I’m reading about the Age of Enlightenment this week in class. It’s moments like these when I wish that I would’ve minored in Political Science instead of Economics as an undergrad, so that I would have a better foundational understanding of key philosophers of political thought.

One thing that struck me as particularly interesting was Thomas Hobbes’ comparison of politics to geometry. Nowadays, we tend to think of politics as highly opinionated and not a topic that lends itself naturally to quantitative research. Early Enlightenment thinkers, however, believed that the hallmark of science is certainty, and the Maker (God, or in this case, the creations of the human mind) has ownership/rights over his creation.

Back to the topic of geometry: because we created definitions for shapes like triangles and circles, they can be mathematically explained. In a similar vein, Hobbes stated, “… civil philosophy is demonstrable, because we make the commonwealth ourselves.” We created the government; therefore, it falls under the same category of “certainty” as mathematical theorems.

I will be curious to see how the Age of Enlightenment unfolds.