How did the relations between philosophy and science evolve during the 17th and the 18th century? This book analyzes this issue by considering the history of Cartesianism in Dutch universities, as well as its legacy in the 18th century. It takes into account the ways in which the disciplines of logic and metaphysics became functional to the justification and reflection on the conceptual premises and the methods of natural philosophy, changing their traditional roles as art of reasoning and as science of being. This transformation took place as a result of two factors. First, logic and metaphysics (which included rational theology) were used to grant the status of indubitable knowledge of natural philosophy. Second, the debates internal to Cartesianism, as well as the emergence of alternative philosophical world-views (such as those of Hobbes, Spinoza, the experimental science and Newtonianism) progressively deprived such disciplines of their foundational function, and they started to become forms of reflection over given scientific practices, either Cartesian, experimental, or Newtonian.

• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. The quest for a foundation in early modern philosophy: A historical-historiographical overview
• 2. The ‘crisis’ of foundationalism: Regius and Descartes
• 3. Cartesianism as the Philosophy of the School: Logic, metaphysics, and rational theology
• 4. Dutch Cartesianism in the 1650s and 1660s: Philosophy, theology, and ethics
• 5. Foundationalism confronting radical Cartesianism around 1670
• 6. Bridging scientia and experience: the last evolution of Cartesian foundationalism
• 7. The aftermath: The Cartesian heritage in ’s Gravesande’s foundation of Newtonian physics
• 8. Conclusion: From ancilla theologiae to philosophy of science: a systematic assessment
• Bibliography
• Index