The Clock, Icon of Science

Philosophers were always looking for new handles on the universe—new similes, new metaphors, new analogies. Despite their scorn for those who cast the Creator of the Universe in man's image, the theologians never ceased to scrutinize man's own handiwork as their clues to God. Now man was a proud clockmaker, a maker of self-moving machines. Once set in motion, the mechanical clock seemed to tick with a life of its own. Might not the universe itself be a vast clock made and set in motion by the...

 Many Great Scientific Minds Were Religious

A great many leading lights of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment-Nicolaus Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle—were distinctly religious and viewed science as a better means of understanding God's creation and the laws governing it.