De Corpore - Contents

Contents

Although the chosen title would suggest a work of natural philosophy, De Corpore is largely devoted to foundational matters. It consists of four sections. Part I covers logic. Part II and Part III concern “abstract bodies”: the second part is a repertoire of scientific concepts, and the third of geometry. The Chapters 16 to 20 of Part III are in fact devoted to mathematics generally, in a reductive way, and proved controversial. They proposed a kinematic foundation for geometry, which Hobbes wished to equate with mathematics; geometry itself, that is, is a “science of motion”. Hobbes here adopts ideas from Galileo and Cavalieri. It is in Part IV, on natural phenomena, that there is discussion of physics as such.

Read more about this topic:  De Corpore

Famous quotes containing the word contents:

    Yet to speak of the whole world as metaphor
    Is still to stick to the contents of the mind
    And the desire to believe in a metaphor.
    It is to stick to the nicer knowledge of
    Belief, that what it believes in is not true.
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    How often we must remember the art of the surgeon, which, in replacing the broken bone, contents itself with releasing the parts from false position; they fly into place by the action of the muscles. On this art of nature all our arts rely.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The permanence of all books is fixed by no effort friendly or hostile, but by their own specific gravity, or the intrinsic importance of their contents to the constant mind of man.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)