Discourse on the Method in the context of "Age of Enlightenment"

The Latin cogito, ergo sum, usually translated into English as "I think, therefore I am", is the "first principle" of René Descartes' philosophy. He originally published it in French as je pense, donc je suis in his 1637 Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed. It later appeared in Latin in his Principles of Philosophy, and a similar phrase (Ego sum, ego existo, 'I am, I exist') also featured prominently in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The dictum is also sometimes referred to as the cogito. As Descartes explained in a margin note, "we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt." In the posthumously published The Search for Truth by Natural Light, he expressed this insight as dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I am—or what is the same—I think, therefore I am."). Antoine Léonard Thomas, in a 1765 essay in honor of Descartes, presented it as dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.").

Descartes's statement became a fundamental element of Western philosophy, as it purported to provide a certain foundation for knowledge in the face of radical doubt. While other knowledge could be a figment of imagination, deception, or mistake, Descartes asserted that the very act of doubting one's own existence served—at minimum—as proof of the reality of one's own mind; there must be a thinking entity—in this case the self—for there to be a thought.

La Dioptrique (usually translated in English as Optics, or more literally Dioptrics) is a short treatise by René Descartes. It was published in 1637 included in one of the Essays written with Discourse on the Method. In this essay Descartes uses various models to understand the properties of light. This essay is known as Descartes' greatest contribution to optics, as it is the first publication of the Law of Refraction.