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 or 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?
Interpretation
The quote questions the logic of believing that complex systems arise without a designer, while accepting simple imitations as designed.
Isaac Newton's quote provokes thought about the nature of existence and creation. He challenges the reasoning of those who accept the idea that intricate systems, like the universe, can arise spontaneously without a designer while simultaneously recognizing that human-made objects require a creator. This reflects on the philosophical discussion about the existence of a supreme intelligence or force behind the universe's complexity.
In practice
In a debate about intelligent design vs. evolution.
The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated.
Integrity, the choice between what's convenient and what's right.
They say if one understands himself, he understands all people. But I say to you, when one loves people, he learns something about himself.
In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin.
Our choice is not between war and peace but between life with dignity or without
There are always interests that are furthered by war. Therefore, those who have power and influence can also stop them... we should not accept any excuses from those in power.
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