The science of man’s body, the most profitable part of natural science, was first discovered with admirable sagacity by our countryman Doctor Harvey, principal Physician to King James and King Charles, in his books of the Motion of the Blood, and of the Generation of Living Creatures; who is the only man I know, that conquering envy, hath established a new doctrine in his life-time. Before these, there was nothing certain in natural philosophy but every man’s experiments to himself, and the natural histories, if they may be called certain, that are no certainer than civil histories.
But since these, astronomy and natural philosophy in general have, for so little time, been extraordinarily advanced by Joannes Keplerus, Petrus Gassendus, and Marinus Mersennus; and the science of human bodies in special by the wit and industry of physicians, the only true natural philosophers, especially of our most learned men of the College of Physicians in London.
Natural Philosophy is therefore but young; but Civil Philosophy yet much younger, as being no older (I say it provoked, and that my detractors may know how little they have wrought upon me) than my own book De Cive.
But what? were there no philosophers natural nor civil among the ancient Greeks? There were men so called; witness Lucian, by whom they are derided; witness divers cities, from which they have been often by public edicts banished. But it follows not that there was philosophy. There walked in old Greece a certain phantasm, for superficial gravity, though full within of fraud and filth, a little like philosophy; which unwary men, thinking to be it, adhered to the professors of it, some to one, some to another, though they disagreed among themselves, and with great salary put their children to them to be taught, instead of wisdom, nothing but to dispute, and, neglecting the laws, to determine every question according to their own fancies.
Thomas Hobbes: De Corpore
See also
Books
- By Thomas Hobbes:
- By Sir Roger Scruton: