"It is commonplace to say that #Descartes was the “father of modern #philosophy.” Whether or not this label is apt, it is certainly the case that Descartes consciously presented himself as an innovator.
Much of this innovation was concerned with his famous program for the mathematicization of science – the replacement of the scholastic apparatus of substantial forms and real qualities with a physics based purely on the quantifiable notions of size, shape, and motion.
Yet innovative though it may have been (and indeed successful, if not in the specific detail of Descartes’ theories, then at least in its general conception of the way forward for physics), this fresh approach does not yet represent the kind of radical break in philosophy’s self-conception that we are looking for.
For there was nothing in the “new” Cartesian science that seemed inherently inimical to the traditional ideals of spirituality or to the continued flourishing of a religious worldview.
On the contrary, if the world could be understood on Cartesian principles as a mathematically ordered system, this could be taken to be fully consistent with the standard Stoic and Christian idea of logos or rationality at the heart of the cosmos. This was certainly how it struck the “incomparable Mr Newton,” who thought the workings of the cosmos “could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being”
source: Philosophy as a way of life : ancients and moderns : essays in honor of Pierre Hadot / edited by Michael Chase, Stephen R.L.Clark, Michael McGhee. pg 159
