more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Hobbes took his method from Galileo, of resolving any complex situation into its logically primitive, simple elements and then using the simple elements to show how the complex situation could be reconstructed.
Gist of Idea
Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them
Source
report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10
Book Ref
MacIntyre,Alasdair: 'A Short History of Ethics' [Routledge 1967], p.132
A Reaction
Reverse engineering of reality. This idea, wherever it comes from, strikes me as the key to the advance of human understanding. No one has yet improved on it as a method, in science or philosophy. Reconstruction needs the mechanism.
| 648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
| 166 | A speaker should be able to divide a subject, right down to the limits of divisibility [Plato] |
| 16123 | Whenever you perceive a community of things, you should also hunt out differences in the group [Plato] |
| 2083 | Either a syllable is its letters (making parts as knowable as whole) or it isn't (meaning it has no parts) [Plato] |
| 2086 | Understanding mainly involves knowing the elements, not their combinations [Plato] |
| 12274 | Begin examination with basics, and subdivide till you can go no further [Aristotle] |
| 1484 | We should say nothing of the whole if our contact is with the parts [Epicurus, by Plutarch] |
| 1887 | You cannot divide anything into many parts, because after the first division you are no longer dividing the original [Sext.Empiricus] |
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| 13099 | Analysing right down to primitive concepts seems beyond our powers [Leibniz] |