ABSTRACT
Scholars have tended to view Descartes’ science in the light of his most conspicuous metaphysical ideas. Though recognizing some kind of distinction between natural science and metaphysics, they very often evaluated the former using criteria stemming from the Cartesian cogito, clear and distinct ideas, or the mind-body problem. Within this rationalist framework it became customary to accept uncritically the neglect of experiment and the radical reduction of physics to geometry as defining features of Cartesian science. Accordingly, Descartes’ alleged disregard of experiments would have been just a scientific version of his metaphysical and epistemological arguments against the trustworthiness of sense experience as presented, for instance, in the First Meditation. As a result, the boundaries between natural science and metaphysics became blurred, and those aspects of Descartes’ scientific thought considered by commentators as unsuited to his metaphysical or epistemological ideas were simply disregarded.
