The term the “New Philosophy” was used to designate experimental or empirical science. The Renaissance itself had done much to widen the mental horizons of the age, and induce newer modes of thought.

The discoveries of Columbus and the other navigators and explorers had changed the map of the world and fired imagination with immense possibilities and opened out new vistas. The re-discovery of Greco- Roman humanistic culture, art and literature, gave a knockout blow to medieval ascetic and other worldly outlook.

The medieval cosmology and philosophy were shaken by the rise of the new philosophy. The ‘New philosophy’ was already catchword at the beginning of the century, and by the Restoration scientific experiment was achieving a fashionable status.