.… he who works to understand the true causes of miracles and to understand Nature as a scholar, and not just to gape at them like a fool, is universally considered an impious heretic and denounced by those to whom the common people bow down as interpreters of Nature and the gods. For these people know that the dispelling of ignorance would entail the disappearance of that sense of awe which is the one and only support of their argument and the safeguard of their authority.
That seems really odd to me, coming from Spinoza. I’ve never read him, but I thought that he was supposed to believe that God and Nature are the same thing. Does he do that, but then also investigate the nature of God through analyzing the way that Nature’s laws work? How does he reconcile those two positions, I guess, is what I’m asking.
Can someone more familiar with his work than I help me out here?
Spinoza held that God and Nature are the same thing.
His reasoning in a nutshell: an infinite being would need to have everything else as a part of it, so God has to just be the entire universe. It’s not clear whether he really thought of God as a conscious agent, although he did think that there were “ideas” in God’s mind (read: the Universe) and that these perfectly coincided with the existance of real objects in the world. As an example, he seems to reject the notion of God as picking from among possible worlds and “choosing” the best one, opting instead to say that God just is the actual world and that there is no difference between them.
So basically, studying nature for Spinoza is “knowing the mind of God.”
He may also have been reacting to his excommunication, in fact, that’s pretty likely. So the quote may have some sour grapes hidden inside of it.
an infinite being would need to have everything else as a part of it
That doesn’t hold in maths at least. N, Z, Q have the same size, but clearly Q isn’t part of N. And there are as many rational numbers between 0 and 1 (or between 0 and 0.0000000000000000000001) than in Q as a whole, and yet, we can have an infinity of such different subsets. And it goes even worse with bigger sets.
It saddens me how much philosopher/theologists speak about “infinity” as if we had no set theory, no Peano arithmetic, no calculus, nothing. Intuition is usually wrong on “infinity”.
But still, didn’t we already know that if you take a line, two distinct points A and B on it, there are an infinite number of points between A and B, and yet an infinite number of points outside [AB] ? Didn’t we know that since the ancient greeks ?
First, Spinoza is not using infinite in its modern mathematical sense. For him, “infinite” means “lacking limits” (see Definition 2, Part I of Ethics). Second, Spinoza distinguished between “absolutely infinite” and “infinite in its kind” (see the Explication following Definition 6, Part I).
Something is “infinite in its kind” if it is not limited by anything “of the same nature”. For example, if we fix a Euclidean line L, then any line segment s within L is not “infinite in its kind” because there are line segments on either side that limit the extent of s. Even a ray r within L is not “infinite in its kind”, because there is another ray in L from which r is excluded. Among the subsets of L, only the entire line is “infinite in its kind”.
However, the entire line is not “absolutely infinite” because there are regions of the plane from which it is excluded (although the limits are not placed by lines).
I suspect “infinite” was supposed to mean “having infinite measure” rather than “having infinite number of points / subsets”. In the latter sense every being, not only God, would be infinite.
But still, didn’t we already know that if you take a line, two distinct points A and B on it, there are an infinite number of points between A and B, and yet an infinite number of points outside [AB] ? Didn’t we know that since the ancient greeks ?
That’s a good point. Spinoza himself was a mathematician of no mean talent, so we should assume that he was aware of it as well. So the question is, does his argument avoid the mistake of taking ‘infinite’ to mean ‘all encompassing?’ without any argument to that effect? There are certainly questions to be raised about his argument, but I don’t think this is one of his mistakes. If you don’t want to take my word for it, here’s the opening argument of the Ethics. Good luck, it’s quite a slog.
The idea seems to be that the one substance has to be infinite and singular, because substances can’t share attributes (see his definitions), and things which have nothing in common can’t interact. Therefore substances can’t cause each other to exist, and therefore if any exists, it must exist necessarily. If that’s true, then existence is an attribute of a substance, and so no other substance could exist.
At any rate, the argument concerns an ‘infinity’ of attributes, and I think these are reasonably taken as countably infinite. Spinoza also defines infinite as ‘not being limited by anything of the same kind’, so by that definition he would say that with reference to the ‘kind’ ‘number’, the even numbers are finite, though they’re infinite with reference to the ‘kind’ ‘even number’.
My understanding was basically correct then. I just didn’t understand why he’d go from that overall position to talk about why we need to investigate nature, when his whole approach really seemed more like laid back speculation than any form of science, or advocacy of science. The excommunication detail clarifies a lot though, as Spinoza’s approach seems much more active and investigative when compared to the approach of the church.
It’s notable that Spinoza was a part of a Jewish community, rather than “a church.” I’ve actually read the letter of his excommunication, and WOW. They really went all out. You’re considered cursed just for reading what he wrote.
Are you reacting to Spinoza’s mention of “miracles” and “gods”?
Spinoza held that there are no miracles in the sense that everything without exception proceeds according to cause and effect. So he must mean something like “alleged miracles”. As for the “gods”, they are mentioned only as part of the belief system of the “common people”.
