Back of the Envelope

Serge at Imago Dei raises some interesting thoughts based on this bit of data provided by David Berlinski about Newton's theory of the orbits of the planets: "But Newton was unable to account for the initial conditions that he had himself imposed on his system. Facing an imponderable, he appealed to divine intervention." This leads Serge to ask a few questions, for example:

Since Newton appealed to divine intervention in the initial conditions of his theory does that indicate that this part of his theory, and thus the theory itself was unfalsifiable, and therefore not science?

I don't want to get into the whole intelligent design debate here--I'm way behind on the reading for this subject--but be sure to go over to Imago Dei if you're interested in discussing it. Imago Dei is one of those good blogs I didn't keep up with during my time on dial-up, but I'll be keeping better track of it now.