[Descartes, René]

Discours de la methode pour bien construire sa raison, & chercher la verité dans les sciences. Plus la dioptrique, les meteores et la geometrie qui sont des essais de cete Methode. Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637 



4to (7 7/8 x 5 5/8 in.; 200 x 142 mm). Woodcut device on title, woodcut diagrams and initials; a few quires lightly browned and a few light spots. Maroon morocco, blue morocco doublures, edges gilt, by Noulhac.

Michael Sharpe (bookplate)

Dibner, 81; Norman 621; PMM 129; Horblit/Grolier 24

Discours de la methode pour bien construire sa raison, & chercher la verité dans les sciences. Plus la dioptrique, les meteores et la geometrie qui sont des essais de cete Methode. Leiden: Jan Maire, 1637 4to (7 7/8 x 5 5/8 in.; 200 x 142 mm). Woodcut device on title, woodcut diagrams and initials; a few quires lightly browned and a few light spots. Maroon morocco, blue morocco doublures, edges gilt, by Noulhac.
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First edition of this great scientific classic, establishing the primacy of methodical doubt in the examination of nature and thought, and one of the earliest philosophical works in a vernacular language. The phrase "je pense, donc je suis" (p. 33) coming at the end of a day of solitary thought in which all current science and philosophy is doubted, resulted in a program to find self-evident principles upon which to reconstruct the sciences.

The work was published anonymously as the example of Galileo's house-arrest was still fresh in the air, and publication in France would have required censorship. The essays that follow the Discours include his work on optics, meteorology and the introduction of analytic geometry. "From these central propositions in logic, metaphysics and physics came the subsequent enquiries of Locke, Leibniz and Newton; from them stem all modern scientific and philosophic thought" (PMM).