ABSTRACT
Thomas Hobbes, the most influential thinker of his day; but he was the most revolutionary, and therefore the most prophetic, the most paradigmatic for the dilemma. In sympathy with Rene Descartes and Galileo Galilei, Hobbes is trying to formulate rules for a mechanical nature, where the new discoveries about motion will prevail. Hobbes identified his matter-in-motion language with science; arbitrary in itself, it was nevertheless the only system which, confronted with sensory data, would prove non-contradictory. Social scientists have loudly and firmly accepted this view. Hobbesian bodies are not atoms and the space which Hobbes postulates at the beginning of his system is an imaginary, not a real, void. The growth of the modern mind within these great articulate systems is secured by the cultural institutions of society. The civic culture of society is even more tightly woven into the structure of society. The laws and the morality of a society compel its members to live within their framework.
