Summary of Philip Ball's Critical Mass

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The English Civil War was a conflict between the Parliamentarians and the Cavaliers. The Parliamentarians were loyal to King and Parliament, while the Cavaliers were loyal to Charles I. The conflict ended when Cromwell died in 1658, and a Parliament was created that restored Charles II to the throne.

#2 The English Civil War was the result of a system of government that had been previously upheld by divine and moral imperatives being revealed as arbitrary and contingent. The monarchy with its councillors and Star Chamber harked back to the medievalism of Elizabethan society, but the spirit of the age cleaved to something more democratic.

#3 The mechanical worldview, which was developed by the scientists of the Renaissance, was challenged by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who developed a political theory out of it.

#4 The method of the theoretical scientist, to stipulate fundamental first principles and see where they led him, was used by Hobbes to analyze human nature and how people interact. He found that the most stable society was one based on what we would now call communism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822523388

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Insights on Philip Ball's Critical Mass

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The English Civil War was a conflict between the Parliamentarians and the Cavaliers. The Parliamentarians were loyal to King and Parliament, while the Cavaliers were loyal to Charles I. The conflict ended when Cromwell died in 1658, and a Parliament was created that restored Charles II to the throne.

#2

The English Civil War was the result of a system of government that had been previously upheld by divine and moral imperatives being revealed as arbitrary and contingent. The monarchy with its councillors and Star Chamber harked back to the medievalism of Elizabethan society, but the spirit of the age cleaved to something more democratic.

#3

The mechanical worldview, which was developed by the scientists of the Renaissance, was challenged by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who developed a political theory out of it.

#4

The method of the theoretical scientist, to stipulate fundamental first principles and see where they led him, was used by Hobbes to analyze human nature and how people interact. He found that the most stable society was one based on what we would now call communism.

#5

The first principles of geometry are statements that most people would agree with. They assert things like Two straight lines cannot enclose a space. Other fields of inquiry struggle to muster analogous self-evident starting points.

#6

The laws of physics are called Newton’s laws, since it was Sir Isaac who first formulated them clearly in his Principia Mathematica. But the tallest giant from whose shoulders Newton saw afar was Galileo, who laid the foundations of modern mechanics.

#7

According to Hobbes, humans are puppets whose strings are pulled by the forces at play in the world. Yet he saw nothing intolerable in this bleak picture. After all, he believed that he had arrived at this basic, indisputable postulate about human nature by introspection.

#8

The brain is a sort of vast and squishy computer whose secrets reside in the extreme interconnectedness of its billions of biological switches. This view of the brain as a superior version of our most advanced cultural artifact is neither unusual nor eccentric.

#9

During the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes developed his theory of human nature and the natural state of mankind, which he used to develop a scientific theory of government. He presented his ideas in exile to the fugitive Charles II, to whom he had once taught mathematics. There was no one pleased by what it said.

#10

The word utopia comes from the Greek word ouTOPia, which means no place or good place. It was first used in Thomas More’s book Utopia, which was published in 1516. In it, everything is ideal. There is no ownership, and everyone lives in identical houses, but the houses are exchanged every ten years to dispel any notion that individuals own their homes.

#11

The most basic state of social existence is the state of nature, according to Hobbes. This is a society without any authority or laws, where people are only concerned with protecting themselves and others from attack.

#12

Power is relative: the more power one man has over others, the better his life will be. In a market society, the answer to how to acquire power is simple: buy it.

#13

Without any law or law enforcers, every man is open to violent exploitation by others. When everyone seeks to dominate his neighbor without restraint, there is no place for industry, culture, or knowledge.

#14

The Leviathan is a despotic state created by democratic means. It was a curious name to give to a supposedly desirable state of society, as it seemed to imply that the state was terrifying and oppressive.

#15

Thomas Hobbes believed that the best system of rule was monarchy, because it used science and reason to establish it. He believed that those nations that had enjoyed prolonged civic stability, such as the Romans, had hit on the ideal solution.

#16

The book Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes was very controversial when it was published in 1651. It claimed that kings were the best rulers, and that the authority to rule was derived from a social contract rather than from a heavenly one. It was widely viewed