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]
