The most influential English philosopher before John Locke, was a founder of modern political science. One of his greatest achievements lay in freeing morality and politics from subservience to theology. Hobbes's metaphysical system is a thoroughgoing mechanistic materialism that reduces all events, including thought, to the motion of physical particles. Owing to the importance he attaches to definitions, he has been considered a forerunner of modern linguistic philosophy. It has even been argued that Hobbes was the creator of English-language philosophy, and that his Leviathan, or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill (1651) was the first great philosophical work in the language. Hobbes's writings include works on the sciences, human nature, mathematics, metaphysics, epistemology, vision and light, ethics, rhetoric, religion, and law. His dismissal of Christian terminology in his religious commentaries provoked a storm of abuse. An ardent Royalist, Hobbes defended secular monarchy in Leviathan...