Newton, as the pioneer of Newtonian mechanics, pushed the scientific progress of the world by himself, but why did such a great scientist study theology? Did he find anything in The Secret Behind Science? Actually, it's not like this.
The real reason is that the whole society was ruled by theocracy at that time, so Newton was born with theological education, that is to say, he was a believer from the moment he was born, and he studied science on the basis of believing in God, so Newton didn't start studying theology in his later years, but he studied theology all his life.
It is even more unreliable to say that Einstein, a great physicist, studied theology in his later years, because Einstein has repeatedly said on many occasions that he does not believe in religion or any "personalized" God. The word "God" he usually uses refers to "Spinoza's God", that is, the physical laws of the whole world.
Since Newton and Einstein, two representatives of the phrase "the end of science is theology", have they given up their scientific research on theology in their later years? In fact, to know whether this sentence is correct, we must first understand what is "theology" and what is "science".
Science is actually a philosophical term, which refers to the methods and attitudes of human beings to explore the natural universe. Science pays attention to "verifiability" and "falsifiability", that is to say, any scientific theory must have methods to prove its truth. For example, Darwin's theory of evolution has been put forward for hundreds of years. Although questioned by many people, it is the cornerstone theory of modern biology as long as it is not falsified.
Theology is actually a philosophical term. Theology stands on the opposite side of science because it cannot be falsified. To put it bluntly, it cannot be verified by any means, because theology is self-consistent in internal logic.
According to the philosopher Bertrand Russell's book Religion and Science, the greatest feature of theological thinking is always trying to explain the infinite things in the world with a limited doctrine.
Therefore, theology and some "theists" can directly give the ultimate answers to some ultimate questions, such as how life on earth was born and how human beings were born, while science pays attention to whether the exploration of the problem process is reasonable and whether the answers obtained are accurate. To put it bluntly, science is only responsible for progress, and theology likes to define the end point as soon as it comes up.
Most importantly, I don't know whether "science" has an objective "end". Those who claim to have reached the "end" of science have actually reached the "bottleneck" of science.
If after reaching the bottleneck, all scientists stop trying to break through the bottleneck and convert to theology together, then the end of science will occur at this time, but this end is not an objective end, but a subjective end.
In a word, it is wrong or inaccurate to say that the purpose of science is theology before it reaches its objective purpose, because no one knows what the purpose of science is at present.