The Arse Poetica of Thomas Hobbes: On the Composition and Reception of De Mirabilibus Pecci

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-357
Author(s):  
Jessica Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Geological Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Mock Epic

This article provides a two-part study of Thomas Hobbes’ De Mirabilibus Pecci, a Latin poem composed very early in his career. Part one examines the poem as a product of Hobbes’ participation in the recreational literary culture of Caroline England, in particular analysing the influence of mock-epic and burlesque traditions that would continue to shape Hobbes’ writings but also studying how the poem offers compelling evidence for his early preoccupation with the laws of motion, with geological processes such as the creation and erosion of stone formations, and with the philosophy of Lucretius. Part two recounts the extraordinary history of the poem’s reception in the last decades of the seventeenth century. The poem’s familiarity among Hobbes’ allies and adversaries alike helped to cement his reputation as a master of scoffing and drollery, as an opponent of the experimental science practiced by the Royal Society, and as a freethinker or atheist.

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.

Political Science

2018 ◽  
pp. 104-133
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Gulliver's Travels ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
History Of ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Late seventeenth-century natural philosophers inherited the conjunction of politics and science at the core of Francis Bacon’s experimental project. Thomas Sprat’s The History of the Royal Society, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels use the conventions of literary knowledge to express their scientific-political visions, insisting that natural philosophy cannot be understood apart from the political institutions enabling and enabled by its practice and promulgation. These writers use the experimental imagination to envisage, in turn, civil government, absolutist monarchy, and imperialism. Sprat advances scientific triumphalism and a model for schooling gentlemen into civil society.

Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society

1980 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Social Basis ◽  
History Of ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Natural Philosophers

Central to Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society was the description and justification of the method adopted and advocated by the Fellows of the Society, for it was thought that it was their method which distinguished them from ancients, dogmatists, sceptics, and contemporary natural philosophers such as Descartes. The Fellows saw themselves as furthering primarily a novel method, rather than a system, of philosophy, and the History gave expression to this corporate self-perception. However, the History's description of their method was not necessarily accurate. Rather, as will be argued below, by a combination of subtle misrepresentation and selective exposition, Sprat portrayed a method which would further the aims of social and ecclesiastical stability and material prosperity, essential for the Royal Society since its continued existence depended upon the creation of a social basis for the institutionalized pursuit of natural philosophy. Some link had to be forged between the activities of the Society and the intellectual and social aspirations of the Restoration. To understand the intent and meaning of Sprat's History and the method there portrayed, we must therefore look to the institutional needs which it fulfilled.

Shadwell and the Virtuosi

PMLA ◽  
1929 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 472-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claude Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Material ◽  
Thomas Sprat ◽  
The Town ◽  
Samuel Pepys

On may 30, 1667, Samuel Pepys attended a meeting of the Royal Society at Arundell House where he found “much company, indeed very much company, in expectation of the Duchesse of Newcastle, who had been desired to be invited to the Society; and was, after much debate, pro and con., it seems many being against it; and we do believe,” he observes, “the town will be full of ballads of it.” Thomas Sprat, in his history of the Society published the same year, after pointing out to “Wits and Railleurs” that experimental science will afford them new material for their “wit” and fancy, declares:I acknowledge that we ought to have a great dread of their power: I confess I believe that New Philosophy need not (as Caesar) fear the pale, or the melancholy, as much as the humorous, and the merry: For they perhaps by making it ridiculous, becaus it is new, and becaus they themselves are unwilling to take pains about it, may do it more injury than all the arguments of our severe and frowning and dogmatical Adversaries.

Architecture, Anatomy, and the New Science in Early Modern London

2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 475-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Robert Hooke ◽  
New Science ◽  
Early Modern London

Focuses on an important but overlooked building in late seventeenth-century London: the College of Physicians on Warwick Lane designed by the scientist and architect Robert Hooke in the 1670s. The building, which was commissioned in response to the previous college’s destruction in the Great Fire of London in 1666, was itself demolished in the nineteenth century. In this article, Matthew Walker argues that the conception and design of Hooke’s college had close links with the early Royal Society and its broader experimental philosophical program. This came about through the agency of Hooke—the society’s curator—as well as the prominence of the college’s physicians in the experimental philosophical group in its early years. By analyzing Hooke’s design for the college, and its prominent anatomy theater in particular, this article thus raises broader questions about architecture’s relationship with medicine and experimental science in early modern London.

A Brief Semantic History of Securitas

Security ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
John T. Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Sense Of Security ◽  
Positive Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Semantic History ◽  
Cultural Connotations ◽  
Historical Usage

What does the term “security” express? What are or have been its semantic functions: its shifting cultural connotations and its divergent discursive values? This chapter examines the figures and metaphors that have been deployed to think about security across the ages. It outlines the main stations along the word's complex itinerary through historical usage. It begins with a cursory overview that marks the major turning points of this history, beginning with ancient Rome and concluding with seventeenth-century Europe. Among the topics covered is the positive sense of security that established its position as a central topic in political philosophy in the work of Thomas Hobbes. Throughout, the affirmation of security as a good is fundamentally connected with the power of sovereignty to alleviate the cares and concerns of its subjects. The state emerges as an institution that protects its citizens from all varieties of existential threats, from external aggression as well as from internal discord.

Murat Kamaletdinov and the struggle for acceptance of the thrust-nappe theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-115
Author(s):  
Iskhak M. Farkhutdinov ◽  
Rustem A. Ismagilov ◽  
Anvar M. Farkhutdinov ◽  
Leyla M. Farkhutdinova
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mineral Deposits ◽  
The Urals ◽  
Geological Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Oil Gas ◽  
Geologic Processes

This article describes the confrontation between fixist and mobilistic ideas in the USSR in the twentieth century. The history of discovery of the Urals thrust-nappe structure and the creation of the thrust-nappe theory are outlined. The fundamentals of the thrust-nappe theory are considered. These fundamentals allow for the explanation of geological processes and phenomena from the standpoint of mobilism. The geologic processes of interest include orogenesis, folding, magmatism, metamorphism and the formation of mineral deposits such as oil, gas, metal ores, coal and others.

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.

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