Hobbes's Leviathan

• Hobbes (1588-1679) was an admirer of mathematical method. His Father was a vicar, who was ill- tempered and uneducated; he lost his job by arguing with a neighbouring vicar at the church door. After this, Hobbes, was brought up by his uncle.
•  At the age of 15 Hobbes, went to Oxford, where they taught him scholastic logic and the philosophy of Aristotle.
• In the year of 1610, when he was 22 years old, he became a tutor to Lord Hardwick. It was at this time that he became to know the work of Galileo and Kepler, which profoundly influenced him.
• After the death of the Earl of Devonshire, Hobbes then lived in Paris for a short time. He then became a tutor to the son that the Earl of Devonshire left behind. He travelled to Italy with his pupil where he visited Galileo in 1636. A year later he came back to England.
• From 1646 to 1648, he taught mathematics to Charles II. Then in 1651 he went on to publish the Leviathan, which pleased no one. The books bitter attack on the Catholic Church offended the French Government, which made Hobbes to flee secretly to London.

Hobbes Leviathan book cover

• After the plague and the great fire, when peoples superstitious fears were aroused, the house of commons appointed a committee to inquire into atheistical writings, especially those of Hobbes. From this point onwards, he was not allowed to print anything on controversial subjects in England.
• Below are some of the controversial philosophical ideas that Hobbes believed in and wrote about in his Leviathan book.
• Hobbes believed that all men are naturally equal. In the state of nature, before there was any government, every man desires to preserve his own liberty, but to acquire dominion over others; both these desires are dictated by the impulse of self-preservation. From this he believes that from their conflict there will arise a war of all against all, which makes life 'nasty, brutish and short'. In a state of nature, there is no property, no justice or injustice; there is only war. The second part tells how men escape from these evils by combining into communities, with each subject to a central authority. This is represented as happening by means of social contract. It is thought that a number of people come together and agree to choose a sovereign, or a sovereign authority, which shall gain authority over them and put an end to universal war.
• Hobbes asks the question, why men can't co-operate like ants and bees. He states ' Bees in the same hive, do not compete; they have no desire for honour; and they do not have reason to criticize the government. Their agreement is natural, but that of men can only be artificial, by covenant. The covenant must confer power on one man or one assembly, since otherwise it cannot be enforced'. The government is chosen by the majority of citizens, once the government is chosen and takes power, the citizens loose all rights to the government except when the government find it expedient to grant. Also there is no right to rebel because the ruler is not bound by any contract, whereas the subjects are.
• A multitude so united is called a commonwealth. This 'Leviathan' is a mortal god.
• Hobbes preferred monarchy, he could tolerate parliament alone, but not in a system where the power is shared between King and Parliament.
• Hobbes believed that the English civil war occurred because power was divided between King, Lords and Commons.
• The supreme power , whether a man or an assembly, is called the Sovereign. In Hobbes system the powers of the Sovereign are unlimited. He has the right of censorship over all expression of opinion.The laws of property are to be entirely subject to the Sovereign. Rebellion is wrong, both because it usually fails and because if it succeeds, it sets a bad example and teaches others to rebel.
• In Hobbes system, the succession of the Sovereign is to be determined by the Sovereign himself. Which would usually be one of his children, or a near relative if he has no children himself. But it is held that there is no law that prevents the Sovereign from choosing otherwise.
• On the grounds of self-preservation ( though with limitation ) Hobbes holds that a man has a right to refuse to fight when called upon by the government to do so. Hobbes also believes that resistance against the sovereign is only justified in self defence; resistance in defence of another is always culpable. All teachers are to ministers of the sovereign and should only teach what the sovereign thinks is necessary. The sovereign also has the right to regulate foreign trade and the right to punish comes from him, not from any other forms of justice.
• Hobbes thinks that there should be no difficulty in teaching people in the rights of the sovereign, for they have not been taught to believe in Christianity. 
•  I think that Hobbes is very clear in what he believes in and he is not trying to trick anyone into believing in his concepts. I think he's got the best interest of the citizens at heart, although I must say that I don't believe his political ideas of the sovereign or the government. Mainly because, even though he says that the citizens choose by majority, the sovereign, he's not taking into account every citizen. He's only talking about people of high social status. Also because Hobbes believes that the sovereign has the right to choose his successor, that would mean, the public would only have the right to choose the first ever sovereign, but not any other. Which I believe will eventually lead to a dictatorship.

Francis Bacon

• Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, who was a Lord keeper of the great Seal.
• Francis Bacon entered Parliament when he was 23 and became advisor to Essex.
• When Essex fell from favour with Parliament, Bacon helped in his prosecution. Bacon was blamed for his treachery and ingratitude towards Essex by some, but this was quite unjust because he worked with Essex while Essex was a noble man, but then abandoned him when continued loyalty to him would have been treasonable. 
• In 1618 Bacon became Lord chancellor, he held this position for two years, then he was prosecuted for accepting bribes from Litigants. For this he was fined £40,000, imprisonment in the tower, perpetual banishment from court and inability to hold office. This sentence was only partially executed because he was not made to pay the fine, was only kept in the tower for four days, but he was compelled to abandon public life and was ordered to spend the rest of his days writing important books.

