The Leviathan Table of Sciences and Newcastle’s Queries

Abstract Taking up Noel Malcolm’s suggestion that, rather being than an integral part of the conception of the work, the table of sciences featured in Chapter 9 of Leviathan was included because Hobbes had it to hand, having perhaps prepared it for William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle, this article establishes the raising of queries for clients to settle as a standard practice within the Cavendish Circle, and argues that the table was likely Hobbes’s response to enquiries about the status of different sciences following the 1644 publication of works on mixed mathematics by Mersenne. The table is more closely connected than we have realized with other works by Hobbes and appears to be a transitional schema, offering a looser and more expansive definition of philosophy, one better equipped to account for natural phenomena, than the narrowly logical definition established in The Elements of Law .