In the middle of the 16th century, Platonic and Aristotelian schools that had had an indisputable role in Western thought, began to be displaced after the rediscovery of the presocratic philosophies, in particular the mathematicism of Pythagoras and the atomism of Democritus . These knowledge, which operated as assumptions of the Scientific Revolution, resulted in the abandonment of methodological essentialism, replacing it with mechanicism. A remarkable transformation of philosophy was underway.
The central theme of the period focuses on the question what and how knowledge is possible. The answers to this question resulted in antagonistic positions in which rationalists and metaphysics lost the game: the enormous prestige of the work of Newton (which independent physics from metaphysics), contributed to the fact that empiricist theses were finally imposed. Although later, the gnoseological problem would be enriched by the nuances that Kant , the most prominent philosopher of the 18th century, knew how to argue.
Rationalism represented categorical opposition to scholastic thinking. Descartes is above all a classical philosopher and his ideal is order and measure. Its goal will be to renew science and unify it. However, it opened an abyss between man and the world. Rationalism was also the trigger of its counter-movement: empiricism.
The methodical doubt of Renato Descartes
Metaphysical Meditations of Descartes
Baron will point out that the empirics, as if they were ants, did nothing but pile up and use. On the contrary, rationalists, like spiders, would weave fabrics made by themselves. Indeed, empiricism in glés will be characterized by giving experience the origin of knowledge (which brings them closer to Aristotle and even the scholastics themselves). But also, empiricism will recognize a limit that will sentence metaphysics, as an unknowable entity.