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This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

Hobbes and Wallis's "battle of the books" illuminates the intimate relationship between science and crucial seventeenth-century debates over the limits of sovereign power and the existence of God.

The subject is Sextus Empiricus, one the chief sources of information on ancient philosophy and one of the most influential authors in the history of skepticism. Sextus' works have had an extraordinary influence on western philosophy, and this book provides the first exhaustive and detailed study of their recovery, transmission, and intellectual influence through Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. This study deals with Sextus' biography, as well as the history of the availability and reception of his works. (...) It also contains an extensive bibliographical section, including editions, translations, and commentaries. (shrink)

It was as a political thinker that Thomas Hobbes first came to prominence, and it is as a political theorist that he is most studied today. Yet the range of his writings extends well beyond morals and politics. Hobbes had distinctive views in metaphysics and epistemology, and wrote about such subjects as history, law, and religion. He also produced full-scale treatises in physics, optics, and geometry. All of these areas are covered in this Companion, most in considerable detail. The volume (...) also reflects the multidisciplinary nature of current Hobbes scholarship by drawing together perspectives that are now being developed in parallel by philosophers, historians of science and mathematics, intellectual historians, political scientists, and literary theorists. (shrink)

Hobbes ' geometrical disputes are significant since they highlight several important strands in his thought - issues concerning the right to make definitions, his anti-clericalism, the maker's knowledge argument and his objections to algebra. These are examined, and the foundational position, according to Hobbes, of geomentry in relation to philosophy, science and technology, explained and discussed.

This paper discusses the influence of Sextus Empiricus' works on Renaissance culture and the recovery of Pyrrhonism during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It investigates what primary and secondary sources were available at the time, and who knew and made use of such sources. The article concludes that the dearth of Pyrrhonic arguments in Renaissance literature was due to the prevailing and incompatible culture of humanism rather than to a lack of interest in Sextus Empiricus’ works during this period.

We know very little about mathematical skepticism in modem times. Imre Lakatos once remarked that “in discussing modem efforts to establish foundations for mathematical knowledge one tends to forget that these are but a chapter in the great effort to overcome skepticism by establishing foundations for knowledge in general." And in a sense he was clearly right: modem thought — with its new discoveries in mathematical sciences, the mathematization of physics, the spreading of Pyrrhonist doctrines, the centrality of epistemological foundationalism (...) and the diffusion of the geometrical method in philosophy — was the most natural arena in which skepticism and mathematics could confront each other. The problem remains, however, that no investigation of the whole topic has yet been attempted. Thus, as far as we know, mathematical certainties should have clashed with skeptical doubts, but whether and to what extent there was indeed a historical debate on mathematical skepticism in modern thought remains to be ascertained. (shrink)

I argue that, according to Descartes, even mathematics is not immune from doubt and absolutely reliable, and hence fails to grant the ultimate justification of science. Descartes offers two arguments and a corollary to support this view. They are sufficient to show that the mathematical atheist cannot justifiably claim to have absolutely certain knowledge even of simple mathematical truths. Philosophical reflection itself turns out to be the only alternative means to provide knowledge with a stable foundation.