display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
9 ideas
| 17190 | We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We may easily conceive the whole of nature to be one individual. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Lem 7) |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 12731 | Final causes are figments of human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All final causes are nothing but human fictions. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: You can see why Spinoza was rather controversial in the late seventeenth century, when he says things as bold as this, even though he is echoing Descartes. The latter's proposal (Idea 12730) is methodological, whereas this idea is metaphysical. |
| 1587 | Spinoza strongly attacked teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Ethics' Spinoza shows his enormous hostility to teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.77 |
| 1588 | For Spinoza eyes don't act for purposes, but follow mechanical necessity [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle would be perfectly happy with the idea that the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have purposes, but obey the laws of mechanical necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.79 | |
| A reaction: My view is that eyes wouldn't exist if they didn't see, which places them in a different category from inorganic matter. |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If an infinite line be measured out in feet, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part was only an inch; therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: This seems to anticipate Cantor. Spinoza's point seemed bewildering then, but is now accepted as a standard feature of the concept of infinity. |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature only one substance exists, and it is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to render the concept of 'substance' redundant, since all the interest is now in the attributes (or whatever) of this one substance, and we must work to discount the appearance of there being numerous substances (e.g. you and me). |
| 14301 | We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In order to form an idea of solidity, we must conceive two bodies pressing on each other without penetration. ..The ideas of secondary qualities are excluded, and the idea of motion depends on extension. This leaves us no just idea of solidity or matter. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.4), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 02.3 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] For me these kind of strict empiricist arguments always recede when you accept the notion of an inference to be best explanation. We have some sort of notion of 'matter', but here the physicist seems to take over. |