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inert
sphere of matter--an egg--turns seemingly by itself into a chick.
Yet enthusiasts in the Age of Reason felt Newton held the keys that
would unlock all of life's mysteries.
Newtonian science swept nearly every other form of analysis
from respectability. And Newton himself obtained the power to crush
his rivals, dictate what was intellectually acceptable and what was not,
and even to steal the credit for the discoveries of his fellow natural
philosophers.54
When men look desperately for masters of control, they do not
peck at the limitations of the new savior. They seize the idea of his
power with hungry enthusiasm. For the new sorcerer offers the
promise of influencing the uninfluencable.
The same trick of using a few insights into the motions of
heavenly bodies to imply mastery over all of the known universe
vaulted previous generations of savants to positions of incredible
power. Babylonian astronomers, three thousand years before Newton,
became power brokers by predicting the seasons and producing a
viable calendar.55 So did the Chinese emperors, who made sure that
the computations of their own calendar were kept top secret, since
those calculations were the key to their hold over the state.56 Mayan
and Aztec priests in Central America also held massive power by
virtue of a bit of astronomical virtuosity. These priests were housed in
elaborately architected city centers, while the peasants who raised the
crops they ate resided in hovels in the countryside.57 Tribute of all
kinds flowed to the divine intercessors: food, clothing and gold. And
prelates could dictate life and death. These holy men ordered the
armies of the Aztec Empire to scour distant lands in search of captives.
Then the priests sacrificed the prisoners of war by the tens of
thousands to satisfy their invisible gods. On occasion, the Aztec clerics
would cut open the chests and tear out the hearts of as many as 5,000
humans in a single day.58
The key to the power of the Aztec priests was the same as that
which made Newton the king of science. These Central American men
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