short cuts when applying particular method.25 The hierarchically ordered definitions attained by Hobbes’s method for unqualified scientific knowledge supply the principles one deduces from in particular method. The latter can be analytic2, synthetic2 or a combination of both. In the methodical pursuit of particular scientific inquiries, computation is not the generation of ordered definitions that follows analysis into universal notions but fits Hobbes’s identification of scientific knowledge with deductive reasoning.
This is clear from Hobbes’s example of using analysis2 and synthesis2 to inquire after the subject of an accident.26 The question is: In what subject is the splendor and apparent magnitude of the sun? The methodical steps are:
1 Analysis2: matter in general [materia universa] is divided into parts, e.g., object, medium and sentient or “by some other division which seems most suitable to the proposed matter [rem]” (EW I.76).
2 Synthesis2: “Next, the individual parts are to be examined according to the definition of the subject; and those which are not capable of those accidents are to be rejected” (EW I.76).For example, we rule out the body of the sun as the subject by discovering that the sun is greater than its apparent magnitude and hence that magnitude is not in the sun; we discover this through knowledge of optics:“if the sun be in one determined straight line, and one determined distance, and the magnitude and splendor be seen in more lines and distances than one, as it is in reflection and refraction, then neither that splendour nor apparent magnitude are in the sun itself, and, therefore, the body of the sun cannot be the subject of that splendour and magnitude” (EW I.76).We rule out the air and other parts by the same reasons until we are left with the sentient as the subject of the splendor of the sun.
Synthesis2 is not an aggregation of concepts/names into definitions but a methodical use of prior definitions that universal method orders as more basic (like principles of optics) and other bits of prior knowledge to narrow down possibilities and deduce the correct conclusion.27 Physicists may require observations to exclude some possibilities whereas geometers or civil scientists may employ constructions and thought experiments before making deductions. These are differences in application, not in the essence of the particular method.
1.4 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have argued that Hobbes’s philosophical method is integral to his project of separating philosophy and religion so as to put morals on a true scientific foundation. I have clarified what Hobbes means by “science,” “method,” and “demonstration,” showing that the common attribution of a mechanistic method of resolution to Hobbes is incorrect. Building on recent views regarding whether Hobbes has a unified method for theoretical and practical philosophy I add to available interpretations by drawing on Hobbes’s context. Like contemporaneous methods, Hobbes’s method comprises a universal and a particular method. This distinction sheds light on how analysis and synthesis function in each branch of Hobbes’s method in a way that serves to unify and place both theoretical and practical philosophy on a scientific basis.
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