The most influential approach to studying the so-called scientific revolution has been to seek its causes through a history of ideas. Alexandre Koyré’s work is one of the best examples of that line of inquiry. Unfortunately, such methods have led most historians of science to overlook – or even to consciously avoid – examination of the ways in which changes in material life affected cultural values, which in the early modern period shifted the attention of natural philosophers from seeking out first causes to describing “matters of fact” in precise detail. The kind of scientific activities evident in Amsterdam show such changes clearly. In an oration of one of the best Dutch philosophers of the 1630s, Caspar Barlaeus, the activities of commerce and science were seen not only to support one another but to flow from the same source, a kind of love of investigating the world. In the commercial milieu of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, the pursuit of “the good” became increasingly associated with “goods”;consequently, “speculative philosophy” became increasingly associated with the production, accumulation, and exchange of accurate information, which changed to methods and content of natural philosophy. Even Descartes was persuaded by the power of this view.