Hattab2014 PDF

+REEHV૷VDQG=DEDUHOOD૷V0HWKRGV$0LVVLQJ/LQN
+HOHQ+DWWDE
Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 52, Number 3, July 2014,

pp. 461-485 (Article)
3XEOLVKHGE\7KH-RKQV+RSNLQV8QLYHUVLW\3UHVV
DOI: 10.1353/hph.2014.0057
For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/hph/summary/v052/52.3.hattab.html
Access provided by Freie Universitaet Berlin (6 May 2015 17:27 GMT)

Hobbes’s and Zabarella’s
Methods: A Missing Link
Helen Hattab*
early modern philosophers commonly appeal to a mathematical method to

demonstrate their philosophical claims. Since such claims are not always followed
by what we would recognize as mathematical proofs, they are often dismissed as
mere rhetoric. René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Benedict de Spinoza are
perhaps the most well-known early modern philosophers who fall into this category.
It is a matter of dispute whether the ordo geometricus amounts to more than a method
of presentation in Spinoza’s philosophy. Descartes and Hobbes clearly appeal to
a method of discovery modeled after geometry, but neither employs it to develop
a heavily quantitative physics. Whereas Descartes’s version of the geometrical
method receives extensive scrutiny, there is far less scholarship on this aspect of
Hobbes’s philosophy. A common point of departure for interpreting Hobbes’s
philosophical/scientific method is Jacopo Zabarella’s regressus, which lies squarely
in the Aristotelian Posterior Analytics tradition developed at the University of Padua,
in the sixteenth century. Whereas parallels between Hobbes’s philosophical method
and the geometrical methods of analysis and synthesis also receive attention, there
appear to be significant differences between the way analysis and synthesis operate
in philosophy versus geometry. Hence the Paduan reading that ties Hobbes’s
philosophical method to Zabarella’s regressus retains its currency.1
Both William Sacksteder and Richard Talaska have made in-depth comparisons between Hobbes’s
1
philosophical method, as laid out in part I, chapter 6 of De Corpore and what Hobbes calls the “art of
the geometricians” or logistica, discussed in part III, chapter 20 of De Corpore and in his Examinatio
et emendatio mathematicae hodierne. These commentators differ because Sacksteder reads logistica as a
distinctive, specific case of Hobbes’s general philosophical method, whereas Talaska takes it to be the
paradigm method Hobbes aims to imitate, as far as he can, in other sciences. However, Sacksteder’s
and Talaska’s extensive examinations of the relevant texts show that, for Hobbes, analysis and synthesis
do not function, in philosophy, as they do in geometry. Hence, despite a broader analogy between
the two methods, both commentators acknowledge key differences. In particular, the philosophical
propositions one arrives at, through analysis, are not convertible in the corresponding synthesis, as
they would be in geometry. Thus additional elements, such as the introduction of hypotheses in the
method of natural philosophy, become necessary to arrive at scientific demonstrations. This paper will
not ponder subtle differences in Sacksteder’s and Talaska’s interpretations. Instead, I grant their points
of agreement and proceed to examine the ways in which contemporaneous discussions of method
* Helen Hattab is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston.
Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 52, no. 3 (2014) 461–486
[461]
462 j o u r n a l o f t h e h i s t o r y o f p h i l o s o p h y 5 2 : 3 J u ly 2 0 1 4
In this paper, I argue that the Paduan reading of Hobbes relies on an overly
narrow understanding of Zabarella’s method, and tends to identify his scientific
method with one small component, the regressus. Zabarella’s wider writings on
method influence subsequent philosophers, most notably Protestant logicians
relevant to Hobbes’s context, who take up and develop Zabarella’s discussion
of method as order. In proposing a new interpretation of Hobbes’s method I
take into account this neglected aspect of Hobbes’s intellectual context. My
interpretation has three distinct advantages over the Paduan reading. First, it
saves Hobbes from the charge of being inconsistent to his stated method in his
particular explanations of natural and political phenomena. Second, it advances
our understanding of the sense in which his method would have been regarded
as “mathematical” although it remains non-quantitative. Third, my approach
illuminates Hobbes’s odd combination of Aristotelian and geometrical elements
within his philosophical system.
In making my case for a fresh approach to Hobbes’s method, I will
simultaneously strengthen the case against the interpretation that treats Hobbes as
advancing some version of Zabarella’s regressus. In section 1, I discuss the relevant
parts of Zabarella’s Liber de Regressu, as I turn to his treatment of the order of
Euclid’s Elements found in Zabarella’s De Methodis. In section 2.1, I show that the
component parts of Hobbes’s method ought not be confused with the resolutive
and compositive phases of Zabarella’s regressus, despite Hobbes’s appropriation
of Aristotelian terminology. In section 2.2, I offer an explanation of Hobbes’s
universal method for attaining scientia simpliciter, as he lays it out in chapter 6 of De
Corpore, and show that its features put it closer to method as order, in Zabarella’s
sense, than to the regressus. Once read this way, Hobbes’s method is saved from
inconsistency. Finally, in section 3, I show that Hobbes’s method can be understood
as both mathematical and Aristotelian, if we read it against the background of
developments and modifications to Zabarella’s views on method as order by
Bartholomaeus Keckerman and Franco Burgersdijk.
1. zabarella’s definition of method and the

problem of euclid’s order
Zabarella first distinguishes between two senses of ‘method’ in the broad sense:
‘method’ can designate both the instrumental habit (the Latin term ‘habitus’ can
mean tendency, habit, or attitude) which is not yet directed to a thing or discipline,
and the discipline to which it is applied.2 Zabarella aims to focus only on the sense
clarify key elements of Hobbes’s philosophical method; see Sacksteder, “Art of the Geometricians,”
131–46; Sacksteder, “Notes,” 643–47; and Talaska, “Analytic and Synthetic,” 207–37.
Here, Zabarella’s main concern is to reconcile the genus shared by method and order (the genus
2
being that it is a type of habitus) with Aristotle’s frequent uses of the term ‘method’ to also designate
the sciences and methods to which the habitus is applied. To account for this apparently inconsistent
use of ‘method,’ Zabarella draws a parallel to logic, which, in On the Nature of Logic, he claimed was
twofold: logic applied to things and logic separated from things. Zabarella claims that in this other
work he showed that the former was not an instrument but scientia, namely applied scientia, whereas
the latter was not scientia but the instrument of the sciences or an instrumental discipline: . . . ibi qui-
dem logicam duplicem esse diximus, unam rebus applicatam, & iam in usu positam; alteram a rebus seiunctam;
hanc scientiam non esse, sed scientiarum instrumentum, seu instrumentalem disciplinam demonstravimus (De
Methodis, Book.I, ch. ii, 135). All citations are to the same edition of the Opera Logica and translations
hobbes’s & zabarella’s methods 463
in which method is divorced from objects. In other words, he will not treat of
method in mathematics or natural philosophy, but rather of the nature of method.
He defines method in this sense as “an instrumental habitus of the intellect, which
aids us in attaining knowledge of things.”3 Next, Zabarella divides method, taken
broadly, into order and method properly speaking. The task of method in the
proper sense is to lead us from a known thing to knowledge of another, unknown
thing, as when we are led from substantial change to knowledge of prime matter
or, from eternal motion to knowledge of an eternal unmoved mover. The regressus,
a particular form of scientific proof, falls under this second sense of method.
In his Liber De Regressu, Zabarella gives a rather succinct example, taken from
the first book of Aristotle’s Physics, of the three parts of the demonstrative regressus.
The first is the resolutive phase, by which we deduce confused knowledge of the
cause from our confused knowledge of the effect.4 The second phase consists in
the mental consideration of the cause known confusedly, so as to know it distinctly.
The third phase consists in composition, by which the effect is deduced from
the cause, now known distinctly.5 In the example Zabarella takes from Book I of
Aristotle’s Physics, we start from our confused knowledge that there is a certain
effect: the generation of a substance. We then reason back to the more fundamental
principle, that is, the cause of this generation. This is the demonstratio quia or τό
ὅτι proof from what is more known to us to what is prior by nature:
Where there is generation there is a subject, i.e. matter (in the Aristotelian sense of
an underlying subject).
In a natural body, there is generation.
Therefore, in a natural body there is matter.
of the Latin are my own. Zabarella’s point appears to be at odds with De Methodis I.v, titled “In what
way Logic would be a science and in what sense not.” There he concludes that logic said simpliciter is
not a science even though it is called a science when put to use. In chapter ii of De Methodis, Zabarella
merely draws a parallel to the earlier division of logic for the purpose of accomodating Aristotle’s use
of the Greek term ‘method’ to signify both the instrumental habitus and those sciences/disciplines
that use and consist in method. It is clear that Zabarella considers the proper genus of both logic and
method to be an instrumental habitus not a science.
. . . ideo eam diximus esse habitum intellectus instrumentalem, quo ad rerum cognitionem consequendam
3
iuuamur (De Methodis, I.ii,136).

In the secondary literature, the resolutive procedure of the regressus is commonly also labeled
4
“analysis.” Randall equates them, even though he distinguishes them earlier in the paper (“Develop-
ment of Scientific Method,” 199). Anglo-American discussions of Hobbes’s method and the regressus
often use ‘resolution’ and ‘analysis’ interchangeably, especially in connection with Galileo’s supposed
adaptation of the regressus. The first to have done so appears to be Röd in Geometrischer Geist, 10. This
may be the origin of subsequent uses, e.g. by Watkins, System of Ideas, 52; Hungerland and Vick, “Misin-
terpretations,” 26; Jesseph, “Method of Natural Science,” 95–96; Dear, “Method,” 150. The secondary
literature that connects Descartes’s and Spinoza’s methods to the regressus likewise employs the term
‘analysis’ for resolution; see, for instance, Timmermans, “Descartes’s Conception of Analysis,” 433–47;
and Garrett, Meaning, 107–8. However, Zabarella does not use the term ‘analysis’ in the context of
discussing scientific proof. Instead Zabarella only applies it in the context of method as order. An ar-
ticle by Don Morrison suggests to me that the widespread conflation found in the secondary literature
might also be influenced by G. Papuli’s work which attempts to tie the renaissance regressus back to
Galen’s method of analysis. Morrison, rightly, points out that the two methods are too distinct for this
to be likely (“Philoponous and Simplicius,” 117–18).
Again, Zabarella does not use the term ‘synthesis’ here, although the secondary literature (see
5
previous note) tends to use it as an equivalent term for composition.

