How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts? Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?

Isaac Newton Opticks, Book III, Query 28 (4th ed., 1730) Verified source · How we source quotes

Where this quote comes from

This comes from the queries Newton placed at the end of Opticks, open questions he posed instead of claims he could prove. In Query 28 he asks how the eye and ear could have been made without knowledge of optics and sound, and how instinct and the will move the body. His answer is a question too: whether nature shows an intelligent being present everywhere in space.

Source: Opticks, Book III, Query 28 (4th ed., 1730)

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