Descartes Publishes the Discourse on Method

Timeline

1. 1633–1635Dutch Republic · Dutch RepublicAfter the Roman Inquisition convicted Galileo, Descartes halted publication of his nearly finished The World and instead wrote a more cautious French work centered on method and scientific examples, to avoid directly challenging the geocentric ban.
2. 1636Leiden · LeidenAfter failing to reach terms with the Elzevirs, Descartes contracted with Leiden printer Jan Maire. Frans van Schooten the Younger rushed the woodcut diagrams for optics and geometry, completing the Optics first; the Dutch privilege was granted on 20 December 1636, while the French copyright still awaited processing in Paris.
3. 1637Leiden · LeidenThe Discourse appeared anonymously in French, followed by the Optics, Meteorology, and Geometry. Part Four proposed 'I think, therefore I am'; the Geometry matched algebraic equations with curves, founding analytic geometry; the Optics published the sine form of the law of refraction.
4. 1637–1641Europe · EuropeThe French text was accessible to non-scholastic readers, and Mersenne and others quickly organized discussions and rebuttals. Descartes later extended the method into a full first-philosophy system in the Latin Meditations and Principles of Philosophy, while analytic geometry became the computational language of seventeenth-century mathematical physics.