Indeed, in contrast to many authors before and after him, Descartes never showed any interest in the long-established metaphysical interpretation of substances as being causal factors of natural change. Finally, having first redefined the notion of substance in the Principia, Descartes would completely abandon making use of this notion in his later years. Likewise, in his early works, Descartes consistently avoided referring to causal operators. Descartes’s Meditations centred around epistemological questions rather than non-human intelligences or the life of the mind beyond this world. It does so by linking Descartes’s method to his transformation of the notion of substance. This article discusses Descartes’s preferred focus on morally and theologically neutral subjects and points out the impact of this focus on the scientific status of theology.
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