An acclaimed study - now available for the first time in English - investigates the relation between Thomas Hobbes’ natural philosophy as represented in his Prima Philosophia (the second part of De corpore (1655)) and the various currents of Renaissance and early modern Aristotelianism.
This book explores the dynamics of the commentary and textbook traditions in Aristotelian natural philosophy under the headings of doctrine, method, and scientific and social status. It enquires what the evolution of the Aristotelian commentary tradition can tell us about the character of natural philosophy as a pedagogical tool, as a scientific enterprise, and as a background to modern scientific thought. In a unique attempt to cut old-fashioned historiographic divisions, it brings together scholars of ancient, medieval, Renaissance and seventeenth-century philosophy. The book covers a remarkably broad range of it starts with the first Greek commentators and ends with Leibniz.