See also Posterior Analytics I.9 (76a4-13; Aristotle 1984, 123) and Metaphysics M.3 1078a14-16 For discussion of Aristotle’s view of subalternate sciences and Galileo, see Lennox (1986).
8 8 Indeed, in Minute Hobbes describes vision “in general” as “that fancie which is caused in any living creature” (1983 [1646], 334). Médina (2016, 42) suggests that the placement of optics within De homine, rather than in De corpore, relates to Hobbes’s division in Minute between illumination (Part I) and vision (Part II) and suggests that this division is similarly reflected in Hobbes’s separation of sciography from optiques in the Table in Leviathan 9 (2012, 131). The former studies consequences “from the Qualities of the Starres” and the latter consequences from the “Qualities of Bodies Terrestriall.” However, were this strict division Hobbes’s intention behind placing optics within De homine (and not within De corpore), it would not explain why De corpore Part IV (chapter XXV) opens with the discussion of “sense”.
9 9 du Verdus to Hobbes (August 17/27, 1656; Hobbes 1994a, 298, 299); Sorbière to Hobbes (December 13/23, 1656; Hobbes 1994a, 388, 391); du Verdus to Hobbes (May 17/27, 1657; Hobbes 1994a, 468, 471); Fermat to Hobbes (June 5/15, 1657; Hobbes 1994a, 474, 475); de Martel to Hobbes (July29/ August 8, 1657; Hobbes 1994a, 480, 482); and de Martel to Hobbes (August 7/17, 1657; Hobbes 1994a, 483, 484).
10 10 Although geometry plays this role in the account of the optic axis and the visual line in De homine, and elsewhere in Hobbes’s optics, geometry does not serve as the “why” in all explanations, such as in Minute where Hobbes’s account of the nature of light plays an explanatory role in understanding the production of heat (see Malet 2001, 320).
11 11 I develop this explanation in more detail in Adams (2016, 47–8). I discuss Hobbes’s borrowing (and citing) of geometrical principles in his criticisms of Robert Boyle in Dialogus Physicus in Adams (2017).
References
1 Adams, Marcus P.2016. “Hobbes on Natural Philosophy as ‘True Physics’ and Mixed Mathematics.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 56: 43–51.
2 Adams, Marcus P.2017. “Natural Philosophy, Deduction, and Geometry in the Hobbes-Boyle Debate.” Hobbes Studies 30: 83–107.
3 Adams, Marcus P.2019. “Hobbes’s Laws of Nature in Leviathan as a Synthetic Demonstration: Thought Experiments and Knowing the Causes.” Philosophers’ Imprint 19 (5): 1–23.
4 Aristotle. 1984. The Complete Works of Aristotle, Vol. I, edited by Jonathan Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
5 Biener, Zvi. 2016. “Hobbes on the Order of Sciences: A Partial Defense of the Mathematization Thesis.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 54 (3): 312–32.
6 Hampton, Jean. 1986. Hobbes and the Social Contract Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
7 Hobbes, Thomas. 1839–1845a. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, 11 vols., edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: John Bohn. Cited as EW.
8 Hobbes, Thomas. 1839–1845b. Thomæ Hobbes malmesburiensis opera philosophica, 5 vols., edited by Gulielmi Molesworth. London: John Bohn. Cited as OL.
9 Hobbes, Thomas. 1973 [1642–1643]. Critique du De Mundo de Thomas White, edited by Jean Jacquotand Harold Whitmore Jones. Paris: Vrin.
10 Hobbes, Thomas. 1976 [1642–1643]. Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined, translated by Harold Whitmore Jones. London: Bradford University Press.
11 Hobbes, Thomas. 1981. Computatio sive Logica: Logic. Translation and Commentary by Aloysius P. Martinich, edited by Isabel C. Hungerlandand George R. Vick. New York: Abaris Books.
12 Hobbes, Thomas . 1983 [1646]. Thomas Hobbes’s a Minute or First Draught of the Optiques: A Critical Edition, edited by Elaine C. Stroud. PhD Dissertation. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
13 Hobbes, Thomas. 1994a. The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes, 2 vols., edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
14 Hobbes, Thomas. 1994b [1658]. Man and Citizen: De homine and De cive, edited and translated by Bernard Gert. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
15 Hobbes, Thomas. 2012 [1651]. Leviathan, 3 vols., edited by Noel Malcolm. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
16 Leijenhorst, Cees. 1996. “Hobbes’s Theory of Causality and Its Aristotelian Background.” The Monist 79 (3): 426–47.
17 Lennox, James. 1986. “Aristotle, Galileo, and the ‘Mixed Sciences’.” In Reinterpreting Galileo, edited by William A. Wallace, 29–51.Washington, DC: Catholic University Press.
18 Malcolm, Noel. 2002. Aspects of Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
19 Malet, Antoni. 2001. “The Power of Images: Mathematics and Metaphysics in Hobbes’s Optics.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 32 (2): 303–33.
20 Martinich, Aloysius P.2005. Hobbes. New York, London: Routledge.
21 Médina, José. 2016. “Hobbes’s Geometrical Optics.” Hobbes Studies 27 (1): 39–65.
22 Peters, Richard. 1967. Hobbes. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books.
23 Prins, Jan. 1993. “Ward’s Polemic with Hobbes on the Sources of His Optical Theories.” Revue d’histoire des sciences 46: 195–224.
24 Ryan, Alan. 1970. The Philosophy of the Social Sciences. London: Macmillan.
25 Shapin, Stevenand Simon Schaffer. 1985. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
26 Shapiro, Alan. 1973. “Kinematic Optics: A Study of the Wave Theory of Light in the Seventeenth Century.” Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences 11: 134–266.
27 Watkins, John W.N.1965. Hobbes’s System of Ideas: A Study in the Political Significance of Philosophical Theories. London: Hutchinson.
5 “A Most Useful Economy”: Hobbes on Linguistic Meaning and Understanding
R.W. MCINTYRE
Hobbes holds that there is an intimate connection between linguistic meaning and thought. In Leviathan Hobbes defines linguistic understanding in the following way:
When a man upon the hearing of any Speech, hath those thoughts which the words of that Speech, and their connexion, were ordained and constituted to signifie; Then he is said to understand it: Understanding being nothing else, but a conception caused by Speech. And therefore if Speech be peculiar to man (as for ought I know it is,) then is Understanding peculiar to him also.
(Hobbes 2012, 62; 1651, 17)
From passages such as this, it is easy to conclude that signification – the relationship between a linguistic expression and that thought the expression signifies – is Hobbes’s primary semantic notion. Yet, this conclusion does not square well with Hobbes’s definition of a sign:
A Signe, is the Event Antecedent, of the Consequent; and contrarily, the Consequent of the Antecedent, when the like Consequences have been observed before.
(Hobbes 2012, 44; 1651, 10)
As Ian Hacking observes, given this definition of “sign,” it is “very difficult to foist any theory of meaning on to Hobbes” (1975, 20; cf. Abizadeh 2015 and Ott 2003, 13–21). Indeed, since understanding is “conception caused by speech,” it seems that Hobbes is confusing natural meaning and non-natural meaning in Grice’s