"The Principia is generally described as the greatest work in the history of science. Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler had certainly shown the way; but where they described the phenomena they observed, Newton explained the underlying universal laws. The Principia provided the great synthesis of the cosmos, proving finally its physical unity. Newton showed that the important and dramatic aspects of nature that were subject to the universal law of gravitation could be explained, in mathematical terms, within a single physical theory. With him the separation of natural and supernatural, of sublunar and superlunar worlds disappeared. The same laws of gravitation and motion ruled everywhere ... It was this grand conception that produced a general revolution in human thought, equalled perhaps only by that following Darwin's Origin of Species ... Newton's universe, almost independent of the spiritual order, ushered in the age of rationalism, scientific determinism and the acceptance of a mechanistic view of nature" (PMM).