HOBBES, THOMAS

(1588-1679) Wrote 1. Leviathan , 2. Behemoth , 3. Human Nature , 4. On the Body Politic , 5. On the Citizen , 6. On Body , and 7. On Man . Regarding his theory of reality: All that is, is "body" if there is God, God is also "body" the mechanism that Galileo and Descartes ascribed to the material or extended world is also ascribed to the human world; nothing whatever is immaterial ( naturalism ); all "bodies" are subject to efficient causes (mechanical materialism ); man is solely "body" subject to forces which move him emotionally as well as physically ( behaviorism ). Regarding his theory of knowledge: sensations (phantasms or sense images) produced by bodily motion together with reason constitute knowledge; but reason is not a "light" illuminating universal truths, as in medieval or Cartesian philosophy, nor is it an activity of a mind in any sense (there is no mind); rather reason is an epiphenomenon of the human body such that certain operations like naming, identifying natural causes, or symbolic references occur; although the human understanding can ascribe general names, there are no universals either as independent entities (as, e.g., Plato 's Ideas) or as mental entities (as, e.g., Abelard 's concepts) ( nominalism ); thought of any kind arises as an "endeavor" or reaction (response) to outside forces (stimuli) in the form of phantasms or sense images; thought is the succession of these or their epiphenomena; truth consists in the coherence of one's speech and thought as a symbolic system rather than in the correspondence to fact; knowledge is the coherent and successful organization of linguistic symbols rather than the intellectual grasp of some objective reality; the purpose of knowledge is the control of nature, including human nature; although a rationalist and determinist, Hobbes showed his scepticism in his hesitations about the objectivity of causal demonstrations and in his view -- unlike other rationalists -- that reason is epiphenomenal rather than metaphysical; there is, e.g., no cognito , as in Descartes . Said Scripture is not contrary to reason. A forerunner of Deism .