Sir Isaac Newton Time life magizines "Greatest scientific thinker of our time"

[Welsh cake]

Sir Isaac Newton's work represents some of the greatest contributions to science ever made by an individual.

Debatable, in his time. In our time? Certainly not.

Most notably, Newton derived the Law of Universal Gravitation,

I would argue he plagiarised it from Robert Hooke.

invented the branch of mathematics called Calculus,

Yeah because historically speaking Gottfried Leibniz contributed nothing to the field did he?

and performed experiments investigating the nature of light and color.

Which he arguably heavily borrowed from Leone Battista Alberti's work and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci also.

He also was scholar of the Bible and devoted much time to its study.

Couldn't care less. That has nothing to do with science.

Sir Isaac had an accomplished artisan fashion for him a small scale model of our solar system which was to be put in a room in Newton's home when completed.

This doesn't put him on equal footing with Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, or anyone else involved the Heliocentrism movement.

I made a model of our solar system once. So what?

The assignment was finished and installed on a large table. The workman had done a very commendable job, simulating not only the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities, but also so constructing the model that everything rotated and orbited when a crank was turned. It was an interesting, even fascinating work, as you can image, particularly to anyone schooled in the sciences.

A scientist friend of Newton's came by for a visit. Seeing the model, he was naturally intrigued, and proceeded to examine it with undisguised admiration for the high quality of the workmanship.

"Oh My! What an exquisite thing this is!" Newton's friend exclaimed. "Who made it?"

Paying little attention to him, Sir Isaac answered, "Nobody."

Stopping his inspection, the visitor turned and said, "Oh? Evidently you did not understand my question. I asked who made this?"

Newton, enjoying himself immensely no doubt, replied in a still more serious tone, "Nobody. What you see just happened to assume the form it now has."

"You must think I am a fool!" the visitor retorted heatedly, "Of course somebody made it, and he is a genius, and I would like to know who he is."

Newton then spoke to his friend in a polite yet firm way: "This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?

adapted from Sir Isaac Newton Solar System Story (from the book: The Truth: God or evolution?, by Marshall and Sandra Hall, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI)

So what?

Dutch clockmaker Steven Tracy made the world's oldest known dynamic heliocentric model of our solar system "The Leiden Sphaera" around 1670.

So what?