English metaphysician.
Theologian, scholar, and philosopher Samuel Clarke was born in Norwich and had a celebrated academic career at Cambridge. He became chaplain to the bishop of Norwich and, later, to Queen Anne. His most ambitious works, the Boyle Lectures, asserted that God's existence could be proven by mathematical logic, and that the principles of morality are as set and consistent as the laws of mathematics. A friend and disciple of Isaac Newton, Clarke wrote or translated several treatises on Newtonian theories. His combination of theology, ethics, and science into rationalism exerted a significant influence on 18th century English thought.