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One of the chief obstacles that all mechanistic theories have faced is providing a mechanistic explanation of the human mind; Descartes, for one, endorsed dualism in spite of endorsing a completely mechanistic conception of the material world because he argued that mechanism and the notion of a mind are logically incompatible.
This view predetermined Hobbes’s method of deductive reasoning, which involved the application of geometry, Galilean scientific concepts and definition. [5] This scientific method stresses the importance of first establishing well-defined principles of human nature (moral philosophy) and ‘deducing’ aspects of political life from this. [1]
Thomas Hobbes (/ h ɒ b z / HOBZ; 5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) was an English philosopher, best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, in which he expounds an influential formulation of social contract theory. [4]
De Cive is the first of a trilogy of works written by Hobbes dealing with human knowledge, the other two works in the trilogy being De Corpore ('On the Body'), published in 1655, and De Homine ('On Man'), published in 1658.
Hobbes in De Corpore states that the subject of philosophy is devoted to "bodies". He clarifies this by division: in English translation, natural philosophy is concerned with concept of "natural body" (Latin: corpus naturale), while the bodies called commonwealths are the concern of "civil philosophy". [5]
But in the new modern approach of Bacon and Hobbes, and before them Machiavelli (who however never clothed his criticism of the Aristotelian approach in medieval terms like "laws of nature"), [42] such laws of nature are quite different to human laws: they no longer imply any sense of better or worse, but simply how things really are, and, when ...
Corpuscularianism remained a dominant theory for centuries and was blended with alchemy by early scientists such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton in the 17th century. In his work The Sceptical Chymist (1661), Boyle abandoned the Aristotelian ideas of the classical elements —earth, water, air, and fire—in favor of corpuscularianism.
Instead, Hobbes posits that man's own agency is the place for natural philosophy, once again drawing on geometry: "'as we know, that, if the figure shown be a circle, then any straight line through the centre shall divide it into two equal parts.' 'And this,' Hobbes said, 'is the knowledge required in a philosopher.'" [26] Thus, belief played ...