I have been mulling on this for some time now and I have come to the conclusion that Spinoza's philosophy hinges exclusively on a purely rationalistic conception of the universe. Spinoza's God is a rational God, no ifs, ands or buts.
Without rationality, there is no Spinoza's God/Nature. As Ilya Progogine puts it, "It is a timeless world of supreme rationality."
Any limits to rationality as the only way to apprehend Nature would per force, challenge Spinoza's foundation and his edifice would come down, crumbling to the ground without new supports and changes.
Spinoza's ideas were based, primarily, on first principles, not on empirical observations, but they blended well with the main tenets of the radical Enlightenment. A mechanistic, deterministic and thoroughly rational universe, from which modern science was born. It was a main supplier of the classical Newtonian World. A world in which once the initial conditions were known everything could be known, past, present and future. Causality reigned supreme. Temporality was seen as illusion.
In that world, the laws of Nature are unchanging, eternal and unmodifiable. Any changes to any of these laws could, by definition, question the whole.
Spinoza based his Ethics on the linear Euclidian geometrical format, with its axioms and theorems. Its rationality based exclusively on deductive logic. Everything that follows is explained by a preceding axiom. Simple and straight forward, uniform. No room for chance or chaos, irreversibility, randomness or nonlinear relationships.
But then came thermodynamics, particularly the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy and its unambiguous challenge to the timelessness of classical modern science. There was a definite "arrow of time." It created a "contradiction within a contradiction." Irreversible time was no longer a contradiction.
Then came the nonlinear geometry with its own math and new challenges to Euclidian geometry. Suddenly, the sum of the angles of a triangle was not just 180, it could be as high as 360.
Then Darwin introduces evolution in biology, with its correlation of random mutations. Genes change without apparent reason, they mutate randomly, unpredictably
And, to make a long story short, then came Quantum mechanics.
It challenged all of it.
There is now randomness, chance, nonlocal actions, uncertainty. Time is now a player. Causality is now Probability. The evolution of the laws of Nature is a definite possibility. The eternal laws of Nature breakdown at the time of the BingBang.
Man has now some freedom from Spinoza's determinism.
And so it goes,
Luis
- I recommend a close reading of TEI. Spinoza dismisses maths/geometry as mere “beings of reason.” He has no beef with non-Euclidean geometry, and his endeavor is metaphysics. One must inquire into the existence of their own mind/body. What is the cause of it’s existence? Is there an essence of it, and an adequate cause of same which can be understood as the The Ethics “Third Kind of Knowledge?” The point is, certainty is the province of intuition. AtmanBrahman. A science that is certain is only an allegory Spinoza is ready for infinite attributes, while our theorists struggle with what? A paltry 11 dimensional M theory?Leave your head at the foot of the mountain. Do something really outrageous with your mind. Join a motorcycle gang and take some mushrooms. Then you may get a glimpse of matter/mind etc.Dullsville, man. Sorry.There is perfect freedom within Spinoza’s determinism. It is more joyous to understand it of course.On Oct 9, 2015, at 2:12 PM, luiguti_88@... [spinoza] <spinoza@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
I have been mulling on this for some time now and I have come to the conclusion that Spinoza's philosophy hinges exclusively on a purely rationalistic conception of the universe. Spinoza's God is a rational God, no ifs, ands or buts.
Without rationality, there is no Spinoza's God/Nature. As Ilya Progogine puts it, "It is a timeless world of supreme rationality."
Any limits to rationality as the only way to apprehend Nature would per force, challenge Spinoza's foundation and his edifice would come down, crumbling to the ground without new supports and changes.
Spinoza's ideas were based, primarily, on first principles, not on empirical observations, but they blended well with the main tenets of the radical Enlightenment. A mechanistic, deterministic and thoroughly rational universe, from which modern science was born. It was a main supplier of the classical Newtonian World. A world in which once the initial conditions were known everything could be known, past, present and future. Causality reigned supreme. Temporality was seen as illusion.
In that world, the laws of Nature are unchanging, eternal and unmodifiable. Any changes to any of these laws could, by definition, question the whole.
Spinoza based his Ethics on the linear Euclidian geometrical format, with its axioms and theorems. Its rationality based exclusively on deductive logic. Everything that follows is explained by a preceding axiom. Simple and straight forward, uniform. No room for chance or chaos, irreversibility, randomness or nonlinear relationships.
But then came thermodynamics, particularly the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy and its unambiguous challenge to the timelessness of classical modern science. There was a definite "arrow of time." It created a "contradiction within a contradiction." Irreversible time was no longer a contradiction.
Then came the nonlinear geometry with its own math and new challenges to Euclidian geometry. Suddenly, the sum of the angles of a triangle was not just 180, it could be as high as 360.
Then Darwin introduces evolution in biology, with its correlation of random mutations. Genes change without apparent reason, they mutate randomly, unpredictably
And, to make a long story short, then came Quantum mechanics.
It challenged all of it.
There is now randomness, chance, nonlocal actions, uncertainty. Time is now a player. Causality is now Probability. The evolution of the laws of Nature is a definite possibility. The eternal laws of Nature breakdown at the time of the BingBang.
Man has now some freedom from Spinoza's determinism.
And so it goes,
Luis
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