Infinity and creation: the origin of the controversy between Thomas Hobbes and the Savilian professors Seth Ward and John Wallis

1993 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siegmund Probst
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Foundations Of Mathematics ◽  
Logical Foundations ◽  
Squaring The Circle ◽  
Mathematical Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wallis ◽  
Doubling The Cube

Until recently, historians of mathematics usually agreed in refusing to consider the numerous geometrical publications of Thomas Hobbes as a contribution to the development of mathematics in the seventeenth century. From time to time, one could find statements that although Hobbes did not find new theorems he undoubtedly had profound insights into the logical foundations of mathematics, but these occasional remarks did not encourage historians to go deeper into Hobbes's mathematical thought. In the end, the general conclusion was that Hobbes's preoccupation with squaring the circle, doubling the cube (starting when the philosopher was more than forty years of age), and challenging Euclid's definitions were better ignored, at least in the history of science. In particular, his controversy with the Savilian professors Seth Ward and John Wallis was seen as a ‘deplorable affair’, liable only to damage the reputation of the protagonists.

The Reverend John Wallis, F. R. S. (1616-1703)

1960 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-67 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
John Wallis ◽  
The University ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
Country Town

John Wallis (1616-1703), one of the original Fellows of the Royal Society, was a scholar of amazing versatility. Though born into an age of intellectual giants he rapidly acquired a commanding place even among that brilliant group which has made the seventeenth century illustrious in the history of science. More than once he blazed the trail which led to some epoch-making discovery. When Newton modestly declared ‘If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants’, he no doubt had the name of John WalHs well before his mind. Walks was born on 23 November 1616, at Ashford in East Kent, a country town of which his father was rector. On the death of his father, Wallis was sent to school at Ashford. Later he was moved to Tenter den, where he came under the care of Mr James Movat, and even in his earliest years he distinguished himself by that singular aptitude for learning which was to remain with him till the closing years of his life. At the age of fourteen he went to Felsted, and here he acquired a marked proficiency not only in Latin and Greek, but also in Hebrew. From Felsted he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and although his interest in mathematics dates from this period, he gave no evidence of unusual talent for the subject; this, he complains was because there was no one in the University to direct his studies. Divinity was his dominant interest. In 1640 he was ordained, and four years later he was appointed, together with Adoniram Byfield, Secretary to the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. Possibly on account of his ecclesiastical duties, which absorbed much of his time and energy, his early promise as a mathematician still remained unfulfilled.

Controversies on Mathematics between Wallis, Hobbes and Barrow

1929 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-151
Author(s):  
Florian Cajori
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Geometric Structure ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Squaring The Circle ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
John Wallis

In the writings of John Wallis, Thomas Hobbes and Isaac Barrow, persons proficient in the dramatic art will find rich material for a mathematical tragedy or comedy. Hobbes, the aged philosopher superficially versed: in all fields human knowledge, presumes to show mere professors of mathematics that a philosopher from his wider outlook easily disposes of problems which had baffled mathematicians or ages-such problems as squaring the circle, trisection of an angle and the duplication of the cube. Wallis, young and ambitious, a highly trained mathematician and gifted also: in the power of satire and ridicule, demolishes Hobbes' geometric structure, leaving no stone unturned1. Barrow, the theologian and mathematician, assuming the position of a superior judge, takes under advisement the various mathematical views advanced by Hobbes and Wallis, and finds something to praise and much to criticise in the philosophy of both. Hobbes the septuagenarian emerges from the conflict battered and torn. Wallis shows little outward evidence of the struggle, but inwardly repents for the mass ridicule which he had heaped upon the aged philosopher; Wallis refuses to have hifi controversial articles against Hobbes included in his collected works. Such in crude outline is the material available for the dramatist. We note a few of the topics discussed by these distinguished seventeenth century thinkers.

scholarly journals Batalia „szklanej rury”. Współzawodnictwo „starego” i „nowego” w debacie wokół doświadczeń z próżnią z 1647 roku

1970 ◽  
pp. 167-190
Author(s):  
Anna Kołos
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Discourse ◽  
Blaise Pascal ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Republic Of Letters ◽  
Knowledge Formation ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Republic

The article addresses the issue of one of the more intense and captivating European scientific disputes, likewise common to Poland, in the era of the seventeenth-century transformation of knowledge formation, which centered around the possibility of the existence of vacuum, and which culminated in 1647. The fundamental aim of the article comes down to an attempt to determine a position in the scientific-cognitive debate, from which the pro and anti-Polish and European representatives of The Republic of Letters (Respublica literaria)  could voice their opinions. In the course of the analysis of the mid-seventeenth century scientific discourse, the reflections of Valeriano Magni, Torricelli, Jan Brożek, Wojciech Wijuk Kojałowicz, Blaise Pascal, Giovanni Elefantuzzi, Jacob Pierius, and Pierre Guiffart are subjected to close scrutiny. From the perspective of contextualism in the history of science, experiments demonstrating the existence of vacuum are perceived as anomalies that fall into the crisis of normal science, largely based on Aristotle’s physics. The conflict between the old and the new is not, however, presented as a battle of progression with epigonism, but merely as a contest between opposing individual views and the concept of science, which before the formation of the new paradigm was accompanied by ambiguous verification criteria.

