ABSTRACT
This book has unfolded the story of one of the most radical and consequential changes in the history of early modem science. It was radical because it marked out the break with the discourse on the nature of things that dominated the philosophical study of the physical world since its inception in ancient Greece. In this respect, this change differed, for example, from the impact of mathematical tools or mechanical images and models on science, which evolved within the philosophical discourse on the nature of things since the rise of humanism in 14th century Italy. It had farreaching consequences because it transformed empirical research into a crucial and most vital means of explaining natural phenomena. The break with age old philosophical tradition and the changing roles of empirical research were inseparable. Both were the result of establishing a new mode of explanation proposed as an alternative to the traditional search for a definition of the nature of things. The alternative, in a nutshell, consisted of understanding correlations between empirical properties.