Via this syllogism we gain a confused knowledge of the cause or first principle of
substantial generation, namely matter. Zabarella notes the major premise (the first
one listed) is only known confusedly, as what we observe is merely a correlation
between generation and matter—we do not yet understand its cause. We come to
know the major premise confusedly, not by sense, but through a “demonstrative
induction” whereby we notice an essential connection between generation and
matter, after having observed merely a few instances.6 Note that we still only
know this confusedly, because we do not yet know the cause of this essential
connection. Zabarella sums it all up: “Therefore this is the first process in the
regressus, by which alone we discover the inherence of the cause in the proposed
subject, not nonetheless as it is the cause of that effect, but as a certain necessary
and inseparable predicate.”7
Gaining genuine causal knowledge of the effect requires that we complete
the compositive phase of the regressus. This requires another mental examination
through which we come to know not just an essential connection between
generation and matter, but that matter causes the observed effect, in this case,
substantial generation. Once we grasp the cause, we may convert the major premise.
The ensuing syllogism then takes the form of a propter quid or τό διότι proof from
what is prior by nature to what is more known by us:
Where there is matter, there is generation.
In a natural body, there is matter.
Therefore, in a natural body there is generation.
But to know that matter is the cause of generation requires an intermediate step,
a mental examination by which the cause, known only confusedly in the quia
syllogism, comes to be known distinctly. Only then can we deduce the effect from
it. Briefly, once we know confusedly that the cause exists we examine it so as to
learn what it is. Once we know its definition, we compare matter with the effect, in
this case substantial generation, and distinguish matter from other possible causes
and principles of generation to isolate it—as the proper cause.
Extensive study of Zabarella’s theory of the regressus has resulted in both
comparisons and contrasts to the forms of demonstration used by Galileo Galilei,
William Harvey, and René Descartes, but the relationship between early modern
methods and the other branch of Zabarella’s method is relatively understudied.8
The mind immediately attains the universal. Through an examination of the nature of mutation
6
it sees that it is necessarily predicated of a subject, i.e. matter in the Aristotelian sense of an underlying
subject. Zabarella accounts for the confused knowledge of the major premise by means of the follow-
ing reasoning (this is the demonstrative induction, I presume): We observe that in the mutation of
accidents, there is always matter. We see an essential connection between mutation and matter. Given
that substantial generation is a kind of mutation, there must also be an essential connection between
substantial generation and matter; see Zabarella, De Regressu, ch. iv, 484–86.
Zabarella, De Regressu, ch. iv, 486.
7
Recent studies in connection with Galileo’s and Descartes’s methods include Wallace, “Galileo’s
8
Regressive Methodology,” 229–52; Timmermans, “Descartes’s Conception of Analysis,” 433–47. Wat-

kins, relying on Randall and one passage from Harvey’s On Generation of Animals, connects Harvey’s
method back to Zabarella’s regressus; see System of Ideas, 64. This connection is, however, contradicted
by more in-depth studies revealing that Fabricius, under whom Harvey studied medicine at Padua,
drew heavily on Aristotle’s biological writings in his method rather than Zabarella’s writings on method;
see Cunningham, “Fabricius,” 211.
As Zabarella notes, method as order does not cause us to infer one thing from
another, but rather arranges (disponere) the things to be treated, as when the order
of teaching demands that we first discuss the heavens and then the elements. In
other words, it arranges the parts of a discipline.9 Order takes precedence because
one must divide a discipline into parts before one can articulate the method that
will lead us from the known to the unknown that is sought within each part.10 For
example, one must first treat of living things in general, then each individual species
of living thing; and finally seek methods to treat what is common to animals, to
understand the nature of an animal (if such is hidden) and its accidents. 11
Zabarella adds that one must not state that the order is made randomly without
any reason and internally by our choice: there has to be some certain reason or
certain, necessary norm by which the correct disposition and appropriate ordering
is taken up.12 At the same time, Zabarella denies earlier views that ordering
must always proceed from one thing, either a principle, medium, or end, and
that correspondingly, there are three types of order: compositive, definitive,
and resolutive (Galen originates this view).13 Rather, Zabarella follows Averroes,
claiming that the procedure for ordering the sciences and all disciplines is found
not in the essence of the objects sought, but in the manner of knowing things that
is best and easiest for us. When a science is ordered in one way rather than some
other, it is so ordered because it shall be learned more easily and effectively this
way, not because of a natural order that exists outside the mind.14
Next Zabarella addresses the problem of whether the proper order is always
from the universal to the particular, per Aristotle. Zabarella affirms this, on the
. . . ordo enim nullam facit illationem huius rei ex illa, sed solum disponit ea, quae tractanda sunt: ut si dica-
9
mus ordinem doctrinae postulare ut prius de coelo, quam de elementis agamus (Zabarella, De Methodis, I.iii, 139).
10
Zabarella holds that one must treat of order first because it appears to be something more
general, extending more widely than method, for it regards scientia as a whole and compares its parts.
Method proper, by contrast, consists in the investigation of a single sought thing without any com-
parison to other parts of scientia: . . . methodus vero in unius rei quaesitae investigatione consistit sine ulla
partium scientiae inter se comparatione . . . (De Methodis, I.iii, 139).
11
. . . veluti prius decernit de animali generaliter agendum esse, mox de speciebus singulis; postea vero de
animali communi tractationem aggrediens methodos quaerit, quae ad animalis naturam, si latuerit, & ad eiusdem
accidentia cognoscenda nos ducat (Zabarella, De Methodis, I.iii, 139).
12
. . . non est enim dicendum eam dispositionem a nobis temere, & absque ulla ratione, & penitus arbitratu
nostro fieri (Zabarella, De Methodis, I.iv, 140). Following the distinction between order and method,
Zabarella amends the common interpretation of the order of a discipline as an instrumental habitus or
mental instrument, by means of which one is taught to appropriately arrange the parts of a doctrine:
Nunc satis est si dicamus neminem sanae mentis inficiari posse dandam esse necessario aliquam certam rationem,
seu certam normam, a qua semper sumatur haec dispositionis rectitudo, & convenientia, ut haec dispositio dica-
tur conveniens, illa vero non conveniens. hanc autem normam unam esse necesse est: nisi enim una esset omnis
ordinis ratio, ex qua ordo quilibet dicatur esse conveniens, non esset ordo vox univoca, sed ambigua, de qua ut de
re una sermo haberi non posset; quo fieret ut omnes aliorum de ordinibus tractationes vitiosae essent, quia omnes
in ambiguo laborassent (De Methodis, I.iv, 140).
13
Zabarella, De Methodis, I.v, 140–41.
14
He points out, if the suitable order within each discipline were found in the natural order of its
objects, then the compositive order would be the only valid one since the simples and the principles of
nature are prior by nature to the composites (Zabarella, De Methodis, I.vi, 142). However, the suitable
order is the order by which we know more easily and more effectively, as seen by the fact that Aristotle
often follows the resolutive order in his works (e.g. in Book VII of the Metaphysics and also the De Anima
and Nichomachean Ethics); see Zabarella, De Methodis, I.vi, 142. Nonetheless, sometimes a given order
of learning will coincide with the natural order, which accounts for how some come to confuse the
natural order with the order of knowing; see Zabarella, De Methodis, I.vi, 144.
grounds that we always investigate the essence or nature of a thing or its proper
accidents. To know the nature of a thing we must know its species, and this is only
possible once we know the nature of the genus. Likewise, we know the accidents
of the species when we know the accidents of the genus. Therefore, the easiest
and most effective order of learning is from knowledge of the genus, or the more
universal, to the species and thence to accidents of the species.15 However, this
process has counter-examples, most notably, the ordering of the books of Euclid’s
Elements. As Zabarella points out, Euclid deals with lines and surfaces in the first
four books of the Elements and only then turns to magnitude, taken broadly, in
Book V. Euclid does not even give his definition of magnitude, taken broadly, in
Book V, but simply states the names of some of the accidents of magnitude he
will demonstrate. Zabarella characterizes the whole of Book V as being about the
accidents of magnitude, taken broadly, without any mention of the substance and
nature of magnitude. In other words, Euclid’s Elements violate the proper order
from the more universal to the less universal; from the nature of the genus, to its
accidents; and then onto the nature and accidents of the species.16
To allow for this apparent counter-example to the suitable order, Zabarella
introduces another distinction. In some cases, the property of the species being
taught is also the species of the property of the genus. For example, motion away
from the center of the earth is a property of a species of natural body known as
light body. At the same time, motion away from the center of the earth is also a
species of a property of the genus, the genus being natural body, with this kind
of motion being a species of motion, a property of natural bodies. In such cases,
it is easier to learn that motion away from the center of the earth is a property of
light bodies, if we first understand what natural bodies are (this is the genus); that
motion is a property or accident of this genus; and that there are certain species
of motion that are accidents particular to certain species of natural bodies. Then
we can advance to understanding the nature of light bodies, as a species of this
genus, and see that the species of motion belonging to them is motion away from
the center of the earth. But there are other cases, where knowing the genus and
its property will not make it easier to learn that a certain property belongs to a
species. For example, heat is also a property of light bodies, but heat is not a species
of the property of the genus, as heat is not a species of motion on the Aristotelian
view (and presumably not of any other generic property). So for this case, the
order of teaching need not begin with a treatment of the genus, its nature, and
accidents. Next Zabarella spells out two criteria one has to meet to dispense with
the order from the more universal to the less universal: the nature of the genus
must be known per se, and hence not require explanation, and the accidents of
the species cannot be species of the accidents of the genus.
In fact, mathematics meets both criteria. First, Zabarella points out, the subject
treated by Euclid possesses magnitude, taken most broadly, but abstracted by the
mind from every sensible thing. The nature of magnitude, taken broadly, need
Zabarella, De Methodis, I.iii, 139.

15
Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiii, 156–57.