Baruch Spinoza Ethics
http://lesswrong.com/lw/i0/are_your_enemies_innately_evil/
That seems really odd to me, coming from Spinoza. I’ve never read him, but I thought that he was supposed to believe that God and Nature are the same thing. Does he do that, but then also investigate the nature of God through analyzing the way that Nature’s laws work? How does he reconcile those two positions, I guess, is what I’m asking.
Can someone more familiar with his work than I help me out here?
Spinoza held that God and Nature are the same thing.
His reasoning in a nutshell: an infinite being would need to have everything else as a part of it, so God has to just be the entire universe. It’s not clear whether he really thought of God as a conscious agent, although he did think that there were “ideas” in God’s mind (read: the Universe) and that these perfectly coincided with the existance of real objects in the world. As an example, he seems to reject the notion of God as picking from among possible worlds and “choosing” the best one, opting instead to say that God just is the actual world and that there is no difference between them.
So basically, studying nature for Spinoza is “knowing the mind of God.”
He may also have been reacting to his excommunication, in fact, that’s pretty likely. So the quote may have some sour grapes hidden inside of it.
That doesn’t hold in maths at least. N, Z, Q have the same size, but clearly Q isn’t part of N. And there are as many rational numbers between 0 and 1 (or between 0 and 0.0000000000000000000001) than in Q as a whole, and yet, we can have an infinity of such different subsets. And it goes even worse with bigger sets.
It saddens me how much philosopher/theologists speak about “infinity” as if we had no set theory, no Peano arithmetic, no calculus, nothing. Intuition is usually wrong on “infinity”.
Baruch Spinoza: 1632-1677 Isaac Newton: 1642-1727 Georg Cantor: 1845-1918 Richard Dedekind: 1831-1916 Guiseppe Peano: 1858-1932
Ok, I stand corrected on the dates, my mistake.
But still, didn’t we already know that if you take a line, two distinct points A and B on it, there are an infinite number of points between A and B, and yet an infinite number of points outside [AB] ? Didn’t we know that since the ancient greeks ?
First, Spinoza is not using infinite in its modern mathematical sense. For him, “infinite” means “lacking limits” (see Definition 2, Part I of Ethics). Second, Spinoza distinguished between “absolutely infinite” and “infinite in its kind” (see the Explication following Definition 6, Part I).
Something is “infinite in its kind” if it is not limited by anything “of the same nature”. For example, if we fix a Euclidean line L, then any line segment s within L is not “infinite in its kind” because there are line segments on either side that limit the extent of s. Even a ray r within L is not “infinite in its kind”, because there is another ray in L from which r is excluded. Among the subsets of L, only the entire line is “infinite in its kind”.
However, the entire line is not “absolutely infinite” because there are regions of the plane from which it is excluded (although the limits are not placed by lines).
I suspect “infinite” was supposed to mean “having infinite measure” rather than “having infinite number of points / subsets”. In the latter sense every being, not only God, would be infinite.
That’s a good point. Spinoza himself was a mathematician of no mean talent, so we should assume that he was aware of it as well. So the question is, does his argument avoid the mistake of taking ‘infinite’ to mean ‘all encompassing?’ without any argument to that effect? There are certainly questions to be raised about his argument, but I don’t think this is one of his mistakes. If you don’t want to take my word for it, here’s the opening argument of the Ethics. Good luck, it’s quite a slog.
The idea seems to be that the one substance has to be infinite and singular, because substances can’t share attributes (see his definitions), and things which have nothing in common can’t interact. Therefore substances can’t cause each other to exist, and therefore if any exists, it must exist necessarily. If that’s true, then existence is an attribute of a substance, and so no other substance could exist.
At any rate, the argument concerns an ‘infinity’ of attributes, and I think these are reasonably taken as countably infinite. Spinoza also defines infinite as ‘not being limited by anything of the same kind’, so by that definition he would say that with reference to the ‘kind’ ‘number’, the even numbers are finite, though they’re infinite with reference to the ‘kind’ ‘even number’.
Thanks.
My understanding was basically correct then. I just didn’t understand why he’d go from that overall position to talk about why we need to investigate nature, when his whole approach really seemed more like laid back speculation than any form of science, or advocacy of science. The excommunication detail clarifies a lot though, as Spinoza’s approach seems much more active and investigative when compared to the approach of the church.
Excellent, thanks again.
It’s notable that Spinoza was a part of a Jewish community, rather than “a church.” I’ve actually read the letter of his excommunication, and WOW. They really went all out. You’re considered cursed just for reading what he wrote.
Are you reacting to Spinoza’s mention of “miracles” and “gods”?
Spinoza held that there are no miracles in the sense that everything without exception proceeds according to cause and effect. So he must mean something like “alleged miracles”. As for the “gods”, they are mentioned only as part of the belief system of the “common people”.
What do you- he’s a pantheist. Contemporaries called him an atheist because his position works exactly like atheism.
Downvoted for glibness and vagueness.