French philosophy evinces a conflict of methodology that may be traced at least as far back as Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) and René Descartes (1596–1650). Montaigne is noted for rejecting scholasticism in favor of a philosophy conceived of as the practice of free judgment. He believed that insofar as human conduct does not obey universal rules, but a great diversity of rules, it follows that universal ‘reason’, ‘truth’, or ‘justice’ must be subject to doubt. Thus Montaigne pursues knowledge through experience; the meaning of concepts must be related to common language or to historical examples. This leads him to moderate his use of philosophical language and to prefer phrases such as ‘perhaps’, ‘to some extent’, ‘they say’, ‘I think’ when making philosophical claims. Descartes, widely thought to have been influenced by Montaigne's skepticism, nevertheless moves in the opposite direction emphasizing judgment based on universal rules such as logic rather than experience. Descartes' interest in mathematics is evident, leading him to originate what are now called Cartesian coordinates (a system for representing the relative positions of points in a plane or in space). Most importantly, ‘Descartes believed that a system of knowledge should start from first principles and proceed mathematically to a series of deductions, reducing physics to mathematics.’ Thus we have one skepticism, but two radically different solutions.