publish a book on alchemy called “Praxis” that was going to be as great as or greater than “Principia Mathematica” and supply the missing bits. At the same time Leibniz is toiling away on a totally different system that’s meant to achieve the same goal. It’s really the clash between those two systems that’s the story, not who invented the calculus first. What Newton and Leibniz were arguing about was broad metaphysical topics of a
