Jesuit Concepts of Spatium Imaginarium and Thomas Hobbes's Doctrine of Space1

Early Science and Medicine 1 (3):355-380 (1996)
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Abstract

Thomas Hobbes's doctrine of space is here considered as an example of the Nachzuirkung of Jesuit commentaries on Aristotle's natural philosophy in seventeenth-century mechanistic science. Hobbes's doctrine of space can be reconstructed in terms of his intensive dialogue with late scholasticism, as represented in the works of several important Jesuit authors. Although he presents his concept of space as an alternative to the Aristotelian notion of place, there are some remarkable similarities between Hobbes's alternative notion of space and the concept of spatium imaginarium, found in the Jesuit commentaries. While Hobbes adopts many scholastic elements, he employs these to his own purposes. Thus, on the one hand, this article does not so much challenge Hobbes's "modernity", but rather tries to put it in its proper perspective. On the other hand, it tries to show the vitality and importance of Jesuit natural philosophy in non- or even anti-Aristotelian contexts

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Cees Leijenhorst
Radboud University Nijmegen

References found in this work

Hobbes's causal account of sensation.Jeffrey Barnouw - 1980 - Journal of the History of Philosophy 18 (2):115-130.
Kepler, Hobbes and medieval optics.J. Prins - 1987 - Philosophia Naturalis 24 (3):287-310.
Thomas Hobbes und Francesco Patrizi.Karl Schuhmann - 1986 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 68 (3):253-279.
La question du vide chez Hobbes.Jean Bernhardt - 1993 - Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 46 (2):225-232.

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