Abstract

We discuss the meaning of the Philosophy of Sciences and the Epistemology of space and time in connection with ideas of R. Descartes, I. Newton and G. W. Leibniz. We prove the significance of the different space-time conceptions by Descartes, Newton and Leibniz in correlation to physics today. Special problems are the meaning of the geometrization of physics suggested by Descartes and by Einstein. Further we discuss the reception of the Leibnizian "Physics of principles" by H. Helmholtz and M. Planck. These receptions became an importance for the problems of "great unification" in physics