Knowledge of Consequences

Letters, a profitable invention for continuing the memory of time past.
....whereby inventing Speech; Men register their thoughts; and declare them to one another for conversation.

The first author of Speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sights; for the Scripture goeth no further in this matter..........By this it appears that Reason is not as Sense, and Memorey, borne with us; nor gotten by Experience onely; as Prudence is; but attayned by lndustry; first in apt imposing of Names; and secondly by getting a good and orderly Method in proceeding from the Elements, which are Names, to Assertions made by connexion of one of them to another, and so to syllogismes, which are the connexions of one Assertion to another, till we come to a knowledge of all the consequences of Names appertaining to the subject in hand and that is it, men call Science. And whereas Sense and Memory are but knowldege of Fact, which is a thing of past, and irrevocable; Science is the knowledge of Consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another....


Thomas Hobbes; Leviathan, The Matter, Forme and Power of A Common Wealth and Civill; Of Reason and Science, Chap V




From classical humanist to mechanical philosopher, Hobbes political commitment remained basically unchanged; it was a commitment to civil peace by whatever means and what ever allegiance this was to be obtained. He returned to England soon after the publication of Leviathan. There he lived out his last twenthy eight years, keeping quiet politically and being left for the most part undisturbed. The only disturbing flurry was in 1666, who, in the panic atmosphere after the Great Fire and Great Plague, a Bill against Atheism and Profaneness was introduced in the Commons, and the committee to which it was sent was empowered to receive information and report to the House on books tending to atheism, blasphemy, and profaneness, including by name - The book of Mr. Hobbes called Leviathan.

Hobbes had been struck by the deductive method of geometry and scientific ideas of his time, leading him to the general hypthesis that everything was to be explained in terms of motions.

The apparatus which was not, strictily speaking, self moving, but it was always in motion because other things always were impinging on it, made him desire or endeavour to maintain its motion, an innate impulsion to keep going, that is to say in fundamental form the impulsion to avoid death.

As in political science he was concerned with the motions of men in relation to each other, which motions were dependent on their wills, which could be expected to be a good deal more complex than whatever forces it was that moved them - to have a direct kind of knowldege about what moves us and our wills.

Hence, the first question a political science has to answer is, what makes a political society tick? and then resolving political society into the motions of its parts - individual human beings.

Men, Hobbes claimed, are moved by appetites and aversions. Appetites continually change, and are different in different men and of different strengths. Different men have within them more or less desire of Power, of Riches, of Knowledge, and of Honour; this difference of passions proceedeth partly from the different Constitution of the body and partly from different Education, but also from their differences of customes. (Leviathan, Chapter 8, p 35) His grand conclusion of human nature is Man's need for Power become a necessarily harmful thing.'