16
not be expressed as a definition because everyone knows that magnitude is that
which is measured out, by something. When we define mathematical entities, our
definitions are advanced as principles “since they are heard and understood at the
same time, and are known per se.”17 This is because things like “line” and “surface”
are simple accidents, so the declaration of merely the word suffices to signify the
essence. In other words, in mathematics, nominal and essential definitions of
the object coincide; thus, in mathematics, one has a perfect definition once one
obtains a nominal definition. This view was shared by some seventeenth-century
mathematicians, for example, the Jesuit Josephus Blancanus, who claims that most
mathematical definitions bear the advantage of being both nominal and essential
definitions. Blancanus notes, “[W]hen it is said that an equilateral triangle is one
having three equal sides, at once you see the cause for both the name and the
thing.”18 Blancanus’s work is cited in Marin Mersenne’s early publications, making
it quite likely that Hobbes was exposed to Blancanus’s mathematical theory, via the
Mersenne Circle. On this theory, the definitions of mathematical objects carry the
distinct advantage that their names concurrently tell you how the object is caused.
Consequently, one need not define in terms of genus and differentia to attain a
full understanding of the object’s nature, that is, one need not first treat the genus
to which a mathematical object belongs in order to understand its definition and
demonstrate its properties from this definition.
Mathematics also fulfills the second criterion—that the accidents of the species
of magnitude are not species of the accidents of the genus. For example, we can
demonstrate and know the properties of a triangle, without knowing the accidents
of magnitude. Hence, no demonstration in the first four books of Euclid’s Elements
presupposes a demonstration in Book V, and vice versa. Zabarella concludes,
“Whence it is clear that no necessity of teaching forces Euclid to either begin from
the first or from the fifth [book].”19 With the benefit of this background, I now
address Hobbes’s method and show, on both textual and conceptual grounds,
that the method he advances in De Corpore differs, in fundamental respects, from
Zabarella’s regressus, but can be situated in subsequent discussions of what Zabarella
calls method as order.
2.hobbes’s method
2.1 Textual Evidence against the Paduan Interpretation
Hobbes characterizes both his philosophical method and the geometrical art in
terms of the twin methods of analysis or resolution, and synthesis or composition.
Given the confusing nature of Hobbes’s descriptions of his method and the
smorgasbord of previous methods advanced under the same labels, a long-standing
debate in Hobbes scholarship regarding the exact nature of Hobbes’s philosophical
Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiv, 159.

17
Blancanus, De Mathematicarum,181.
18
Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiv, 160.

19
method ensues. Some even dispute that Hobbes has a consistent method.20 As
mentioned, a common approach reads Hobbes’s stated method as a variant of
the scientific method developed by Renaissance Aristotelians at the University of
Padua, further thought to be best exemplified by Zabarella’s detailed account of
a form of demonstrative proof known as the regressus.21 Such proofs take the form
I just described in the previous section. For example, Kersting reads Hobbes’s
method as a more elaborate version of Zabarella’s.22 Hanson, MacPherson, and Röd
see Galileo’s supposed application of the regressus to physics as the inspiration for
Hobbes’s method.23 Hungerland and Vick liken Hobbes’s method to both Galileo’s
and Harvey’s developments of the regressus, whereas Watkins argues that Hobbes’s
method is closer to Harvey’s.24 More recently, Jesseph notes both a “strong similarity
to the methodological doctrine of ‘resolution and composition’ developed in
the sixteenth century” by Paduan philosophers like Zabarella, and a possible,
though unprovable, influence of Galileo’s scientific method upon Hobbes.25 Dear
situates Hobbes’s method within the Zabarellian/Galilean traditions, but sees
Hobbes as diverging from both on the issue of the adequacy of the methods of
resolution and composition, in natural philosophy. According to Dear, Hobbes’s
nominalism precludes the discovery of physical causes through the regressive
method—something Zabarella accomplished via the mental examination that
constituted the second phase of the regressus.26 As I discuss below, the absence of
this second phase is one of the significant differences between Hobbes’s method
and Zabarella’s regressus. Dear’s point and the additional counter-evidence brought
forth by Engfer and Prins notwithstanding, the Paduan interpretation of Hobbes
persists, having recently been revived by Duncan. 27 In what follows, I strengthen
the case against this interpretation, by showing that the differences go deeper than
generally acknowledged: Hobbes’s universal method does not aim at the discovery
of the physical causes of particular phenomena, in the Aristotelian sense, but at
discovering as much as possible about the causes of our conceptions of things.
Most recently, Tom Sorell argues that Hobbes does not have one universal scientific method.
20
Instead, he takes Hobbes’s political philosophy to be autonomous on the basis that the method Hobbes
employs in his political philosophy does not conform to the scientific method laid out in De Corpore;
see Sorell, “Hobbes’s Reputation,” 195.
The view that Hobbes’s method was inspired by Zabarella’s regressus dates at least as far back as
21
Gilbert’s suggestion in his by now classic Renaissance Concepts of Method, 211.

Kersting, “Erkenntnis und Methode,” 131.
22
Hanson’s position is more qualified than the other two. While he affirms Galileo’s influence
23
on Hobbes, he takes Galileo’s method of analysis and synthesis to differ from that of the Paduans in
ways that can partially be traced back to the geometrical senses of analysis and synthesis; see Hanson,
“Meaning of ‘Demonstration,’” 587–626; MacPherson, “Introduction,” 25–29; and Röd, Geometrischer
Geist, 10–15.
Hungerland and Vick, “Misinterpretations,” 25–27; Watkins, System of Ideas, 63–65.
24
Jesseph, “Method of Natural Science,” 95. Note that Jesseph has since qualified his view, claim-
25
ing that any number of extant views on analysis and synthesis could have influenced Hobbes’s; see
Jesseph, “Galileo, Hobbes,” 191–211.
Dear, “Method,” 151–52.
26
Prins’s article, in particular, does an excellent job of showing how fundamental differences
27
between Hobbes’s and Zabarella’s views on logic affect their views on several issues relating to method
and scientific knowledge; see “Hobbes and the School of Padua,” 26–46. See also Engfer, Philosophie
als Analysis, 90–96, 97–99; and Duncan, Metaphysics and Method.
The Paduan interpretation at times appears to be based on, and certainly gains
plausibility from, English translations of De Corpore. The first English edition,
published a year after the Latin edition, apparently with Hobbes’s approval,
appears to confirm the Paduan interpretation, thus contributing to its apparent
plausibility.28 However, a careful reading of the original Latin version of Hobbes’s
chapter “On Method” reveals significant differences between the standard
meanings of key Latin terms and the corresponding English translations. I will
show that a direct conceptual link between Hobbes’s and Zabarella’s methods
of resolution and composition does not exist but that—indirectly, via Protestant
philosophers who took up elements of Zabarella’s method as order—Hobbes’s
universal method is better understood in relation to Zabarella’s treatment of
method as order. Interpreting Hobbes’s method in light of this broader framework
of contemporaneous theories of method clarifies the sense in which his method
would have been considered mathematical in his own time, for Hobbes’s first
method has affinities to Zabarella’s characterization of the mathematical order
as found in Euclid.
The method Hobbes outlines in De Corpore is a method that applies specifically
to the domain of philosophy, so we must first understand what Hobbes means by
‘philosophy.’ Hobbes’s definition, repeated at the beginning of chapter 6 “On
Method,” reads:29
Philosophy is cognition, acquired through correct reasoning, of the phenomena or
apparent effects from the conceived production or a certain possible generation,
and of the production which was or could be from the conceived apparent effect.30
I hesitate to attribute this interpretation entirely to confusions generated by the seventeenth-

28
century English edition. Kersting and Duncan still end up with a type of Paduan interpretation though
they refer to the original Latin. With respect to the remainder of the studies just cited, it is difficult
to establish conclusively how much the authors relied on the English wording, as they do not directly
quote the passages where the relevant mistranslations occur. Nonetheless, it is hard to see how so many
good scholars could find the Paduan interpretation compelling unless they took the English transla-
tion seriously. Since the anonymous seventeenth-century translator claims that Hobbes approved of
the translation, there is prima facie no reason not to. The nineteenth-century Molesworth edition of
Hobbes’s English works, which is still commonly used, simply repeats the errors found in the 1656
English translation of De Corpore that I will discuss next. Martinich, in his more recent translation of
Computatio Sive Logica, partially corrects them in some places (e.g. at pages 288–89—see note 32) but
not at others (e.g. pages 292–93). These considerations taken as a whole make it more than likely
that misleading English editions of De Corpore contributed to the fact that Hobbes’s text continues to
be read through a Paduan lens. The other main line of interpretation reads Hobbes’s philosophical
method as related to the geometrical methods of analysis and synthesis, but in ways that do not preclude
additional philosophical influences—see note 1 above.
What follows is my very literal translation of the Latin edition and, from now on, I will emphasize
29
any terms that are important to translation issues in bold, as I do in the following quote. Philosophia
est phenomenon sive effectuum apparentium, ex concepta productione sive generatione aliquâ possibili; & pro-
ductionis quae fuit, vel esse potuit, ex concepto effectu apparente, per rectam rationationem acquisita cognitio”
(DC 1655, Part I, ch. vi, 41).
DC 1655, I.vi.1, 41. Citations to Hobbes’s De Corpore are mainly from the original Latin edition
30
cited above and DC 1656. When not engaging in direct comparison of the seventeenth-century edi-
tions, I at times cite DC 1839, the nineteenth-century English edition, since the relevant chapters are
sometimes faithful to the Latin edition (though not when it comes to the distinction between ‘scire’ and
‘cognoscere’) and are more elegant than my own, which err on the side of the overly literal to capture
the structure of the original Latin.
The Latin ‘concepta’ is rendered by ‘from the knowledge we have of the production . . .
etc.’ in the English edition, and ‘cognitio’ is also simply rendered as ‘knowledge.’31
This rendering may seem like an innocuous convergence, but in Hobbes’s
subsequent definition of philosophical method, the translator’s use of the same
term, ‘to know,’ to translate the Latin terms for ‘to conceive,’ ‘to cognize,’ and
‘to know scientifically’ bears serious implications:
The Method of philosophizing, is therefore the shortest investigation of Effects through
known causes, or of causes through known effects. However, we are said thus to know an
effect scientifically [scire] when we know of its causes that they are, and in what subject they
inhere, and in what subject they introduce the effect, and in what manner they produce it.
And accordingly, scientific knowledge [scientia] [is called] τού διότι or [knowledge]
of causes, all other cognition which is called τού ὅτι is of senses [sensuum], or from
sense remaining, [that is] imagination or memory.32
In my translation I have rendered ‘scire’ as ‘to know scientifically,’ since for

