The Wax and the Mechanical Mind: Reexamining Hobbes's Objections to Descartes's<i>Meditations</i>

Adams, Marcus

doi:10.1080/09608788.2014.893226

Cited by 52 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…11 It assumes that Hobbes 5 See Aubrey 1898, 1:332, andBerhardt 1986. 6 See, e.g., Sacksteder 1981, 1980, Talaska 1988, Hattab 2014, and Adams 2014 See, e.g., Adams 2014 andPettit 2008, chap. 2.…”

Section: Hobbes and Geometrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…9 See, e.g., Popkin 1992, 9-49, andTuck 1988. 10 See also Adams 2014Adams , 2016 Historians of science have not made this error for several decades, but the presentism is still part of work on Hobbes's philosophy of language and politics, and thus often affects treatments of the unity of his system; see, e.g., Daston andStolleis 2008, 7, andDeigh 1996. Mostly, the problem is one of omission. By not specifying the extension of "geometry," contemporary authors invite misinterpretation.…”

Section: Hobbes and Geometrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He also repeatedly praised Euclid, e.g., in the preface to De Corpore. For the causal definitions Hobbes sees as missing from Euclid, see Adams 2014. what we understand by "mathematization." I begin by considering how mathematics was used by Hobbes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…M&S skirt this issue here, and so will I. For an account that stresses that causal reading, see Adams .…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…He also repeatedly praised Euclid, e.g., in the preface to De Corpore . For the causal definitions Hobbes sees as missing from Euclid, see Adams .…”

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confidence: 99%

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Hobbes on the Order of Sciences: A Partial Defense of the Mathematization Thesis

Biener¹

2016

The Southern J of Philosophy

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Accounts of Hobbes's “system” of sciences oscillate between two extremes. On one extreme, the system is portrayed as wholly axiomatic‐deductive, with statecraft being deduced in an unbroken chain from the principles of logic and first philosophy. On the other, it is portrayed as rife with conceptual cracks and fissures, with Hobbes's statements about its deductive structure amounting to mere window‐dressing. This paper argues that a middle way is found by conceiving of Hobbes's Elements of Philosophy on the model of a mixed‐mathematical science, not the model provided by Euclid's Elements of Geometry. I suggest that Hobbes is a test case for understanding early‐modern system construction more generally, as inspired by the structure of the applied mathematical sciences. This approach has the additional virtue of bolstering in a novel way the thesis that the transformation of philosophy in the long seventeenth century was indebted to mathematics, a thesis that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

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Section: Hobbes and Geometrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hobbes and Geometrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…M&S skirt this issue here, and so will I. For an account that stresses that causal reading, see Adams .…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…He also repeatedly praised Euclid, e.g., in the preface to De Corpore . For the causal definitions Hobbes sees as missing from Euclid, see Adams .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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