Abstract

This thesis examines the role played by Cartesians between 1650 and 1690 in the development of the notion of a scientific method. That is, the study concerns the peculiarly Cartesian contributions to the demise of the Aristotelian Scholastic notion of method and the parallel rise of the modern, experimental notion of scientific method. It covers a critical period in the seventeenth century, between the death of Descartes and the publication of Regis's Systeme general, the latter date very closely following the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica. It is argued that the Cartesians were in a unique position to spearhead the final attack on Aristotelian Scholastic method, and that they did so using a notion of method derived ultimately from the works of Descartes published during that author's lifetime: the Discourse, Meditations, and Principles. The notion of method which was articulated by Cartesians in this period was, contrary to many modern assessments of Cartesian contributions to the philosophy of science, critical for the eventual triumph of the experimental philosophy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. It is argued that the Cartesians can be divided into two, broad classes: the traditionalists, who attempted an integration of Cartesian and Scholastic methods, and the moderns, who attempted a defense of mathematics and experiment within a Cartesian framework. Both strains of Cartesianism turn out to have been critical in seventeenth century methodological developments, because both contributed to the disentangling of the tasks of justification and explanation in scientific theory