Hobbes scientia is still demonstrative knowledge of causes. This distinguishes the
knowledge of causes, that is, propter quid demonstrations, or in Greek τό διότι, from
non-causal, non-scientific forms of knowledge, also included under the broader
term, ‘cognition.’ The English translation not only fails to render the distinction
but even mistranslates the term ‘cognitio’ in the second to last line, as ‘all other
science.’33 This makes it sound like Hobbes is drawing a distinction between two
kinds of scientific knowledge when, in fact, he is distinguishing between scientific
knowledge and non-scientific, sensory cognition. One is easily misled, by the
English version of this passage, into attributing to Hobbes a distinction between
two kinds of scientific proof: the first proceeding demonstratively from cause
to effect; the second initiating from sense perceptions, and then proceeding,
deductively, to the possible causes of the perceived effects. Once read this way,
Hobbes’s distinction appears to precisely mirror the two phases of Zabarella’s
regressus: the demonstratio quia or resolutive deduction of the cause from the effect
(analysis), and the demonstratio propter quid, or compositive demonstration of the
effect from the cause (synthesis).
Here is the same passage in the English edition of 1656 with the problematic translations once
31
again emphasized in bold: “PHILOSOPHY is the knowledge we acquire by true Ratiocination of Ap-
pearances or apparent Effects, from the knowledge we have of some possible Production or Generation
of the Same; and of such production as has been or may, from the knowledge we have of the Effects”
(DC 1656, I.vi, 48). The Molesworth edition follows it (DC 1839, I.vi, 65).
The original Latin reads, Est ergo Methodus Philosophandi, Effectuum per causas cognitas, vel
32
causarum per cognitos effectus brevissima investigatio. Scire autem aliquem effectum tunc dicimur, cùm &
causas ejus, quòd sunt; & in quo subjecto insunt, & in quod subiectum effectum introducunt, & quomodo id
faciunt cognoscimus. Itaque, scientia τού διότι sive causarum est; aliqua cognitio omnis quae τού ὅτι dicitur,
sensio est vel a sensione remanens imaginatio sive memoria (DC 1655, I.vi.1, 41).
The English edition reads: “METHOD therefore in the Study of Philosophy, is the shortest way
33
of finding out Effects by their known causes, or of Causes by their known Effects. But we are then said to know
any Effect, when we know, that there be Causes of the same, and in what Subiect those Causes are, and in what
Subiect they produce that Effect, and in what Manner they work the same. And this is the Science of Causes,
or as they call it of the διότι. All other science, which is called the ὅτι, is either Perception by Sense, or
the Imagination, or Memory remaining after such Perception” (DC 1656, I.vi, 48–49). The Molesworth
edition is identical (DC 1839, I.vi, 66). While Martinich does not make the mistake of translating the
last occurrence of ‘cognitio’ with ‘science,’ he translates it with ‘knowledge, suggesting something
closer to scientific proof than mere cognition; see Martinich, Computatio Sive Logica, 288–89.
But Hobbes has something very different in mind, notwithstanding his
misleading use of Greek terms Aristotle employs in the Posterior Analytics to
distinguish between proofs τόυ διότι and τόυ ὅτι. First, at odds with Zabarella’s use
of resolution, Hobbes limits cognition τόυ ὅτι to sense and contrasts it to scientia.
Second, there is no hint of any mental examination as a separate step in Hobbes’s
method. There appears to be no intermediate category of confused knowledge of
essential connections due to inductive demonstration in Hobbes’s philosophical
method. There remains only scientia, in the sense of demonstrative knowledge of
causes, versus sense-based awareness that a thing exists. While some interpreters
liken the latter to Zabarella’s confused knowledge34 that sense based cognitions do
not constitute any part of philosophical reasoning is clear from a passage following
Hobbes’s definition of philosophy in chapter 1 of De Corpore:
For the better understanding of this Definition, we must consider, first, that although
Sense and Memory of things, which are common to Man and all living creatures, be
cognitions, yet because they are given us immediately by Nature, and not gotten by
Ratiocination, they are not Philosophy.35 36
Cognition τόυ ὂτι does not function as the first phase of a scientific proof that starts
from confused, inductive generalizations for Hobbes—rather, it is merely sense
that lies squarely outside the domain of scientia.37 One may object, this passage does
not preclude that cognition τόυ ὅτι is preparatory to scientific proof for Hobbes,
with the ensuing proof τού διότι constituting the proper scientific demonstration.
This possible reading still puts Hobbes’s method at odds with Zabarella’s regressus
because the latter will include, as a component first phase, syllogistic reasoning
from an observed effect back to a cause. For Zabarella, this phase consists in
something more than non-demonstrative cognition: it counts as a type of proof,
known as a demonstratio quia that demonstrates the existence of the cause, without
explaining its nature. Together with the mental examination and demonstratio propter
quid (which yields knowledge of the cause’s nature), the proof τού ὂτι comprises
an integral part of the entire scientific demonstration known as the regressus. On
Hobbes’s account, cognition τόυ ὅτι at best is preliminary to demonstration, but
cannot itself form part of the philosophical ratiocination that constitutes scientia.
I now turn to yet another passage in Chapter 6 where an equivocation between
knowledge, in the proper sense of scientific knowledge, and mere cognition is
found in the English edition of De Corpore. Once again, this English translation
lends credence to the Paduan reading of Hobbes (whether or not those who
originally proposed this interpretation explicitly relied on it). A literal translation
of the Latin reads:
For example, this is how Duncan explains the fact that Hobbes consistently uses the term ‘cognitio’
34
rather than ‘scientia’ when discussing knowledge τόυ ὅτι; see Metaphysics and Method, 101.
Ad quam definitionem intelligendam, considerare oportet primo, Sensionem atque Memoriam rerum, quae
35
communes homini sunt cum omnibus animantibus, etsi cognitiones sint, tamen quia datae sunt statim à Natura,
non ratiocinando acquisitae, non esse Philosophiam (DC 1655, I.i, 2).
The English edition reads: “To understand this definition, we must consider, first, that although
36
Sense and Memory of things, which are common to man and all living things, be knowledge, yet because
they are given immediately by nature, and not acquired by ratiocination, they are not philosophy” (DC
1656, I.i, 2). The Molesworth edition follows this (DC, 1839, I.i, 3).
N.B. Hobbes restricts scientia to demonstrative reasoning, so that both prudential reasoning
37
based on generalizations from past experience and direct sense-based cognitions are excluded.
However, in cognition of the senses, the whole Phenomenon is more known than
any of its parts, just as when we see a man, the Concept, or that whole Idea of the
man is known before, or is better known than the particular ideas of figured, animated,
rational, that is, we see the whole man and cognize that he is before we turn our mind
towards those particulars [i.e. the particular ideas of the man being figured, animated,
and rational]. And thus, in cognition τόυ ὅτι, or that it is [quod est] the beginning of
searching is from the whole Idea.38
In the English edition, ‘cognitio’ gets translated into ‘knowledge by sense,’

lending credence to the idea that it forms that part of scientific knowledge, which
starts from sensory perceptions of the effects, to reason back to the causes. The
English translation only clearly distinguishes cognitio from scientia in its second
occurrence.39 The translator obviously interprets ‘cognitio’—whenever it appears
in conjunction with τού ὅτι—as something stronger than mere cognition. But
if we attend to the fact that the Latin term remains ‘cognitio’ throughout, then
we know, by the previously cited passage, that what Hobbes describes here lies
beyond philosophy’s scope. Recall, philosophical knowledge is limited to scientia,
that is, causal, demonstrative knowledge. All Hobbes claims in this passage is that,
before philosophical reasoning can begin, we must be aware, through our senses,
that the something we seek to know exists and has certain properties. This is the
beginning of our awareness of the contents of an idea, not the first resolutive
phase of a regressive scientific proof.
Clearly, significant confusion in the English translation of De Corpore renders
connections between Hobbes’s method and Zabarella’s regressus more plausible
than warranted. Hobbes’s characterization of scientia significantly differs from the
model of Zabarella’s regressus. Zabarella’s regressive method permits syllogistic
deduction of an observed physical effect from premises via a middle term that
designates one of the four Aristotelian causes. As will soon become clear, Hobbes,
inspired by the Euclidean mathematical model, regards true scientific knowledge
as starting from mathematical definitions, from which more complex wholes are
gradually compounded. Nonetheless, I contend one can yet observe Hobbes taking
on elements of Zabarella’s treatment of method as order.
2.2 Hobbes’s First Method as a Conceptual Ordering

