Govert Bidloo, A Spinoza Microscopist?

[Addendum, September 10th: in looking at the full text of the letter referenced below, indeed Bidlow did NOT use a Spinoza microscope, but was only referencing Kerckring's use as well as his observations on the limitations of the microscope. I keep the post up though, to preserve the thought process of a deadend of research, for [...]

Simple or Compound: Spinoza’s Microscopes

Smaller Objective Lenses Produce Finer Representations A very suggestive clue to the kinds of microscopes Spinoza may have produced is Christiaan Huygens’ admission to his brother Constantijn in a May 11 1667 letter that Spinoza was right in one regard, that smaller objective lenses do produce finer images. This has been cited by Wim Klever [...]

Huygens’s Criticism of Descartes’ La Dioptrique

In order to understand Spinoza’s dissatisfaction with and objection to Descartes’ La Dioptrique  (found in letters 39 and 40 linked below), one has to understand the opinions of those contemporary to Spinoza. Below I post a selection from Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis comprehensive book on Christian Huygens, who is well-noted for having been Spinoza’s neighbor in Voorburg.   La Dioptrique [...]

A 1940 Review of Theodore Kerckring’s “Spicilegium Anatomicum”

Spinoza’s Microscopist I post here a link to a 1940 Canadian Medical Association Journal review of Theodore Kerckring’s “Spicilegium Anatomicum”, a work which contains specific reference to observations made with a Spinoza made microscope. Kerckring was a fellow student of Spinoza’s at van den Enden’s Latin school, and then studied anatomy at the University of Leiden when [...]

A Sum on Spinoza Sugar

Spinoza at Sea I’m waiting for Wolf’s book on the Canary Island Inquistion, so for now that should probably be all on the possible connections between the Spinozas and sugar production in Brazil and Barbados. It is my instinct that there is something there, that the bonds between the Amsterdam community and Recife, and also [...]

The Number of Jewish Merchants in 17th Century Amsterdam

From Johanthan Israel’s Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch and the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585-1713: The Number of Dutch Jewish Depositors with the Amsterdam Exchange Bank 1609-1674 (page 422) One can see the post-1620 dip in investment which followed the renewal of the Spanish embargo on Dutch shipping to Spanish, Portuguese and Flemish ports. But to [...]

Spinoza Doubt? The Sephardim and the Slave Trade

  Spinoza Doubt Working slowly along the edge of a soft hypothesis, one comes upon a curious aporia in history when looking into Brazilian and West Indies sugar, the Sephardim, and the slave trade. It is the movement away from share-cropping and indentured labor to imported, enslaved Africans that really fueled the dramatic rise of sugar plantation production; [...]

Dealings In London, Evidence for Spinoza Sugar Trade Relations

Brazil Revisited To begin, I must make this clear that I am not a historian. It is only that I have combed the historical record looking for facets others may not have considered in the making sense of Spinoza’s historical context and life decisions. Among the things that have been curious for me has been [...]

Spinoza Sugar Time Table

A Time Table of Events Juxtaposing Personal, Commerical and Colonial Interests Surrounding the Spinoza Family  1524 Canary Island Jewish merchants as New Christians are trading with the West Indies, Castille, France, Flanders and London. In evidence of a moment in the islands, at least one family immigrated to Palestine to live again as Jews. 1593 Brazil. After [...]

The Hole at the “Center of Vision”

Spinoza as Seer In a sense, if we are to understand Spinoza’s optical influences we have to come to at least consider what seeing, or more helpfully, perceiving meant for Spinoza, for behind any optical conceptions Spinoza had lies the very act of actively engaging the world. Much as Descartes worked from definitive values of what [...]