Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Born: 5 April 1588 in Westport, Malmesbury, Wiltshire, England
Died: 4 Dec 1679 in Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, England

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Hobbes was the author of Leviathan (1651 and was a renowned philosopher and political theorist. Educated at Oxford, where he graduated in 1608, he then journyed on the continent of Europe and visited Galileo , Mersenne, Gassendi and Roberval.

Hobbes spent many periods in England and on the continent. He was in contact with Mersenne and his group on a number of these occasions, in particular the time he spent following 1640 when he feared for his safety in England. He became interested in light and wrote Tractatus opticus which was published by Mersenne .

He wrote on geometry, not always correctly as De Morgan pointed out, but he loved the subject. However Wallis's Algebra he described as a scab of symbols which disfigured the page as if a hen had been scraping there .

Hobbes attacked Wallis and others in Six Lessons to the Professors of Mathematics in the University of Oxford (1656). In 1660 Hobbes attacked the 'new' methods of mathematical analysis. In Dialogus Physicus, sive de Natura Aeris (1661) he attacked Boyle and those setting up the Royal Society. Wallis replied with unfair charges of disloyalty but Hobbes ended the argument with Mr. Hobbes Considered in His Loyalty, Religion, Reputation, and Manners (1662).

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. K Brown (ed.), Hobbes studies (Oxford, 1965).
  4. G C Robertson, Hobbes (1886, reprinted 1971).
  5. R S Peters, Hobbes (2nd ed., 1967).
  6. C H Hinnant, Thomas Hobbes: A Reference Guide (1980).
  7. H Pycior, Mathematics and philosophy : Wallis, Hobbes, Barrow and Berkeley, Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 265-287. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996