It is well known that Hobbes became enamored with Euclidean geometry through
his first encounter with the proofs of the Elements of Geometry.40 For Hobbes such
In cognitione autem sensuum, totum Phaenomenon notius est quam quaelibet pars ejus; ut cum videmus ho-
38
minem, priùs notus, seu notior est Conceptus, sive Idea illa tota Hominis quàm particulares ideae figurati, animati,
rationalis, hoc est, prius videmus hominem totum, cognoscimusque quod est, quàm animum ad particularia illa
advertimus. Itaque in cognitione τού ὅτι sive quòd est, initium quaerendi est à tota Idea (DC 1655, I.vi.2, 42).
“But in knowledge by Sense, the whole object is more known, than any part thereof; as when
39
we see a Man, the Conception or the whole Idea of that Man is first or more known, then the particular
Ideas of his being figurate, animate and rationall; that is, we first see the whole Man, and take notice of
his Being, before we observe him in those other Particulars. And therefore in any knowledge of the
ὅτι, or that any thing is, the beginning of our search is from the whole Idea” (DC 1656, I.vi, 49). The
Molesworth edition has the same translation; see DC 1839, I.vi, 66–67.
Aubrey reports the incident and Hobbes appears to allude to it by having an interlocutor who
40
speaks for Hobbes recount such an encounter; see Brief Lives, 1:332; Hobbes, Examinatio,154–55.
proofs are the model for all demonstration, and to justify this, he traces the
etymological origins of the Greek term for ‘demonstration’ back to geometry.
[T]hat which the Greeks called αποδέιξις, and the Latins demonstratio, was understood
by them for that sort only of ratiocination, in which, by the describing of certain lines
and figures, they placed the thing they were to prove, as it were before men’s eyes,
which is properly αποδεικνύειν, or to shew by the figure; 41
Hobbes attributes the Ancients’ failure to progress in all other areas of knowledge
to their lack of true definitions, rather than the impossibility of evident reasoning,
without the use of geometrical figures. For Hobbes, something about definitions of
mathematical entities, as starting points for mathematical demonstration, accounts
for the evidence and certainty of mathematical proofs. As we will see later on, for
Hobbes, the definition of a mathematical object gives one the process by which it
is generated. The definition of a square, for example, gives one the components
from which it is put together; from these all its properties can then be deduced.
As we shall see, Hobbes wants to model definitions of natural objects, like that of
gold, after such definitions. Given that Hobbes thinks we arrive at such definitions
by processes of resolving and compounding, it is not surprising then that he
characterizes ratiocination as computation and claims that it consists in merely
adding to and subtracting from the self-evident definitions that constitute the
principles of our demonstrations. Recall Hobbes defines method as the shortest
route to scientia (i.e. necessary, causal knowledge). In De Corpore, his method
for attaining scientia includes the key elements of a resolution to self-evident
simples (abstract names, standing for our conceptions, and their definitions),
their subsequent compositions into propositions, and finally the composition of
propositions into chains of deductive reasoning (syllogistic, for Hobbes, in common
with Aristotelians). The properly scientific, demonstrative path of discovery and
method for teaching what one discovers is compositive, or synthetic.
For Hobbes, the parts we add, as we ratiocinate synthetically or compositively
are not parts of the thing itself:
By contrast [to cognition τού ὅτι] in cognition τόυ διότι or in cognition of causes,
that is in the Sciences [Scientiis], the causes of the parts are more known than the
whole. For [since] the cause of the whole is composed from the causes of the parts
it is necessary that the things to be composed be known before the composite.
However, in this place, by parts I do not mean parts of the thing itself, but parts of
its nature, such that by parts of the man I do not understand the head, shoulders,
arms etc, but figure, quantity, motion, sensation, ratiocination and similar [parts],
namely accidents which when composed all at once constitute the whole man, not
[his] bulk [molem], but [his] nature.42
Clearly then, the parts we combine into wholes, as we reason philosophically, are
not terms designating physical parts but rather accidents that compose a thing’s
nature. For Hobbes, accidents appear to be simples that everyone understands.
They are both the manner in which any body is conceived, and the corresponding
faculty in any body by which it produces a conception of itself in the perceiver.
DC 1839, I.vi, 16, 86.

41
DC 1655, I.vi.2, 42.

42
[B]ut we seek this itself, what is an accident? in which we seek that which we understand
and not that which we should seek. For who does not always and in the same manner
understand him who says any thing is extended, or moved, or not moved? But most
men will have it be said that an accident is something, namely some part of natural
things, when, indeed, it is no part of them. To satisfy these men, as well as may be,
they answer best that define an accident to be the manner by which any body is conceived;
which is all one and the same as if they should say, an accident is that faculty of any body,
by which it works in us a conception of itself.43
Rather confusingly, Hobbes refers to these self-evident accidents as “universals,”

“universal notions,” and “simples,” despite denying that universals have any
existence beyond the names and the individuals to which these names apply.44 So,
Hobbes does not use the terms ‘universal’ and ‘universal notion’ to designate a
general, abstract idea in the mind. We only possess ideas of particular bodies that,
through their similarities, reveal to us accidents common to all bodies. Hobbes
claims we signify these common accidents with abstract names or universals, for
example, ‘extension’ and ‘corporiety.’ As long as we do not consider them as
existing apart from bodies, abstract names are used correctly and are, according
to Hobbes, the only means by which we can reason philosophically. Hobbes claims
that the causes of concrete names like ‘body’ are abstract names like ‘extension.’
Extension is not something over and above an accident, common to the set of
individual bodies, nor is it the cause of the bodies themselves; ‘extension’ is merely
the cause of the concrete name ‘body.’ But since accidents are both the manner
by which bodies are conceived, and the faculties by which bodies produce these
conceptions in us, these causes of our names turn out to be equivalent to the
causes of our conceptions.45 Thus, Hobbes’s philosophical method, in contrast
to the method proper of Zabarella and other Aristotelians, yields not knowledge
of the causes of things themselves, but rather of the causes of our conceptions of
things.46 I take this to be one of the most significant differences between Hobbes’s
method and the Aristotelian regressus. My point is not normally emphasized in the
scholarly literature on Hobbes’s method, even when it highlights other important
differences between Hobbes’s and Zabarella’s methods.47 Next I address how the
Latin De Corpore describes Hobbes’s method to produce this kind of knowledge.
DC 1655, I.viii.2, 63.

43
DC 1655, I.ii.9, 12.

44
DC 1655, I.iii.2, 20–21.

45
One might take it then that, for Hobbes, the causes of our conceptions of things would turn out
46
to be the same as the corresponding causes of physical things. As will become clear later on when I turn
to Hobbes’s view on definitions, this is true for geometrical objects, since for Hobbes proper definitions
describe how an object is or could be generated. Whether I conceive of a line in my imagination or
draw it on paper, the motion by which I generate it from points is the same. However, when it comes
to objects not constructed by us, namely natural bodies, there is a significant gap between my causal
definitions of my conceptions of complex bodies and the actual, invisible corpuscles from which the
body is generated. The best I can do is conceive of ways such bodies could be generated starting from
my simple conceptions. As Hobbes himself puts it, “In things that are not demonstrable, which is ye
greatest part of Naturall Philosophy, as dependinge upon the motion of bodies so subtile as they are
inuisible, such as are ayre and spirits, the most that can be atteyned vnto is to haue such as opinions,
as no certayne experience can confute, and from which can be deduced by lawfull argumentation, no
absurdity . . . ” (Correspondence, I.33).
Prins appears to be the exception. He recognizes that Hobbes’s method is concerned with our
47
conceptions, but assumes that the causes attained by resolution consist in mere descriptions of the
ways in which things, as we choose to define them, can be generated. He holds that, for Hobbes, such
Hobbes distinguishes two aims of philosophical inquiry: the first, knowing
indefinitely or simpliciter, the second, inquiring into specific phenomena and causes.
I propose that the first method, outlined by Hobbes to fulfill the first aim, shares
key features with the branch of method Zabarella designates as ‘order’ and is thus
preparatory to engaging in particular scientific demonstrations, while the second
corresponds to method proper. So, relating Hobbes’s claims about the method for
scientia simpliciter to Zabarella’s regressus, which deals instead with method proper
applied to specific phenomena, amounts to comparing apples and oranges. But it
may yet be fruitful to relate Hobbes’s first method to Zabarella’s theory of method
as order, especially if we consider how subsequent Protestant logicians took up
Zabarella’s theory.48 First I examine Hobbes’s method for scientia simpliciter and
show that it amounts to a method for ordering our conceptions—then I address
Protestant theories that illuminate Hobbes’s view in interesting ways.
On the first kind of inquiry, Hobbes states that “without proposing any
determined question they are able to scientically know [scire] as much as possible,”49
so that such scientific knowledge simpliciter “consists in the knowledge of the causes
of all things [rerum] insofar as it can be had.”50 When trying to know as much as
we can about individual things, we must note that
the causes of all individuals are composed of the causes of universals or simples
[hence] it is necessary that we cognize [cognoscere] the causes of the universals or
of those accidents which are common to all bodies, that is all matter, before [we
can know] the causes of individuals, that is the accidents by which one thing is
distinguished from another.51
To know the causes of universals we first investigate universal notions of things,

since
before their causes can be scientifically known [sciri] [i.e. the causes of universals or
simples] it is necessary to cognize [cognoscere] what those very Universals are. Since,
however, the universals are contained in the nature of individuals, they are to be
extracted by reason, that is, through Resolution.52
The method by which we arrive at knowledge of the universals is analysis or

resolution. What analysis amounts to here can be illustrated through two examples
Hobbes gives, and generalized with the help of the diagram that follows.
definitions need only be unequivocal and consistent to each other rather than corresponding to real
causes. So, for Prins, Hobbes’s method follows a strictly cognitive order, divorced from the natural
order. Accordingly, Prins likens Hobbes’s method of resolution to Galen’s description of division;
see “Hobbes and the School of Padua,” 36, 41. But, in the final section of this paper, I argue that
Hobbes—in line with Protestant logicians—conflates the natural and cognitive orders (this is the case
notwithstanding our inability to come to know with certainty the particular physical processes at the
invisible, corpuscular level since the most basic definitions and simple conceptions on which physics
rests do track the natural order for Hobbes). My reading accounts for the direct correspondence
Hobbes invokes between the faculties in bodies that cause our conceptions and the causes we come
to know when we resolve our concepts.
In this paper, I sidestep Hobbes’s discussion of the method as applied to inquiries into the
48
causes of particular phenomena. The latter is more relevant to our understanding of how he actually
proceeds in his natural philosophy and civil science, a topic I intend to address separately.
DC 1655, I.vi.3, 42.
49
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

50
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

51
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

52
In chapter 6, section 4, Hobbes provides two examples of the purely analytical
method used to arrive at the universals necessary to understand things indefinitely
or simpliciter. They illustrate the two levels I depict in my diagram (however, nothing
in Hobbes’s examples precludes the addition of further levels, depending on how
complex a nature one begins with).
Example 1. Individual Nature: Idea of individual thing [Idea rei singularis], idea of a
square.
Level (i): resolved into “plane, terminated with a certain number of equal and straight
lines and right angles. Thus we have these universals or things agreeable to all matter:
line, plane (which includes superficies), terminated, angle, straightness.”53
Level (ii): “If we can find out the causes of these, then we may compound them
together into the cause of the square.”54
Example 2. Individual Nature: Conception of gold.

