ABSTRACT
In Paris in the late 1630s Digby entered the circle of Marin Mersenne, in which he met Pierre Gassendi and other leading Catholic natural philosophers of the period; it was to prove the ideal setting for him to elaborate his own scientific theories. Among the English émigrés in Paris Digby found also Thomas White as well as an old friend, Thomas Hobbes, with whom he had been corresponding in the 1630s, and who was then gravitating around the circle of William Cavendish, future Duke of Newcastle.1 Indeed, from Paris in 1637 Digby had written to Hobbes informing him of the political situation in France and the country’s relationship with England:
After returning to England, Digby wrote to the English philosopher again, excusing himself for his long silence: ‘This is the first time I have bin able to govern a penne these 6 weekes: And very badly now, as you will perceive by my scribbling: for it is so long since a fall from my horse rendered my arme uselesse’.3 In the same letter Digby asked Hobbes to send him ‘any piece of your Logicke’, since ‘I exceedingly value all that cometh from you; for you ioyne nature and solide reason together; whereas others that are accounted learned, beget Chymeras & build castles in the aire’.4 From here
inform his future works.
