ABSTRACT
The transition from the old to the new was gradual, but by 1687, with the publication by Isaac Newton of his Principia Mathematica, the replacement was all but complete. Rene Descartes, who, along with Galileo Galilei, was one of the founders of modern physical science, was the most influential rationalist of the seventeenth century. Descartes’ rationalism overshadowed the empiricism of his day – providing the framework for the most influential philosophy of the seventeenth century. The theory that complex ideas in the human mind are constructed out of simple components and that the succession in the mind of complex ideas can be explained by appeal to their similarity with each other and their repeated juxtaposition had been around since classical times. Effectively doing away with the idea that to understand human nature one must understand the role of an immaterial self in human mentality was crucial to the emergence of a scientific psychology.
