How did Thomas Hobbes combine empiricism about concepts with rationalism about knowledge?

Thomas Hobbes integrated empiricism and rationalism by grounding his philosophy in the sensory origins of knowledge while employing a rigorous, deductive method for organizing that knowledge.12

His empiricism is rooted in the theory that all knowledge arises from sense experiences, which are caused by the actions of physical bodies on our sense organs. By rejecting the existence of abstract universals and adopting nominalism, Hobbes argued that our concepts are derived from these sensory inputs rather than from innate ideas or metaphysical forms.123

Conversely, his rationalism is expressed through his philosophical method, which he defined as reasoning or calculating using words to determine the causes and effects of phenomena. Influenced by geometric proofs, Hobbes favored a synthetic approach, reasoning deductively from established causes to their effects. He systematized this knowledge under the metaphysical assumption that physical reality consists entirely of matter in motion, allowing him to construct a consistent, mechanistic description of nature, psychology, and civil society.124