ABSTRACT
The pursuit of new truth became the highest priority for philosophers interested in the natural world, especially for Francis Bacon and Rene Descartes. It established principles of physics that were considered laws of nature, true everywhere in the universe, until modified in the twentieth century; it used those laws to develop the mathematical formula for gravity on earth; and it showed how that formula explained the orbits of the planets around the sun. The achievements of Newton and Descartes produced cultural competition in what was beginning to be called the republic of letters in other words, a country of savants devoted to the pursuit of truth. The pursuit of truth was not limited to scientists and philosophers. That is the conclusion we are bound to come to, that any particular dogma whatever it may be is to be regarded as false if it clashes with the clear and definite conclusions of the natural understanding.
