Like Galileo (1564-1642), Descartes advocated a form mathematical and geometric reductionism: by explaining complex physical systems in terms of simple, universal principles, the moderns hope to surpass even the wildest dreams of the ambitious ancients in creating a science capable of improving nature. Like Bacon (1561-1626), Descartes saw the need for a new approach to knowledge, a method to organize the many new discoveries being made through technological advances and voyages of exploration. The Discourse was originally the preface to three scientific “essays” on geometry, optics and meteorology: as the final parts make clear, Descartes intends it as the manifesto for a new scientific undertaking destined to make us “masters and possessors of nature.” He shares this ambition with his contemporaries. The Discourse is also a key text of the Scientific Revolution. He determined to advance “masked,” presenting his life in the form of a “fable.” As Descartes narrates his disenchantment with the confused diversity of traditional learning and human opinion, even rejecting the testimony of his own senses, he maps out a minimal, modern space of the self, certain initially only of its own existence. As religious controversy continued to divide Christendom from within, with both Catholics and Protestants claiming privileged access to divine truth and the right to kill to defend it, Descartes adopted as his motto Bene vixit, bene qui latuit (“a life well hidden is a life well lived”). Composed in the midst of the Thirty Years War, one of the most destructive conflicts in European history, the Discourse testifies to a desire to retreat from external chaos and establish lasting foundations for order. The Discourse on Method is one of the greatest intellectual autobiographies ever written. Discourse on a Method, Title Page of First Edition, 1637.

A discourse on method rene descartes