Benedict de Spinoza and Sir Isaac Newton: 17th century titans!
Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jew, whose family was forced out of Spain in a purge. Spinoza rejected orthodox Judaism, preferring the heterodoxy of science, then known as "natural philosophy," which he studied assiduously, while grinding lenses to earn a living.
Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishmen, also a theological heterodox, adroitly avoided taking the expected Anglican vows of priesthood, by a royal edict that allowed him to refine his natural philosophical inquiries in his secure sinecure at Cambridge.
Both men were intellectual titans of the 17th Century, whose influence reverberates to the present day.
Spinoza preceded Newton, by a few years, dying in 1677. Newton died in 1727. Spinoza published in 1677. Newton was first published in 1687.
Both of these very wise men, in turn, are indebted to the alleged 4th Century B.C. Greek geometer, "Euclid,"a mythological personage--it seems, given the paucity of information about him or even accurate image of him.
Euclid's earliest extant, geometry treatise was discovered, ironically, to have been recorded in an ancient papyri in southern Egypt/Nubia, dating back over 1,000 years before "Euclid"--the "Father of Geometry," was born!
Moreover, geometry is most famously applied and exemplified in Egypt and Nubia in their temples, monuments, roads, megaliths and pyramid, rather than in Greece. These African edifices and constructions also predate Euclid's birth by eons.
Euclid is by no means alone in being attributed to Greece by later "historians" for nefarious reasons.
Nevertheless, let us focus on Euclid's geometry and mathematics, and draw therefrom moral and ethical lessons, as Spinoza and Newton later did in their books; not on Euclid, whose story varies from age to age, moving ever inexplicably north!
I was struck that they both deal with motion and rest as their first axiom.
"Axiom I. All bodies are either in motion or at rest."
P.90, "Nature and Origin of the Mind," THE ETHICS, by Benedict de Spinoza, [Translated by R. H.M. Elwes] (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 1677, 1982)
"Law 1 -- Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change by forces impressed."
P.416, "Axioms, or the Laws of Motion," THE PRINCIPIA: MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, by Sir Isaac Newton, [Translators: I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman, Julia Budenz] (University of California Press, Berkeley: 1687, 1999)
Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jew, whose family was forced out of Spain in a purge. Spinoza rejected orthodox Judaism, preferring the heterodoxy of science, then known as "natural philosophy," which he studied assiduously, while grinding lenses to earn a living.
Sir Isaac Newton, an Englishmen, also a theological heterodox, adroitly avoided taking the expected Anglican vows of priesthood, by a royal edict that allowed him to refine his natural philosophical inquiries in his secure sinecure at Cambridge.
Both men were intellectual titans of the 17th Century, whose influence reverberates to the present day.
Spinoza preceded Newton, by a few years, dying in 1677. Newton died in 1727. Spinoza published in 1677. Newton was first published in 1687.
Both of these very wise men, in turn, are indebted to the alleged 4th Century B.C. Greek geometer, "Euclid,"a mythological personage--it seems, given the paucity of information about him or even accurate image of him.
Euclid's earliest extant, geometry treatise was discovered, ironically, to have been recorded in an ancient papyri in southern Egypt/Nubia, dating back over 1,000 years before "Euclid"--the "Father of Geometry," was born!
Moreover, geometry is most famously applied and exemplified in Egypt and Nubia in their temples, monuments, roads, megaliths and pyramid, rather than in Greece. These African edifices and constructions also predate Euclid's birth by eons.
Euclid is by no means alone in being attributed to Greece by later "historians" for nefarious reasons.
Nevertheless, let us focus on Euclid's geometry and mathematics, and draw therefrom moral and ethical lessons, as Spinoza and Newton later did in their books; not on Euclid, whose story varies from age to age, moving ever inexplicably north!
I was struck that they both deal with motion and rest as their first axiom.
"Axiom I. All bodies are either in motion or at rest."
P.90, "Nature and Origin of the Mind," THE ETHICS, by Benedict de Spinoza, [Translated by R. H.M. Elwes] (Prometheus Books, Amherst NY: 1677, 1982)
"Law 1 -- Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change by forces impressed."
P.416, "Axioms, or the Laws of Motion," THE PRINCIPIA: MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, by Sir Isaac Newton, [Translators: I. Bernard Cohen, Anne Whitman, Julia Budenz] (University of California Press, Berkeley: 1687, 1999)