We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
THE TURN AWAY FROM HUMANISM
While Hobbes was initially formed by the rhetorical culture of Renaissance humanism, there is no doubt that in the 1630s he began to desert the studia humanitatis in favour of a different kind of scientia, and at the same time to react strongly against his earlier intellectual allegiances. The explanation usually offered for this change of direction focuses on Aubrey's muchquoted anecdote about Hobbes's sudden discovery of geometrical method:
Being in a gentleman's library in …, Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47 El. libri I. He read the proposition. ‘By G–,’ sayd he, ‘this is impossible!’ So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with geometry.
Aubrey states that this epiphany occurred when Hobbes was forty years old, thereby implying that the library in question must have been that of the Devonshires. But Hobbes himself tells us in his prose Vita that it was in the course of his visit to France with the son of Sir Gervase Clifton in 1629 that ‘I first began to look into Euclid's Elements.’ Hobbes's account tallies with Aubrey's, however, in treating the moment as one of farreaching significance.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
