“The one who contributed most to break down the barrier between physical method and metaphysical method, and to confound their domains, so clearly distinguished in the Aristotelian philosophy, was surely Descartes.”
Notice sur les Titres et Travaux scientifiques de Pierre Duhem rédigée par lui-même lors de sa candidature à l'Académie des sciences (mai 1913), The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (1906)
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Pierre Duhem 8
French physicist, historian of science 1861–1916Related quotes

"Every Time We Say Goodbye" in Sight and Sound [London] ( June 1991)
Context: What is an artist? A provincial who finds himself somewhere between a physical reality and a metaphysical one... It’s this in-between that I’m calling a province, this frontier country between the tangible world and the intangible one — which is really the realm of the artist.

“Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism.”
III, p.36
Science and the Unseen World (1929)

J.D. Bernal (1937) "Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science" in: Science and Society, Volume II, No. 1, Winter 1937; Online ( here http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1930s/dsams.htm) on Marxists Internet Archive (2002).
“The realist method starts with the whole in order to distinguish the parts.”
Methodical Realism
Source: Mathematics for the Nonmathematician (1967), pp. 255-256.

“I cannot contribute anything to this world because I only have one method: agony.”
Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)