Examinatio et emendatio Mathematicae Hodiernae. By Thomas Hobbes. London,
1666, 4to.
In six dialogues: the sixth contains a quadrature of the circle.[197] But
there is another edition of this work, without place or date on the
title-page, in which the quadrature is omitted. This seems to be connected
with the publication {110} of another quadrature, without date, but about
1670, as may be judged from its professing to answer a tract of Wallis,
printed in 1669.[198] The title is "Quadratura circuli, cubatio sphaerae,
duplicatio cubi," 4to.[199] Hobbes, who began in 1655, was very wrong in
his quadrature; but, though not a Gregory St. Vincent,[200] he was not the
ignoramus in geometry that he is sometimes supposed. His writings,
erroneous as they are in many things, contain acute remarks on points of
principle. He is wronged by being coupled with Joseph Scaliger, as the two
great instances of men of letters who have come into geometry to help the
mathematicians out of their difficulty. I have never seen Scaliger's
quadrature,[201] except in the answers of Adrianus Romanus,[202] Vieta and
Clavius, and in the extracts of Kastner.[203] Scaliger had no right to such
strong opponents: Erasmus or Bentley might just as well have tried the
problem, and either would have done much better in any twenty minutes of
his life.[204]