Abstract

Writing in French, the author points to Arnold Geulincx to explain the historical shift in the concepts of philosophic method and first principles. Geulincx' Methodus made use of the synthetic or expositive method, which Descartes had regarded as inferior to his own analytic one, but which he had employed, upon request, in Reply to Objections II. Spinoza, presumably inspired by Geulincx' example, was later to claim demonstrativeness for the mos geometricus.--W. L. M.