Thomas White (scholar)

Thomas White (1593–1676) was an English Roman Catholic priest and scholar, known as a theologian, censured by the Inquisition,[1] and also as a philosopher contributing to scientific and political debates.

[3][4] His role in English Catholic life was caricatured by the hostile Jesuit Robert Pugh in terms of the "Blackloist Cabal", a group supposed to include also Kenelm Digby, Henry Holden, and John Sergeant.

The first philosophical work of Thomas Hobbes, which remained unpublished until 1973, was on the De mundo dialogi tres of White, written in 1642.

[6] The Institutionum peripateticarum (1646, English translation Peripatetical Institutions, 1656) represented itself as an exposition of the 'peripatetic philosophy' of Kenelm Digby.

The political aim was to secure an accommodation, and religious tolerance for Catholicism, and this was particularly controversial since the achievement of the objective might be at the cost of the access of Jesuits to England.