Girard Desargues

Although the proposition that the earth circled the sun met with hostility from the Church (Galileo was censured in 1616 and faced the Inquisition in 1632), mathematicians attempted to explain in rational terms what had been observed experimentally: Desargues and Pascal developed new geometries and Descartes and Fermat laid the basis of algebra. The idea that nature operates through physical laws was extended to other areas of enquiry. Although Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood (1628)