Three Discourses: A Critical Modern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes (review)

BOOK RZVlZWS 465 The Gospel, Luther's especial concern, was what led to knowledge of the doctrine of justification by faith. Melanchthon's early eagerness to turn out existing scholastic learning in the interests of Lutheran reform soon faded, due largely, says Kusukawa, to his dismay at the unrest and heresies of the ~62os, which led him to reemphasize the disciplining function of good philosophy and orderly knowledge--Lutheran "Law." Regarding the specific teaching of natural philosophy at Wittenberg, Kusukawa notes the use, among other texts, of the second book of Piiny's Natural History. Use of that work was part of a more operational, utilitarian (often medical) emphasis in knowledge of nature than had been typical of older scholastic Aristotelianism. A notable feature of this Lutheran construal of natural philosophy concerns the role of the mathematical sciences, especially astronomy and astrology. Within an Aristotelian taxonomy of the disciplines, these were traditionally taken as distinct from natural philosophy because allegedly concerned with different questions. In Melanchthon's particular vision of natural philosophy, however, they were an integral part of it; astronomy was, after all, an effective means of revealing God's providence in the universe. Johannes Kepler stands as the clearest example of the Lutheran theological/naturalphilosophical complex at the end of the century, and Kusukawa's discussions on the present point remind us of Kepler's ambition to develop a physical, not merely mathematical , astronomy. Kusukawa's book represents a mature, stimulating, and refreshingly original take on issues of great concern in the history of early modern philosophy and science. It is a worthy addition to the "Ideas in Context" series. PETER DEAR CorneUUniversity Noel B. Reynolds and Arlene Saxonhouse, editors. ThreeDiscourses:A CriticalModern Edition of Newly Identified Work of the Young Hobbes.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 181. Cloth, $27.5o. In 1615, William Cavendish, the nominal tutee of Thomas Hobbes, presented his father, the first earl of Devonshire, a collection of ten essays, written in the spirit of Francis Bacon's essays. In 1620, an anonymous collection of twelve "observations" (short essays) and four "discourses" (long essays) were published under the title, Horae Subsecivae. Ten of these essays are very similar to those in the Cavendish manuscript. Was the young Cavendish the author? Was it Hobbes? The editors maintain that three of the four discourses, but very probably none of the essays, were written by Hobbes: "Upon the Beginning of Tacitus," "Of Rome," and "Of Laws." If they are right, then these discourses are the earliest examples of Hobbes's writings. There are two obvious questions: (1) Have the authors proven their claim that these discourses are by Hobbes (and not the essays and the other discourse)? (2) On the assumption that they have, what do these discourses teach us about the development of Hobbes's thought? My answer to (l) is a strong negative. The editors use a statistical method similar to 466 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:3 JULY 1997 one that has supposedly shown that the Book of Mormon was written long before the nineteenth century and had dozens of authors, including Mormon, Moroni, and God, but not Joseph Smith! 1 I don't believe it. The Book of Mormon was written by Smith and perhaps one or two others, none of whom was an angel. The stylometric method used by Reynolds suggests that Hobbes wrote some of Bacon's essays. (Bacon himself was probably too busy writing Shakespeare's plays.) Roughly, the method consists of taking prose samples and counting the number of "noncontextual words" as they occur in certain contexts, for example, 'a', 'the', and 'on' when they begin or end a sentence, and then calculating the fraction of that number over the number of occurrences of some designated words. By comparing the results, unique patterns supposedly emerge, as distinctive as fingerprints according to the editors. I am dubious. I have space to mention only two considerations. First, although fingerprints do not change over a lifetime, I think that literary styles very often do, and I am not convinced by Reynolds's denial. A comparison of the 1615 manuscript and the 162o book shows changes that Reynolds...