Level (i): resolved into ideas of solid, visible, heavy (the universals or common
accidents of gold).
Level (ii): “which [i.e. the ideas of solid, visible, heavy] they may resolve again, till
they arrive at the most universal.”55
Figure i (synthesis/addition −−−−−→)

Level (ii) AN/C1 + AN/ C2 + AN/ C3 (Abstract Names/Causes) = Cause of
(analysis/division) Concrete Name yields
| | | Individual/
Level (i) U/CA1 U/CA2 U/CA3 (Universals/ Distinguishing Accident
(analysis/division) Common Accidents)
\ | /
Individual Nature
While Hobbes fails to spell out what the abstract names, at the top-most level of
resolution, would be, the following indicates that gold’s solidity, visibility, and
heaviness would eventually reduce to types of motion.
However, the causes of universals (of those at least, that have any cause) are manifest
of themselves, or (as they say) are known [nota] to nature; so that they require no
Method at all; for the one universal cause of all of them, is motion.56
Hobbes’s claim that discovering the causes of universals requires no method

appears to contradict the quote before this one, which states that universals, such
as the common accidents of gold can be further resolved. This implies that the
method of resolution applies all the way up until we reach the most universal
causes. Two possible readings can reconcile the two passages.
The first is that only the initial step from the Individual Nature to level (i)
involves resolution, so that the next step to knowing the causes of universals is
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

53
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

54
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

55
DC 1839, I.vi.5, 69.

56
intuitive and requires no method. This reading is applicable to the first example
of the square but, in the gold example, Hobbes explicitly allows for further
resolution. The second reading, which makes sense of the gold example, is that
‘universals’ in the last quote above includes only the most generic universal terms,
not all the common accidents. Note that all Hobbes commits himself to is that
natural philosophers using his method must resolve the common accidents of gold
“till they arrive at the most universal.”57 So ‘heavy,’ ‘visible,’ and ‘solid’ would be
further resolved into successively more universal and more abstract notions, until
we arrive at that level preceding the most universal of all causes, motion. At this
point, Hobbes requires no method of resolution, for he appears to hold that as we
reach the highest level of universality, we simply intuit that the cause of everything is
motion. But this level also strikes me as the least useful to the natural philosopher,
who aims to understand the causes that differentiate individual natures rather
than the underlying cause they all share. So it makes more sense to attribute to
Hobbes the view that his method applies to the extraction of all intermediate levels
of common accidents of utmost interest to the attainment of scientific knowledge.
As he puts it, this method will always be analytic, or resolutive:
And in this manner, by resolving some into others, it will be cognized [cognitum] which
are those [universals] the causes of which having been cognized [cognitis] singly and
[then] composed, make known the causes of individual things. And thus we conclude
that the method of investigating the universal notions of things, is purely analytical.58
It is important to note that the purely resolutive part of the method takes us only to
the abstract names/causes of the concrete name. From then onwards composition
or synthesis begins. So let us now examine what synthesis amounts to for Hobbes.
Scientific knowledge is built up when we compose names into propositions
using the copula ‘is’ and then compose propositions into syllogisms. When we
engage in an inquiry of this first kind, the compositive method is a “Method from
principles found out, tending to science simply. . . . ”59 Hobbes specifies that the
first principles by which we know the διότι of things are definitions, not axioms,
for the latter are not really simple and can be proven. He defines definitions as
“nothing but the explication of our most simple [simplicissimum] conceptions.”60
Hobbes is adamant that “[b]esides definitions, there is no other proposition that
ought to be called primary, or (according to severe truth) be received into the
number of principles.”61
In addition to the stipulative definitions, like the ones of our simplest
conceptions of place and motion, synthesis also relies on generations or
descriptions of things. For example, Hobbes explains, “[A] line is made by the
motion of a point, superficies by the motion of a line, and one motion by another
57
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.
58
DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.
This is a marginal note in the Molesworth edition, but not contained in the Latin edition of
59
1655 or the English edition of 1656; cf. DC 1839, I.vi.6, 70.

For example, place is “that space which is possessed or filled adequately by some body.” Motion
60
is “the privation of one place, and the acquisition of another” (DC 1655, I.vi, 44).
DC 1656, I.vi, 13, 59; DC 1655, I.vi, 50.
61
motion, & c.”62 Based on these generative definitions, Hobbes envisions the
gradual synthesis of a unified structure of sciences, or scientia simpliciter. Scientia
simpliciter, which consists in attaining as much knowledge of the causes of things
as possible, starts from the causes of the simple objects of geometry, that is, lines
or lengths generated from points in motion, and surfaces generated from long
bodies—which once demonstrated, are composed to generate the more complex
phenomena of the science of motion, itself produced by the effects of one body’s
motion on other bodies.63 Now, the science of motion provides the starting points
for demonstrating the phenomena of physics, which are produced by the motions
of the parts of bodies, including our sense organs. In like manner, Hobbes thinks
that we can progress all the way up to civil science and thus the demonstrative
knowledge of all sciences, including politics, will necessarily rest on geometrical
foundations. Scientific reasoning thus builds upon first principles, namely
definitions, including generative ones that give us the causes of our conceptions,
from whence we syllogistically deduce even more complex wholes, that is, the
effects of these causes (the latter consist in more complex ideas and conceptions
of the differentiating accidents of individual natures).
Hobbes’s description of his first method shares key features with Zabarella’s
account of method as order. He shares Zabarella’s view that the proper order
must proceed from cognitive simples (the most basic conceptions that are most
easily grasped by us). In Hobbes’s case, these simples are the causes of universals,
constituting universally agreed-upon stipulative and generative definitions. He also
endorses Zabarella’s view that the mathematical order need not begin with the
most universal notion of “magnitude,” and that the most universal mathematical
concepts are so self-evident that they need not be defined. Hobbes further agrees
with Zabarella that the mathematical order begins from more specific simple
notions like “point” and “line.” Hobbes’s first method, designed to enable us to
know things indefinitely or simpliciter, parallels Zabarella’s method as order, in
resulting not in knowledge of the causes of particular phenomena, but rather in a
systematic, cognitive bottom to top ordering, from the least universal all the way up to
the most universal causes of our conceptions of things. Once the universal causes
are discovered by resolution, the compositive methodical order then locates each
scientific domain within a hierarchy—starting from the most simple notions and
definitions (the most abstract names which we combine to form concrete names)
and successively adding them—until we arrive at our most complex conceptions.
This generative model suggests that Hobbes’s universal method for scientia
simpliciter, like Zabarella’s method as order, is preparatory to the task of making
This is preceded by ‘next we have . . .’ (DC 1656, I.vi.6, 52; DC 1655, I.vi, 44). In this chapter,
62
Hobbes presents this as the next step, implying that you start with stipulative definitions and then move
to generative definitions. This appears to contradict the next passage where he talks of the method
of teaching, which is entirely synthetic.
Oddly enough, the example Hobbes gives to reveal the parts into which we resolve our concep-
63
tion of the individual nature of a square does not indicate that these parts would combine to generate
the square in the same manner. “Plane” and “line” do not generate a square in the way a point in mo-
tion generates a line. The same can be said of the definition of a triangle that Hobbes introduces in
De Corpore, vi.11 and again in Leviathan iv.1. Marcus Adams develops a possible explanation for these
two different kinds of definitions in Mechanical Epistemology.
particular scientific demonstrations, for it provides us with an order for successfully
tackling specific scientific problems, and yields definitions, or principles relevant
to each science, within the hierarchy. On this reading, the definitions found at
the beginning of the Leviathan, which Hobbes employs to generate his account
of civil society, become a product of a previously completed conceptual ordering
produced by his first method. Since method as order is preliminary to method
proper, and method proper is what one employs to solve particular problems within
a discipline, my interpretation explains why Hobbes’s particular demonstrations in
his works on natural philosophy and civil science do not conform to his universal
scientific method. The first advantage of my reading is that it saves Hobbes from the
inconsistency that ensues if we read his universal method as a version of the regressus.
As highlighted by Engfer, Dear, and Jesseph, Hobbes’s particular demonstrations
in natural philosophy do not neatly fit the phases of the regressus. But if we read
Hobbes’s first method as order, then there is no inconsistency between his stated
universal method and his particular demonstrations, for the latter would have to
follow methods proper to specific inquiries into the causes of phenomena, instead
of falling under method as order.
Despite the broader parallel, there are two specific differences between
Hobbes’s methodical order and Zabarella’s. First, Hobbes conceives of his
method as one to discover causes (namely, the causes of our conceptions which
correspond to faculties in bodies). In stark contrast, Zabarella limits the process
of orderly arrangement to an order of teaching what one has already discovered.
In my final section, I will show that this difference can be accounted for by noting
that Protestant logicians, closer to Hobbes’s immediate intellectual environment
than Zabarella, modified Zabarella’s theory in the relevant ways. Second, Hobbes
differs from both Zabarella and the Protestant logicians Zabarella influenced in
one respect: for reasons I discuss below, Hobbes treats the mathematical order
as the one true order, placing simple mathematical concepts at the foundation
of all scientia.
3.the protestant connection

Zabarella’s influence spread, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries,
not just through Catholic Europe, but also north of the Alps, to Protestant
universities. Particularly, German Protestant philosophers, known as “systematics,”
took up Zabarella’s teachings, and developed them to articulate a middle path
between Aristotelian and Ramist systems of logic. German systematic logic, in turn,
influenced English logicians at the time Hobbes was writing the first part of his De
Corpore.64 Examination of the Systema Logicae by leading systematic Bartholomeo
Keckermann, and Franco Burgersdijk’s Insitutionum Logicarum (Keckermann’s
follower at the University of Leiden), reveals a crucial transformation of Zabarella’s
Hobbes worked on the first part of De Corpore in the 1630s and still made significant revisions
64
in 1645. See Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, 154. By this time there were numerous editions of Burg-
ersdijk’s logic published in The Netherlands, and in 1644 an edition was published in Cambridge.
There is evidence that Hobbes had Keckermann’s Systema physica and Politica from 1611 onwards; see
Malcolm, Reason of State, 3. Moreover, Robert Sanderson, the leading English follower of Keckermann,
first published his Logicae artis Compendium at Oxford in 1615; see Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 486.
view within this Protestant intellectual environment. Although the systematics
oppose the Ramists, by reinstating the traditional elements of Aristotelian logic,
the systematics retain Ramist influences in their treatises on logic by including a
final part devoted to method.65 Conversely, traditional Scholastic Aristotelian logic
texts omit this final part. Not unlike the English followers of Keckermann, Hobbes
appears to yield to the influences of the emergent German systematic logic, as
he concludes the first part of his De Corpore on Logic, with a chapter on method.
Keckermann begins his section on method by distinguishing universal method
from particular method. His definition of universal method encompasses both
the method-proper and order-of-teaching components of Zabarella’s method
broadly speaking.
It [universal method] is the director of inferential [illativi] discourse; it is moreover
the director of ordering discourse, which is an act of the human mind or intellect
proceeding from one part of doctrine to another, collecting and connecting them
among themselves with the help of the method of teachers.66
Keckermann also incorporates Zabarella’s distinction between method proper

