ABSTRACT
In the English-speaking world Pierre Gassendi is probably best known as the author of a set of Objections to Descartes's Meditations. The grounds for associating Gassendi and Hobbes are contextual as well as textual. They both lived in Paris in the 1640s. They were close friends and active in the circle of scientists, mathematicians and theologians round Mersenne. They were both at odds, intellectually and personally, with Descartes. Whatever the extent of the mutual admiration and influence, it did not produce a particularly marked similarity of outlook except in psychology, where each developed strongly materialistic lines of thought, and even in psychology the match between their views is not perfect. The different intellectual development of the two writers makes it surprising that philosophies of Gassendi and Hobbes converge as much as they do. Hobbes did not have a comparable grounding in the sciences or philosophy. Prior to 1629 or 1630 he is supposed to have been completely innocent of Euclid.
