ABSTRACT
René Descartes was certainly no stranger to doubt and disorientation, growing up at a time when many of the old certainties were being eroded. The theistic vision that is central to Descartes's metaphysics has important implications for the significance of human life. Descartes's ambitions connect with the general aspiration he expressed in the Discourse on the Method, namely that the new mathematical and mechanical science he hoped to found would enable human beings to become 'masters and possessors of nature'. Science, for Descartes, thus opens the door to a practical recipe for virtue, armed with scientific knowledge of how the peoples' psychophysical responses operate. Descartes, in describing the blueprint for his new mathematical science, once observed that the search for final causes is 'utterly useless in physics'. Certainly he saw scientific explanation as working through quantitative laws, and warned against invoking the supposed purposes of the creator, which were 'hidden in the inscrutable abyss of his wisdom'.
