When he dedicated his Meditations on First Philosophy to “The Most Illustrious Dean and Doctors of the Sacred Faculty of Theology in Paris,” Descartes made an astonishing claim: “I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical [i.e., “scientific”] rather than theological argument.”24 In the clear expectation that they would agree with him, Descartes calmly informed the most distinguished body of theologians in Europe that they were not competent to discuss God. Mathematics and physics would do
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