Scientific Enlightenment Context By ishvapm Period: 1618 to 1648 The Thirty Years war 1639 Rene Descartes publishes his philosophical Meditations Period: 1642 to 1651 The English Civil War 1651 Thomas Hobbes Leviathan Period: 1668 to 1669 John Locke's Two Treatises of Government 1748 Baron Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws 1756 Voltaire's "Essay on Customs" Period: 1756 to 1763 The Seven Years War 1762 Rousseau's Social Contract 1784 Kant's "What is the Enlightenment" 1798 Thomas Malthus "Essay on the Principle of Population" 17,771 Diderot's Encyclopedia