D’Alembert wrote that it was Descartes who first “dared . . . to show intelligent minds how to throw off the yoke of scholasticism, of opinion, of authority—in a word, of prejudices and barbarism. . . . He can be thought of as a leader of conspirators who, before anyone else, had the courage to arise against a despotic and arbitrary power, and who, in preparing a resounding revolution, laid the foundations of a more just and happier government which he himself was not able to see established.”
Philosophers of the scholastic persuasion pointed to the dangerous parallel between Descartes’s scientific individualism and the outlawed Protestant heresy. Descartes said individual thinkers could find scientific truth; Protestants said individual souls could find direct communion with the Almighty. But the Holy Roman Catholic Church knew that individual souls and thinkers could be deceived. It took the experience and wisdom of the Church to prevent the seeker from wandering astray. Despite such scholastic criticism, Descartes quickly came to dominate West European intellectual life.
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Like Galileo, Descartes recognized mathematics as the principal tool for revealing truths of nature. He was more explicit than Galileo about how to do it. In every scientific problem, said Descartes, find an algebraic equation relating an unknown variable to a known one. Then solve the algebraic equation! With the development of calculus, Descartes’s doctrine was essentially justified. Today we don’t say “find an algebraic equation.” We say “construct a mathematical model.” This is only a technical generalization of Descartes’s idea. Our scientific technology is an inheritance from Descartes.