as habitus, separate from objects, and its application to objects, stating that this
third act of the intellect (i.e. pertaining to method rather than to predicating or
syllogizing) teaches us the requisite intellectual condition as well as how to use
logic to attain knowledge of things. One proves or refutes a conclusion by means of
syllogistic discourse (i.e. the use of logic), while the other serves “to aptly connect
definitions, divisions, and other parts of doctrine among themselves so that some
precede and others follow” (i.e. the intellectual condition).67 Burgersdijk skips
the distinction between universal and particular method, and equates order
with method by treating of “order or method.” He defines method as the “apt
arrangement of things by what pertains to them so that they are most easily and effectively
understood and so that they inhere most tenaciously in memory.”68 In both texts, method
incorporates what Zabarella calls “order” and what he calls “method proper,” but
in Burgersdijk’s text, ‘method proper’ becomes conflated with what Zabarella
means by ‘order.’
Soon it becomes clear why. Both Keckermann and Burgersdijk (on this point,
following Keckermann closely) deny Zabarella’s claim that the suitable order is
from what is best and most easily known by us rather than from what is prior by
Keckermann divides his logic into three books: the first book deals with the ten Aristotelian
65
categories under the heading of predicates, followed by chapters on definition, division, identity,
distinction and opposition. The second deals with the different kinds of propositions and the third
with syllogisms. He concludes the third book with a treatise on method. Burgersdijk simplifies this
material into two books, the first dealing with the categories and the different types of proposition
and the second with definition and syllogism, and finally, a chapter on method.
Fut directrix discursus illativi; superest directrix discursus ordinativi, qui est actus mentis seu intellectus
66
humani ab una parte doctrinae ad aliam procedentis, eas inter se conferendo & connectendo, adminiculo prae-
ceptorum methodo (Keckermann, Systema Logicae, Book.III, ch. i, 578).
Aliud est probare vel refutare conclusionem, quod sit discursu Syllogistico, aliud definitiones, divisiones,
67
& alias doctrinae partes apte inter se connectere, ut alia praecedant, alia subsequantur (Keckermann, Systema
Logicae, III.i, 579).
Methodus est apta dispositio rerum eodem pertintentium, ut quam optime, facilliméque intel-
68
ligantur, & memoriae quam tenacissimè inhaerant (Burgersdijk, Institutionum, 375–76).

nature. Both Keckermann and Burgersdijk hold that that which is best and most
easily known by us is also prior by nature. Referring back to method, in the sense
of order, Keckermann writes, “Let the process of method imitate the order of
natural things, by progressing from things which are prior by nature and more
known, to the posterior.”69 He adds, “[I]t is most rightly said that there is only one
method, because the process from the prior and more known things by nature to
the posterior is only one.”70
Burgersdijk goes further still, because he explicitly conflates order and method.
In contrast to the arbitrary method by which we accommodate the order of nature,
to confused cognition, to delight and persuade the common folk, “The natural
method is that in which the order of nature and our distinct cognition is preserved.”71 He
elaborates,
Method is to be instituted so that it serves the interest of the easier acquiring of distinct
knowledge of proposed things. Now in fact, the same things are prior by nature, which
are more known to us, as far as distinct cognition goes. For that cognition is distinct
which corresponds to the things themselves and the order of nature.72
In relation to Hobbes’s method, the qualifier ‘as far as distinct cognition goes’
proves vital. As seen in passages quoted earlier, Hobbes similarly acknowledges
that insofar as we are dealing with cognition τόυ ὅτι, or sense-based (i.e. confused)
knowledge, what is prior in our cognition is not equivalent to what is prior by
nature.73 But as already discussed at the beginning of section 2.2, when it comes to
scientia, gained by ratiocination, Hobbes simply assumes that the cognitive order,
by which we gain philosophical knowledge of successively more universal common
accidents and their causes, corresponds to the natural order of bodily faculties
that cause these conceptions in us. Here Hobbes’s view completely comports with
Keckermann and Burgersdijk, by directly opposing Zabarella’s claim that priority,
in a methodical ordering within a specific scientific discipline can and will diverge
from the order that starts from what is prior by nature, for the former must be
adapted to our cognitive capacity to facilitate learning.
Processus methodi imitetur processum & ordinem naturalem rerum, progrediendo à natura prioribus &
69
notioribus ad posteriora (Keckermann, Systema Logicae, III.i. Canon 2, 582).

Et hoc respectu rectissime dicitur unicam tantum esse methodum, quia unicus tantum est processus à prioribus
70
& notioribus natura ad posteriora (Keckermann, Systema Logicae, III.i.Canon 2, 583).

IV. Methodus naturalis est, in quâ servatur ordo naturae, & cognitionis nostrae distinctae
71
(Burgersdijk, Institutionum, Book.II, ch. xxviii, Theorem IV, 378).

Methodus ita instituenda est, ut inserviat distinctae rerum propositarum cognitioni facilius acquirendae.
72
Iam verò, quae nobis notiora sunt, quoad cognitionem distinctam eadem priora sunt naturâ. Cognitio enim distincta
est, quae rebus ipsis respondet & ordini naturae (Burgersdijk, Institutionum, II.xxviii.Theorem IV, 1.§, 378).
See DC 1655, I.vi, 2, 42; DC 1839, I.vi, 67, cited towards the end of section 2.1. Hobbes states
73
that in cognition τού ὅτι we are aware of the whole, e.g. our idea of a particular man, before we become
aware of its parts. By contrast, in cognition τού διότι, or scientific knowledge, which proceeds from cause
to effect, we know the causes of the parts, e.g. universals like ‘figure,’ ‘motion,’ and ‘ratiocination,’
before we know the composite individual nature, e.g. the man’s nature. Next Hobbes ties this to the
common saying that the former are better known to us whereas the latter are better known by nature.
But he does not endorse the common understanding of this distinction: instead he notes that ‘better
known to us’ should be understood with respect to knowledge of the senses, and ‘better known by
nature’ with respect to knowledge acquired by reason. See Prins, “Hobbes and the School of Padua,”
35 on the difference between Zabarella’s and Hobbes’s views of this distinction.
Both Keckermann and Burgersdijk, despite their divergence from Zabarella
on this point, affirm the Paduan’s view, which goes back to Aristotle that the
suitable order is from universals to particulars.74 This natural order is achieved
by the synthetic method. To Burgersdijk, “The natural method ought always to
progress from universals to particulars; in that progression all the parts are to be
connected by apt chains of transition.”75 Burgersdijk elaborates that universals are
not merely better known than particulars, as far as distinct cognition goes, but also
contribute to the acquisition of distinct cognition of the particulars since these are
contained in their definition.76 This is consistent with Hobbes’s use of synthesis,
which derives scientific knowledge of individual natures and their differentiating
accidents from more fundamental definitions (principles), themselves made up
of abstract names (Hobbes’s universals).
Neither Keckermann nor Burgersdijk mention the order followed by Euclid’s
Elements as a counter-example. Instead both simply assert that mathematics
progresses synthetically—from universal first principles to particulars.77 But to
Hobbes, enthralled as he was by the clarity and force of Euclid’s proofs, and
familiar as he would have been with claims by mathematicians that mathematical
demonstrations are none other than the most perfect kind of demonstration—as
alluded to by Aristotle—the need to reconcile the natural order, resulting from the
synthetic method, with the order of Euclid’s Elements would have been pressing.
Burgersdijk’s conflation of Zabarella’s order and method proper offers a likely
source for Hobbes’s claim that the method for discovering things simpliciter and
the method of teaching are one and the same method, consisting in an ordered
composition from the most simple to the more complex.78 Moreover, the fact
that proceeding from universals to particulars is thereby transformed into the
natural order as well as being the order by which we learn most easily, provides
an explanation for Hobbes’s mathematical starting points, and his assumption
that these can be composed, syllogistically, into complex wholes that correspond
to the bodily faculties causing our conceptions. Faced with the order of Euclid’s
Elements—a counter-example to the Aristotelian order from universal genus to
particular—one is saddled with two possible responses if one is not willing to
dismiss the Euclidean order as purely pedagogical: either reintroduce some kind
74
Keckermann, Systema Logicae, III.iii.1.2, 582.
75
Methodus naturalis semper debet progredi ab universalibus ad particulariora; in eoque progressu partes
omnes aptis transitionum vinculis connectendae sunt (Burgersdijk, Institutionum, II.xxviii.Theorem VI, 380).
Burgersdijk, Institutionum, II.xxviii.Theorem VI, §1, 380.
76
Keckermann, Systema Logicae, 589; Burgersdijk, Institutionum, 381.

77
While Hobbes follows Burgersdijk in taking method as order to be both a method of discovery
78
and a teaching method, he does explicitly retain a distinction between this method for scientia simplic-
iter, and a second method that, like Zabarella’s method proper and Keckermann’s particular method,
fulfills the aim of gaining knowledge of particular phenomena. Why Hobbes would have chosen to
follow Burgersdijk on the one point is another question and one can only speculate as to the reasons.
This view is more common among Protestant authors, who strongly reject Scholastic teaching methods,
and so it could have a religious motivation. I suggest in what follows that Hobbes may well have seen
this as a justification for placing mathematical definitions at the foundation of all knowledge. These
are, after all, the most easily taught, so if the teaching order is identical to the order of discovery, then
this provides a reason for replacing Aristotelian genera with mathematical concepts.
of a distinction between the ontological and cognitive orders, or respond to the 79
Euclidean counter-example from within the framework of Protestant systematic

logic; that is, accept that the cognitive order (insofar as it is acquired by reason)
is equivalent to the natural order, but recast the names and definitions of simple
mathematical entities as the universals from which one then advances, by means of
syllogistic deductions, to particulars. On this second option, ‘motion,’ ‘point,’ ‘line,’
and ‘surface’ replace Aristotelian genera, and the different mathematical objects
constructed from them stand in for species. Hobbes takes the second option.
The advantages of interpreting Hobbes’s method for scientia simpliciter as a
response to systematic logicians, instead of treating it as an outgrowth of Zabarella’s
regressus, are now clear. First, this reading saves Hobbes from inconsistency, by
explaining why the demonstrations Hobbes gives to solve particular problems in
natural philosophy and politics, do not conform to his general pronouncements
about method. The reason is that these general pronouncements are concerned
with method as order, not method proper. Second, it explains why Hobbes
considers his universal method mathematical even though it differs significantly
from geometrical analysis and synthesis—at the very foundation of his cognitive/
natural ordering lie the simplest Euclidean mathematical notions that so enthrall
Hobbes. Hobbes means to anchor his system upon the advantage of these valued
mathematical definitions, rendering the cause of the name at once the cause
of the object, for his full set of philosophical ratiocinations. Third, situating
Hobbes’s use of analysis and synthesis within a more dynamic and complex range
of prior developments, as opposed to reading these terms statically in either the
geometrical or the Aristotelian sense, accounts for hybrid elements in Hobbes’s
system. Indeed, what Hobbes ends up with looks like a rather strained mix, made
up of an Aristotelian syllogistic edifice of knowledge that rests upon a slender
and unsteady foundation of stretched mathematical definitions. Whether this
solution is ultimately workable or not forms another set of issues, but the set of
methodological problems and assumptions likely to have propelled Hobbes’s
curious move has at least been clarified.
bibliography and abbreviations

