In this work of model clarity, Yves Simon discusses the basic insights of the creators of modern thought: Descartes, Newton, Galileo, Comte, Mach, Meyerson, Bergson, Planck, and the issues at stake in the development of modern science and in the rejection of the Aristotelian physics.

Simon distinguishes between a philosophy of nature and a science of nature -- and grants a real value to both. A discussion of this vexing problem and its application to the modern controversy over determinism and chance raised by modern physics rounds out this philosophical and historical highlighting of man's...