The Zuggtmonic Drive: (Dark) Intelligence Without Center

An Organic Demoness Ontology Naught Thought  raises the image of Dark Vitalism and first associates it with the Demoness Zuggtmoy of fantasy lore, suggesting that if we allow an ontology of powers that bubble up from below, from the very matter of matter, we are faced with a world primordially chaotic of its intents. Any intelligence is [...]

Govert Bidloo’s 1698 Reference to a Spinoza Microscope

No Second Spinoza Scope For those that have been following my thought process and research, for a brief moment I believed we may have found another user of a Spinoza microscope, Govert Bidloo in a 1698 open letter to van Leeuwenhoek on the nature of the flatworm parasite F. hepatica. Unfortunately in looking at the [...]

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 [...]

Deciphering Spinoza’s Optical Letters

Line By Line Below is my reading of Spinoza’s Optical Letters (39 and 40) as best as I have been able to extract interpretations from them. They are letters that are in general ignored, or when brushed over, taken to be evidence for Spinoza’s incompetence in optical matters. It seems that few have thought to examine [...]

The Simple Microscope in the Hands of Van Leeuwenhoek and Huygens

Spinoza’s Microscopology: a prospective comparison of context It strikes me that there is a subtle, yet important contrast between the single lens microscope that Christiaan Huygens ended up offering by the Fall of 1678 and the design which was consistently used by Van Leeuwenhoek, a contrast that points up a branching out of conception of the relationship between instrument [...]

Huygens Appropriation Further Notes and Complications

More Notes on Huygens’s New Microscope Having now read Marian Fournier’s “Huygens’ Designs for a Simple Microscope” (1989) the extended hypothesis that Christiaan Huygens was somehow aided in his quick production of a “new microscope” by the grinding techniques that may have been found in the purchase of equipment from Spinoza’s estate, suffers complication. This is [...]

On the Issue of Clarity and Light: Van Leeuwenhoek’s Lenses

Because the grinding of a droplet-made spherical lens can increase the clarity of the glass in use, and as this reflects upon the hypothesis that Spinoza’s equipment may have rendered Christiaan Huygens’ new microscope more feasible, and considering the fact the known users of glass-bead lenses – Van Leeuwenhoek, Hudde and Hooke did grind them – we add the testament [...]

Why Spinoza’s Method of Lens Polishing Might Have Been Integral

How The Clouded Glass Sphere Becomes Opened up to Light Al Shinn has given me a link to work being done by Alvaro Amaro de Azevedo, which might explain why a hypothesized Spinoza lens polishing expertise could prove decisive in employing a single lens technique. First, Amaro de Azevedo approximated a simple, thread-melting techique thought [...]

Did the Huygenses “buy” Spinoza’s lens polishing technique?

The Meteoric Rise of Huygens’s Microscope The following is an exercise in historical imagination, only meant to elicit what is possible from what we know. Perhaps a fiction bent towards fact. Wim Klever has brought to my attention a detail which sheds some light upon the possible lens polishing techniques Spinoza employed. Admittedly the connective tissue for [...]

Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker…the Glazier

Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker was born in 1619 or 20, married in 1651, and buried Dec 5 1682. Assumed to be the translator of Spinoza’s works into Dutch, on the strength of the evidence from Duijkerius’ Philopater novel, Glazemaker is seen to be a thorough participant in the Van den Enden and Jan Rieuwertsz circle of Cartesian-Collegiant politicists. Nadler [...]