Changing canons of mathematical and physical intelligibility in the later 17th century (Q761429)

The world machine emerging from the Scientific Revolution was mechanically intelligible and mathematically transcendental; nature was better understood because it was mechanical and mechanics better understood since it was mathematical. This development had profound implications for the internal mathematical intelligibility. There is a drastic change in the way mathematicians view their own subject during the second half of the 17th century, a change which to a lesser extent a change in actual knowledge but more a conceptual change. This change in mathematical intelligibility results form a strong interaction with the emerging mechanical concepts. Mechanics and mathematics helped each other to intelligibility in a bootstrapping mechanism. The present paper treats some crucial aspects of this process of changing canons in mathematical intelligibility, leaning heavily on the examples of Descartes (closed algebraic expressions are mathematically intelligible) and Leibniz (algebraic equations are basically intelligible in themselves).