Francis Bacon

• After five years in retirement, he died from a chill, whilst experimenting on refrigeration by stuffing a chicken with snow.
• Bacon's most important book is The advancement of learning and he is widely known as the originator of the saying 'knowledge is power'.
• He believed that philosophy should be kept separate from theology and shouldn't be intimately blended with it as in scholasticism.
• Bacon was the first of a long line of scientific minded  philosophers  who have emphasised the importance of induction as opposed to deduction. He wished to discover the nature of heat, which he rightly supposed to consist of rapid irregular motions of the small parts of bodies. His method was to make a list of hot bodies, a list of cold bodies and a list of bodies of varying degrees of heat. He hoped that these lists would show certain characteristics always present in hot bodies but absent in cold bodies, and present in varying degrees in bodies of different degrees of heat.
• One or the most famous parts of Bacon's philosophy is his enumeration of what he calls 'idols'. By this he means bad habits of the mind that cause people to fall into error.
• My opinion is that, in terms of Bacon's scientific and philosophical  discoveries, his role in philosophy is very small. Although the few things he did discover are very impressive and it seems to me that he would more be seen as a noble man because of his work in parliament. Even though he did except a bribe, but back in those days it seems as if taking bribes were a common occurrence, it was just unfortunate that he got caught. Also I can see how his political life could be relevant to the history of journalism.

The Rise Of Science

• Decartes, in a sense was the founder of modern Philosophy & was also one of the creators of 17th century Science.
• Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton are pre-eminent in the creation of Science.
• Copernicus (1473-1543) was a Polish ecclesiastic. In 1500 he had a lectureship or professorship of mathematics in Rome.
• Copernicus believed that the sun is at the centre of the universe. His chief work, De Revoltionibus Oribium Coelestium, was published in the year of his death (1543). The book I believe, was dedicated to the Pope. 
•  Another Astronomer of importance was Tycho Brathe (1546-1601). He believed that the Sun and Moon go around the Earth, but the planets go around the Sun.
• Kepler (1571-1630) is one of the most notable examples of what can be achieved by patience without much in the way of Genius. He was the 1st important Astronomer after Copernicus to adopt the heliocentric theory.
• Kepler's most noticable achievment was the discovery of his three laws of planetery motion.Two of these he published in 1609, the third in 1619.
• His first law states: The planets describe elliptic orbits, of which the sun occupies one focus.
• His second law states: The line joining a planet to the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times.
• His third law states: The square of the period of revolution of a planet is proportional to the cube of its average distance from the sun.
• Galileo (1564-1642) is considered to be the greatest of the founders of modern Science.
• He was born on about the day in  which Michelangelo died, and he died in the year in which newton was born.
• Galileo first discovered the importance of acceleration in dynamics. he believed that every body, if left alone, Will continue to move in a straight line with uniform velocity; any change, either in the rapidity or the direction of motion, requires to be explained as due to the action of some 'force'.
• Galileo was also the first to discover the law of falling bodies. He also studied projectiles, Which was a subject of importance to his employer, the duke of Tuscany. Galileo showed that if a projectile was to be fired horizontally, apart from the air, the horizontal velocity would be added, which would grow according to the law of intertia. But a vertical velocity would be added, which would grow according to the law of falling bodies.
• Galileo, having found out that a Dutchman invented a telescope, he then made one himself. He then went on to discover some important things. He found that the Milky way consists of a multitude of separate stars, he also observed the phases of Venus and also discovered the satellites of Jupiter.
• Newton (1642-1727) showed that acceleration towards the earth and sun, following the same formula as the laws of motion, explains the moon's motion, and that the acceleration of falling bodies on the earth's surface is again related to that of the moon according to the inverse square law.
• According to Newton, the planets were originally hurled by the hand of God. But when he had done this, decreed the law of gravitation, everything went on by itself without further need of divine intervention.  
• The compound microscope was invented just before the 17th century, around 1590.

One of the first compound microscopes (I think)

The telescope was invented in 1608, by a Dutchman named Lippershy. Galileo also invented the thermometer. Torricelli invented the barometer. Guericke (1602-86) invented the air pump.

One of the first Telescopes

• Gilbert (1540-1603) published his book on the magnet in 1600. Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the circulation of the blood, he published his discovery in 1628. Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) discovered spermatozoa, although it was another man, Stephen Hamn, had discovered them a few months earlier; Leeuwenhoek also discovered protozoa or unicellular organisms and even bacteria. 
• As we are able to tell from all these discoveries, the 17th century was really instrumental for Science, and in many respects, was when Science and astronomy really became significant.