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About this quote

What does it mean?
Newton sees God's work as ordered and simple, urging us to reduce knowledge to simplicity to understand visions.
In plain terms
God's order is simple; we should simplify our understanding.
What can you take from it?
Aim for simple, orderly comprehension.

Where it applies

  • studying nature
  • interpreting revelations

Putting it to work

  • reduce concepts to their essential parts

Questions to consider

  • How does simplicity relate to truth?
  • Can simplicity obscure nuance?

Another view

Not all phenomena can be reduced without loss.

More from Isaac Newton

  1. Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

    Permalink to quote #10
  2. If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.

    Permalink to quote #12
  3. By always thinking unto them. ... I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.

    Permalink to quote #9

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