  There is a manuscript by Galileo, dating from around 1589, an  appropriated commentary on Aristotle's Posterior  Analytics, which shows his concern with methodology, and  regressive analysis, in particular (see Wallace 1992a and 1992b).  Hobbes wrote a chapter on method in the first part of De  Corpore, published in 1655, which offers his own interpretation  of the method of analysis and synthesis, where decompositional forms  of analysis are articulated alongside regressive forms   [Quotations].  But perhaps the most influential account of methodology, from the  middle of the seventeenth century until well into the nineteenth  century, was the fourth part of the Port-Royal Logic, the  first edition of which appeared in 1662 and the final revised edition in 1683. Chapter 2 (which was the first chapter in the first edition) opens as follows: