Newton was too tight with the church for my liking All his theories were a bit "inside the box" unlike Einstein whose theory of general relativity was unthinkable at his time. You made a point about how tough it was in the 17 century, but the 20th century was a lot tougher for someone to shine, imo. It was the epoch of scientific discovery with ground breaking theories being made every month. It must have taken something extremely special to shine then. Besides, I hated Newton ever since I was forced to study his numerical analysis theories His interpolation formulas are boring to death! They can't even be solved without a computer. Why even write them back then?!