Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

DOI

10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.10.010

Abstract

In this paper, I offer an alternative account of the relationship of Hobbesian geometry to natural philosophy by arguing that mixed mathematics provided Hobbes with a model for thinking about it. In mixed mathematics, one may borrow causal principles from one science and use them in another science without there being a deductive relationship between those two sciences. Natural philosophy for Hobbes is mixed because an explanation may combine observations from experience (the ‘that’) with causal principles from geometry (the ‘why’). My argument shows that Hobbesian natural philosophy relies upon suppositions that bodies plausibly behave according to these borrowed causal principles from geometry, acknowledging that bodies in the world may not actually behave this way. First, I consider Hobbes's relation to Aristotelian mixed mathematics and to Isaac Barrow's broadening of mixed mathematics in Mathematical Lectures (1683). I show that for Hobbes maker's knowledge from geometry provides the ‘why’ in mixed-mathematical explanations. Next, I examine two explanations from De corpore Part IV: (1) the explanation of sense in De corpore 25.1-2; and (2) the explanation of the swelling of parts of the body when they become warm in De corpore 27.3. In both explanations, I show Hobbes borrowing and citing geometrical principles and mixing these principles with appeals to experience.

Comments

Publisher Acknowledgement

Pre-print version to be published in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. The published version is available at the Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (Elsevier) website:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368115001600

Adams, Marcus P. 2016. “Hobbes on Natural Philosophy as ‘True Physics’ and Mixed Mathematics,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 56: 43-51 doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2015.10.010

Download

Included in

Philosophy Commons

Share

COinS
 

Terms of Use

This work is made available under the Scholars Archive Terms of Use.