Hobbes took an active interest throughout his life in the scientific discoveries of his era. Although he wrote about many subjects, he spent much of his career writing about science. His views on religion were influenced by the ideas of Isaac Newton, whose work had made him question the existence of God. Hobbes didn’t believe in ‘immaterial substance’ and thought all matter was physical. Inspired by Galileo and Copernicus’s theories on astronomy, he took a mechanistic view of the workings of the universe.
Hobbes thought that even humans were just physical machines governed by natural laws. As we think, our minds operate according to the same laws as everything else in nature. This mechanistic view of the universe meant that the idea of free will was impossible. We can’t choose what happens next because there is no external force acting upon us. Instead, Hobbes argued, we act because of the desires within ourselves. Our choices are determined by our own innate needs, and we can never escape them.