Adams, Marcus. “Mechanical Epistemology and Mixed Mathematics: Descartes’s Problems and Hobbes’s
Unity.” PhD Diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2014. [Mechanical Epistemology]
Aubrey, John. “Brief Lives,” Chiefly of Contemporaries, set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669 & 1696.
2 vols. Edited by Andrew Clark. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1898. [Brief Lives]
Blancanus, Josephus. De Mathematicarum Natura Dissertatio, Appendix to Aristotelis Loca Mathematica. In
Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Paolo Mancosu,
translated by Gyula Klima, 178–212. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. [De Mathematicarum].
Burgersdijk, Franco. Institutionum Logicarum Libri Duo. Leiden: Apud Abrahamum Commelinum,
1626. [Institutionum]
Cunningham, Andrew. “Fabricius and the ‘Aristotle Project’ in Anatomical Teaching and Research at
Padua.” In The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, edited by A. Wear, R. K. French, and I.
M. Lonie, 195–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. [“Fabricius”]
This is the approach Descartes takes, in Rule 12 of his Rules for the Direction of the Mind, when
79
applying the mathematical method to other problems. There he emphasizes that one must look for
what is most absolute, and simple with respect to our knowledge and what is most useful for solving
the problem, rather than what might be ontologically most basic.
Dear, Peter. “Method and the Study of Nature.” In The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy,
edited by Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers, 147–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998. [“Method”]
Duncan, Stewart. “Hobbes: Metaphysics and Method.” PhD Diss., Rutgers University, Oct 2003.
[Metaphysics and Method]
Di Liscia, Daniel, Eckhard Kessler, and Charlotte Methuen, editors. Method and Order in Renaissance
Philosophy of Nature. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997. [Method and Order]
Engfer, Hans Jürgen. Philosophie als Analysis. Bad-Cannstadt: Fromann Holzboog, 1982.
Garrett, Aaron. Meaning in Spinoza’s Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [Meaning]
Gilbert, Neal. Renaissance Concepts of Method. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
Hanson, Donald W. “The Meaning of ‘Demonstration’ in Hobbes’s Science.” History of Political Thought
11 (1990): 587–626. [“The Meaning of ‘Demonstration’”]
Hobbes, Thomas. Concerning Body. In Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy. London, 1656. [DC 1656]
———. The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
[Correspondence]
———. De Corpore. In Elementorum Philosophia. London, 1655. [DC 1655]
______. Elementorum Philosophia. London, 1655. [DC 1655]
———. Elements of Philosophy. In The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Sir William Molesworth,
1–532. Bart, London: John Bohn, 1839. [DC 1839]
______. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Sir William Molesworth. Bart, London: John
Bohn, 1839. [DC 1839]
———. Examinatio et Emendatio Mathematica Hodiernae. London: Andrew Crooke, 1660. [Examinatio]
______. Thomas Hobbes Computatio Sive Logica. Edited by Isabel C. Hungerland, and George R.Vick.
Translated by A. Martinich. New York: Abaris Books, 1981. [Computatio Sive Logica]
Howell, Wilbur Samuel. Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700. New York: Russell & Russell Inc.,
1961. [Logic and Rhetoric].
Hungerland, Isabel C., and George R. Vick. “Misinterpretations of Hobbes: The Correct View.” In
Thomas Hobbes Computatio Sive Logica, edited by Isabel C. Hungerlund and Georpe R.Vick, 15–148.
New York: Abaris Books, 1981. [“Misinterpretations”]
Jesseph, Douglas. “Hobbes and the Method of Natural Science.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes,
edited by Tom Sorell, 86–107. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. [“Method of Natural
Science”]
Jesseph, Douglas. “Galileo, Hobbes, and the Book of Nature.” Perspectives on Science 12 (2004): 191–211.
[“Galileo, Hobbes”]
Keckermann, Bartholomaeus. Systema Logicae. Hanover: Apud Haeredes Guilielmi Antonii, 1613.
Kersting, Wolfgang. “Erkenntnis und Methode in Thomas Hobbes’s Philosophie.” Studia Leibniziana
20 (1988): 126–39. [“Erkenntnis und Methode”]
MacPherson, C. B. “Introduction.” In Leviathan, edited by C. B. MacPherson, 25–29. Hammondsworth:
Penguin, 1968. [“Introduction”]
Malcolm, Noel. Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002.
———. Reason of State, Propaganda, and the Thirty Years’ War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
[Reason of State]
Morrison, Donald. “Philoponous and Simplicius on Tekmeriodic Proof.” In Di Liscia, Kessler, and
Methuen, Method and Order, 1–22. [“Philoponous and Simplicius]
Prins, J. “Hobbes and the School of Padua: Two Incompatible Approaches to Science.” Archiv für
Geschichte de Philosophie 72 (1990): 26–46. [“Hobbes and the School of Padua”]
Randall, John Herman. “The Development of Scientific Method in the School of Padua.” In Renaissance
Essays, edited by Paul Oskar Kristeller and Philip P. Wiener, 177–206. New York: Harper and Row,
1968. [“Development of Scientific Method”]
Röd, Wolfgang. Geometrischer Geist und Naturrecht, Methodengeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur Staatsphilosophie
im 17. Und 18. Jahrhundert. Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1970.
[Geometrischer Geist]
Sacksteder, William. “Hobbes: The Art of the Geometricians.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 18
(1980): 131–46. [“Art of the Geometricians”]
———. “Notes and Discussions: Hobbes and Talaska on the Order of the Sciences.” Journal of the History
of Philosophy 26 (1988): 643–47. [“Notes”]
Sorell, Tom. “Hobbes’s Reputation in Anglo-American Philosophy.” In Insiders and Outsiders in
Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by G. A. J. Rogers and Jill Kraye, 192–206. New York and
London: Routledge, 2010. [“Hobbes’s Reputation”]
Talaska, Richard A. “Analytic and Synthetic Method according to Hobbes.” Journal of the History of
Philosophy 26 (1988): 207–37. [“Analytic and Synthetic”]
Timmermans, Benoît. “The Originality of Descartes’s Conception of Analysis as Discovery.” Journal of
the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 433–47. [“Descartes’ Conception of Analysis”]
Wallace, William A. “Galileo’s Regressive Methodology, Its Prelude and Its Sequel.” In Di Liscia, Kessler,
and Methuen, Method and Order, 229–52. [“Galileo’s Regressive Methodology”]
Watkins, J. N. Hobbes’s System of Ideas. London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973. [System of Ideas]
Zabarella, Jacobus. De Methodis, Opera Logica. Cologne: Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri, 1597. [De Methodis].
———. Liber De Regressu, Opera Logica. Cologne: Sumptibus Lazari Zetneri, 1597. [De Regressu]

Hattab2014 PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hattab2014 PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

+REEHV૷VDQG=DEDUHOOD૷V0HWKRGV$0LVVLQJ/LQN

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 52, Number 3, July 2014,

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Freie Universitaet Berlin (6 May 2015 17:27 GMT)

early modern philosophers commonly appeal to a mathematical method to

* Helen Hattab is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 52, no. 3 (2014) 461–486

1. zabarella’s definition of method and the

iuuamur (De Methodis, I.ii,136).

previous note) tends to use it as an equivalent term for composition.

Regressive Methodology,” 229–52; Timmermans, “Descartes’s Conception of Analysis,” 433–47. Wat-

Zabarella, De Methodis, I.iii, 139.

Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiii, 156–57.

Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiv, 159.

Zabarella, De Methodis, I.xiv, 160.

Gilbert’s suggestion in his by now classic Renaissance Concepts of Method, 211.

I hesitate to attribute this interpretation entirely to confusions generated by the seventeenth-

In my translation I have rendered ‘scire’ as ‘to know scientifically,’ since for

In the English edition, ‘cognitio’ gets translated into ‘knowledge by sense,’

2.2 Hobbes’s First Method as a Conceptual Ordering

DC 1839, I.vi, 16, 86.

DC 1655, I.vi.2, 42.

Rather confusingly, Hobbes refers to these self-evident accidents as “universals,”

DC 1655, I.viii.2, 63.

DC 1655, I.ii.9, 12.

DC 1655, I.iii.2, 20–21.

To know the causes of universals we first investigate universal notions of things,

The method by which we arrive at knowledge of the universals is analysis or

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

Example 2. Individual Nature: Conception of gold.

Figure i (synthesis/addition −−−−−→)

Hobbes’s claim that discovering the causes of universals requires no method

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

DC 1655, I.vi.4, 43.

DC 1839, I.vi.5, 69.

1655 or the English edition of 1656; cf. DC 1839, I.vi.6, 70.

3.the protestant connection

Keckermann also incorporates Zabarella’s distinction between method proper

ligantur, & memoriae quam tenacissimè inhaerant (Burgersdijk, Institutionum, 375–76).

notioribus ad posteriora (Keckermann, Systema Logicae, III.i. Canon 2, 582).

& notioribus natura ad posteriora (Keckermann, Systema Logicae, III.i.Canon 2, 583).

(Burgersdijk, Institutionum, Book.II, ch. xxviii, Theorem IV, 378).

Keckermann, Systema Logicae, 589; Burgersdijk, Institutionum, 381.

Euclidean counter-example from within the framework of Protestant systematic

bibliography and abbreviations

You might also like

+REEHV૷VDQG=DEDUHOOD૷V0HWKRGV$0LVVLQJ/LQN