Squaring the Circle: The War Between Hobbes and Wallis (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780226398990)

In 1655, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes claimed he had solved the centuries-old problem of "squaring of the circle" (constructing a square equal in area to a given circle). With a scathing rebuttal to Hobbes's claims, the mathematician John Wallis began one of the longest and most intense intellectual disputes of all time. Squaring the Circle is a detailed account of this controversy, from the core mathematics to the broader philosophical, political, and religious issues at stake.

Hobbes believed that by recasting geometry in a materialist mold, he could solve any geometric problem and thereby demonstrate the power of his materialist metaphysics. Wallis, a prominent Presbyterian divine as well as an eminent mathematician, refuted Hobbes's geometry as a means of discrediting his philosophy, which Wallis saw as a dangerous mix of atheism and pernicious political theory.

Hobbes and Wallis's "battle of the books" illuminates the intimate relationship between science and crucial seventeenth-century debates over the limits of sovereign power and the existence of God.


Author: Douglas M. Jesseph
ISBN-10: 0226398994
ISBN-13: 9780226398990
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 01/01/2000
Pages: 433
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.72lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.32w x 1.11d