"and he had no idea of the General Relativity Theory, either."
So what? You may not believe this, but the Theory of Relativity is actually a relatively minor refinement of the Newtonian model of the world. Newton's model, on the other hand, was a profound step forward -- arguable the greatest scientific advancement of all time.
Incidentally, I read years ago that Newton's model may have actually been more accurate than we realize. His force equation is usually written as F = m dv/dt, but he actually wrote it as F = d(mv)/dt, which may be more accurate and capture the relativistic effect. But I am not a physicist, so don't hold me to that.
"So what?" is exactly the point: Newton's beliefs are absolutely irrelevant for the topic of evolution vs. ID as he was a creationist by default.
You may not believe this, but the Theory of Relativity is actually a relatively minor refinement of the Newtonian model of the world. Newton's model, on the other hand, was a profound step forward -- arguable the greatest scientific advancement of all time.
Newton's model fitted perfectly the available data. The Theory of Relativity had to be developed when new data occurred resp. electromagnetism was to be integrated. "Relatively minor refinements" is a relative fuzzy term :-)
Incidentally, I read years ago that Newton's model may have actually been more accurate than we realize. His force equation is usually written as F = m dv/dt, but he actually wrote it as F = d(mv)/dt, which may be more accurate and capture the relativistic effect. But I am not a physicist, so don't hold me to that.
Yep, by this all bodies with changing mass (like rockets) fit into his theory. I have my private hypothesis (absolutely made up from thin air) that he did it for aesthetic reasons: "force is change of momentum" has the idea of derivation in it, "force is mass times acceleration" sound more static...