 Although some contemporaries saw promise in Hobbes’ optics, such as Mersenne, who published Hobbes’ work in this area in 1644 in Ballistica, in the years following the publication of Leviathan Hobbes’ pursuits apart from political philosophy were taken less seriously. There are a number of possible explanations for this decline in the opinion of Hobbes’ competence in these areas, including his numerous attempts to square the circle, the association of his views with atheism by many critics, and the conflicts he had with Robert Boyle at the time of the rise of experimental philosophy. These all contributed to some extent to Hobbes’ exclusion from the Royal Society when it was founded.