sentences:  Famously, the ultra-empiricist Hobbes ( April 1588 - December 1679 ) tried to defend the idea of a potential infinity in light of the discovery, by Evangelista Torricelli, of a figure (Gabriel's Horn) whose surface area is infinite, but whose volume is finite.Not reported, this motivation of Hobbes came too late as curves having infinite length yet bounding finite areas were known much before.Locke ( August 1632 - October 1704 ) in common with most of the empiricist philosophers, also believed that we can have no proper idea of the infinite.