Voltaire thought Sir Isaac Newton was one of the greatest minds ever.

To explain the laws of motion and gravity and apply them to everything in the universe, when one realizes that, it sure must have meant something!

Voltaire also compared him to Descartes, and noticed how one contradicts the other so much!

"You will observe farther, that the sun, which in France is said to have nothing to do in the affair, comes in here for very near a quarter of its assistance. According to your Cartesians, everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us. At Paris you imagine that the earth is shaped like a melon, or of an oblique figure; at London it has an oblate one. A Cartesian declares that light exists in the air; but a Newtonian asserts that it comes from the sun in six minutes and a half. The several operations of your chemistry are performed by acids, alkalies and subtile matter; but attraction prevails even in chemistry among the English."

Raoul