 Unsurprisingly, Wolff sets up his distinctive emphasis on experience and introduces his innovations in philosophical method in conscious opposition to his rationalist predecessors. He faults Descartes, for instance, for attempting to posit universal metaphysical principles “from which one will deduce through the mere understanding everything that is possible in nature” (Wolff 1723 [Preface]). Instead, Wolff recommends near the end of the German Logic that the philosopher should be trained 