Bingo. Good theory can only come by looking out at reality, which is what empiricists like John Locke promoted. In France, the disease of theorizing separate

Bingo. Good theory can only come by looking out at reality, which is what empiricists like John Locke promoted. In France, the disease of theorizing separate from (and eventually in defiance of) reality started with Descartes, and then spread to many subsequent German and French philosophers. Decartes was really just riffing off of Plato (who may have been riffing off Pythagoras), though.