
Hobbes's Two Sciences
Politics, Geometry, and the Structure of Philosophy
Marcus P. Adams(Author)
Oxford University Press
Published on 8. April 2025
Book
Hardback
224 pages
978-0-19-892468-5 (ISBN)
Description
Seventeenth-Century Thinker Thomas Hobbes maintained that his philosophy constituted a unified system, but in what precise sense did he think that the branches of his philosophy were unified? This question has provoked extensive scholarship over the last half-century. Answering it is essential not only to understanding Hobbes's philosophy generally, but how one answers it significantly impacts our understanding of the Leviathan, his most influential work, and of the Laws of Nature, the foundation of his political philosophy.
Hobbes's Two Sciences answers the question of philosophical unificiation by situating Hobbes's politics within his account of scientific knowledge as constructed by humans—an epistemology founded on the idea that makers have special access to causal knowledge—and by demonstrating that the relationship between pure and mixed mathematics provided him with a model for thinking about relationships between geometry and natural philosophy and between politics and history. Marcus P. Adams explores how this understanding of Hobbes's systematic philosophy impacts three long-standing areas of scholarship on Hobbes and the History of Early Modern Philosophy and provides a new view on Hobbes's system .
Hobbes's Two Sciences answers the question of philosophical unificiation by situating Hobbes's politics within his account of scientific knowledge as constructed by humans—an epistemology founded on the idea that makers have special access to causal knowledge—and by demonstrating that the relationship between pure and mixed mathematics provided him with a model for thinking about relationships between geometry and natural philosophy and between politics and history. Marcus P. Adams explores how this understanding of Hobbes's systematic philosophy impacts three long-standing areas of scholarship on Hobbes and the History of Early Modern Philosophy and provides a new view on Hobbes's system .
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
513 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-892468-5 (9780198924685)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
01/2025
OUP eBook
€71.49
Available for download
Person
Marcus P. Adams is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany and former Associate Editor of the journal Hobbes Studies. His research focuses on perception and natural philosophy in Early Modern Philosophy, in particular these areas in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and Margaret Cavendish. He has edited A Companion to Hobbes (2021), and his papers have appeared in journals such as British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, and Philosophers' Imprint.
Content
1: Introduction: The Unity of Hobbes's Philosophy
2: Prudential Knowledge from Sense and the Mechanical Mind
3: Scientific Knowledge from Making and the Mechanical Mind
4: Demonstrating Scientific Knowledge in Geometry and Civil Philosophy
5: Hobbesian Natural Philosophy as Mixed Mathematics
6: Experience in Hobbesian Civil Philosophy and Civil History
2: Prudential Knowledge from Sense and the Mechanical Mind
3: Scientific Knowledge from Making and the Mechanical Mind
4: Demonstrating Scientific Knowledge in Geometry and Civil Philosophy
5: Hobbesian Natural Philosophy as Mixed Mathematics
6: Experience in Hobbesian Civil Philosophy and Civil History