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Thomas
Hobbes.
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Born at Malmesbury, in Wiltshire,
from his youth he journeyed in many European countries, contacting
numerous savants on the Continent, including Galileo, whom
he visited in Arcetri, and Mersenne. In his home land, Hobbes was
an active participant in the political struggles which were then afflicting
England. A tenacious supporter of the King, he was forced, in 1640,
to retire to France, where he remained until 1651. After the Restoration,
he enjoyed the protection of Charles II, whom he had taught mathematics,
and although occasionally involved in disputes and controversies on
a variety of subjects, was able to dedicate himself entirely to intellectual
pursuits.
Amongst the most important philosophers
of the modern age, Hobbes made great contributions above all in the
field of political theory - in which he announced an original and
drastic absolutist notion of state power - in logic and the philosophy
of nature. In general, his entire thought is dominated by a rigidly
mechanistic system. On this basis, in every field of research, one
must privilege the identification of laws which are similar to those
already established, in a strictly mathematical form, by Galileo in
the context of mechanical science. In this sense, for Hobbes, the
basic categories to be used for the analysis of reality, in any context,
are represented by concepts of body and movement. This
latter should be understood in terms of a deductively constructed
mathematical relation, expressing the formal principle of organisation
of the phenomenon under scrutiny.
This tendency towards analytical and formal
investigation lead Hobbes to develop a critical attitude towards experimentation.
With this in mind, in 1661, he composed his Dialogus physicus de
natura aeris, a brief but pungent attack against the pneumatic
experiments performed by Robert Boyle. It's not surprising, then,
that despite his reputation and prestige, Hobbes was excluded from
the infant Royal Society, of which he had a far from positive opinion,
declaring - probably with a pinch of poorly hidden resentment - that
he counted himself lucky not to have been called to take part.
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