Science and Philosophy

During the last years of the Renaissance the baroque exuberance of its central phase declined.
The most diverse tendencies contributed to this, Puritan plainness and classical restraint above
all. The reaction against metaphysical excesses also came from the new philosophy and
science, which had already been heralded by Francis Bacon at the beginning of the century.
The seeds of the scientific revolution of the 18th century were sown during the last phase of
the Renaissance. The revolution that Copernicus had started in the 16th century developed so
rapidly and so broadly that physics were transformed together with astronomy. In theoretical
terms this meant that the break with the old Aristotelian idea of the universe was complete. In
practical terms there was a parallel development in the design and manufacture of scientific
instruments.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

The other great philosopher of Renaissance England, also strongly opposed obscure
expressions and elaborate conceits. He was in favour of clear thoughts expressed in clear short
sentences, and of direct statements instead of metaphors. His interest in language and rhetoric
as instruments of social and political power was to be greatly influential well into the 18th
century and later. Unlike Bacon, with his empiricism filled with optimism and enthusiasm,
Hobbes was a decided materialist in philosophy; one of his often quoted statements is: ‘The
universal is corporeal; all that is real is material, and what is not material is not real’. For him,
the soul and its operations had all material causes and man’s sentiments – what pleased or
displeased him – were due to external ‘motions’, or factors. Hobbes held a cynical view of
human nature and society. He believed that the state of nature for man only meant war and
destruction; he is the author of the famous phrase: ‘man is a wolf to man’. He argued that
society was run by two overwhelming motivations: fear (of death, other people, social habits,
and so on) and the desire for power. The ways in which these two concerns operate on society
can be rationally analysed as a mechanism. The work in which Hobbes conducts this analysis is
Leviathan (1651). It takes its name from the biblical sea-monster, or whale, which for Hobbes
symbolises the huge and all-powerful organism that alone can control man’s naturally violent
nature: a strong government. Written at the time of the civil wars, the book reflects Hobbes’
pessimistic view of man and expresses a desire for stable government – a sovereign power,
which does not necessarily have to be the king. In examining society and the history of
mankind Hobbes’s displays a cold detachment not unlike that of Machiavelli, which enables him
to deny man’s inherent goodness. In the absence of a supreme power men fall back to a
brutish state in which they are endlessly at war with each other. This, according to Hobbes, is
the fate of mankind unless the social machine regulates and redeems it. Hobbes’s position is
thus opposed to the theories of the natural goodness of man, especially primitive man living in
a state of nature.