ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that the French adopted science as the basis for their Enlightenment because of their very personal fascination with the philosophy of nature and the history of its creatures. Johannes Kepler, Galileo's younger contemporary, found his evidence for the correctness of heliocentrism in the theory itself. He took on the challenge of perfecting the Coperniean system. Rene Descartes, also a heliocentrist of Kepler's generation and the third of our four revolutionaries, developed a new style of mathematics, analytic geometry, which differed markedly from the geometrical style practiced by Copernicus and Kepler. Cartesian mathematics proved extremely conducive to the development of physical theory. During the eighteenth century, amateurs of science observed and acquired increasingly sophisticated philosophical apparatus capable of controlling the motion and the effects of the materials posited in their discussions.