scholarly journals Making the States’ Translation (1637): Orthodox Calvinist Biblical Criticism in the Dutch Republic

2017 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-463
Author(s):  
Dirk van Miert
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Dutch Republic ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
New Science ◽  
The Past ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
History Of

In the study of the history of biblical scholarship, there has been a tendency among historians to emphasize biblical philology as a force which, together with the new philosophy and the new science of the seventeenth century, caused the erosion of universal scriptural authority from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. A case in point is Jonathan Israel's impressive account of how biblical criticism in the hands of Spinoza paved the way for the Enlightenment. Others who have argued for a post-Spinozist rise of biblical criticism include Frank Manuel, Adam Sutcliffe, and Travis Frampton. These scholars have built upon longer standing interpretations such as those of Hugh Trevor-Roper and Paul Hazard. However, scholars in the past two decades such as Anthony Grafton, Scott Mandelbrote and Jean-Louis Quantin have altered the picture of an exegetical revolution inaugurated by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Spinoza (1632–1677), and Richard Simon (1638–1712). These heterodox philosophers in fact relied on philological research that had been largely developed in the first half of the seventeenth century. Moreover, such research was carried out by scholars who had no subversive agenda. This is to say that the importance attached to a historical and philological approach to the biblical text had a cross-confessional appeal, not just a radical-political one.

The Dawn of Scientific Biography

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-230
Author(s):  
Michael Segre
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Scientific Biography ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
History Of ◽  
Literary Model

Abstract This article endeavors to contribute to a better understanding of the literary contexts of early biographies of scientists written during the Scientific Revolution. To what extent are these biographies influenced by stereotypes that are an inadequate fit for modern history of science? Its claim is that there was, indeed, a literary model for biographies of scientists, and that this model had deep roots in Biblical and classical literature. While the model was similar to that used in Renaissance biographies of artists, it did not fully emerge until as late as the seventeenth century.

The Indivisibles of the Continuum

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-122
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Jesseph
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Original Formulation ◽  
Infinitesimal Calculus ◽  
History Of ◽  
John Wallis ◽  
The Continuum

This chapter considers some significant developments in seventeenth-century mathematics which are part of the pre-history of the infinitesimal calculus. In particular, I examine the “method of indivisibles” proposed by Bonaventura Cavalieri and various developments of this method by Evangelista Torricelli, Gilles Personne de Roberval, and John Wallis. From the beginning, the method of indivisibles faced objections that aimed to show that it was either conceptually ill-founded (in supposing that the continuum could be composed of dimensionless points) or that its application would lead to error. I show that Cavalieri’s original formulation of the method attempted to sidestep the question of whether a continuous magnitude could be composed of indivisibles, while Torricelli proposed to avoid paradox by taking indivisibles to have both non-zero (yet infinitesimal) magnitude and internal structure. In contrast, Roberval and Wallis showed significantly less interest in addressing foundational issues and were content to maintain that the method could (at least in principle) be reduced to Archimedean exhaustion techniques.

History of Science and Medicine

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Staffan Müller-Wille
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Medical Sciences ◽  
Growth Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
The Relationship

This article explores what both historians of medicine and historians of science could gain from a stronger entanglement of their respective research agendas. It first gives a cursory outline of the history of the relationship between science and medicine since the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century. Medicine can very well be seen as a domain that was highly productive of scientific knowledge, yet in ways that do not fit very well with the historiographic framework that dominated the history of science. Furthermore, the article discusses two alternative historiographical approaches that offer ways of thinking about the growth of knowledge that fit well with the cumulative and translational patterns that characterize the development of the medical sciences, and also provide an understanding of concepts such as ‘health’ and ‘life’.

Al-Bīrūnī on Hermetic Forgery

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-66
Author(s):  
Kevin van Bladel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reception History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hermes Trismegistus

AbstractIn Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recognized that the Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were inventions of recent centuries falsely written in the name of the ancient sage of legend. He did, however, accept the existence of a historical Hermes and even attempted to establish his chronology. This article presents al-Bīrūnī’s statements about this and contextualizes his view of the Arabic Hermetica as he derived it from Arabic chronographic sources. Al-Bīrūnī’s argument is compared with the celebrated seventeenth-century European criticism of the Greek Hermetica by Isaac Casaubon. It documents a hitherto unknown but significant event in the reception history of the Hermetica and helps to illustrate al-Bīrūnī’s attitude toward the history of science.

scholarly journals Revisiting the Early Modern Philosophical Canon

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
LISA SHAPIRO
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Questions

ABSTRACT:I reflect critically on the early modern philosophical canon in light of the entrenchment and homogeneity of the lineup of seven core figures: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. After distinguishing three elements of a philosophical canon—a causal story, a set of core philosophical questions, and a set of distinctively philosophical works—I argue that recent efforts contextualizing the history of philosophy within the history of science subtly shift the central philosophical questions and allow for a greater range of figures to be philosophically central. However, the history of science is but one context in which to situate philosophical works. Looking at the historical context of seventeenth-century philosophy of mind, one that weaves together questions of consciousness, rationality, and education, does more than shift the central questions—it brings new ones to light. It also shows that a range of genres can be properly philosophical and seamlessly diversifies the central philosophers of the period.

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