| Consider this passage from Thomas Hobbes's seventeenth-century philippic, De Corpore: "So go your ways, you Uncivil Ecclesiastics, Inhuman Divines, Dedoctors of morality, Unasinous Colleagues, Egregious pair of Issachars, most wretched Vindices and Indices Academiatrum." Hobbes has in his sights the Oxford professors John Wallis and Seth Ward, critics of his mathematical writings. (White does not interpret, but an Issachar is one who places profit before principle, and Vindex, a vindicator or defender, was a pseudonym adopted by Ward in his attacks on Hobbes; the last epithet refers to a book by Ward devoted to a defence of the ancient universities.) |
