One day some philosophers decided to take a walk down through history. They had passed through ancient Greece and Rome, continued on through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and had come to the 16th and 17th centuries, where they stumbled upon the Scientific Revolution. “What intricate design these experimental instruments and practices display!” they exclaimed. The philosophers marveled at the intelligent order manifested in the theories and explanations. Where could all this design have come from, of a sudden? They agreed that it was virtually a priori true that there can be no design without an intelligent designer, but who or what could the intelligent designer be in this case? Since the preceding generations of inquirers had done nothing comparable, they concluded that these 17th-century natural philosophers had hit upon some intelligent method of discovery, a tool that amplified their intellect. For how else, short of appealing to a direct revelation from God to the innovators, could they possibly explain this explosion of successful problem-solving activity? How else could they account for the production of so much epistemically interesting design, following upon centuries of sterility?

Now this is a true³ story, or at least an archetype with actual instances! A variant of the story is already true of Descartes, as we shall see, who, along with Bacon, is considered a founder of modern scientific method. Bacon died in 1627 and Descartes in 1650, so neither was in a position to reflect on the later work of Newton, Leibniz, and company.