I am not sure I have ever seen it remarked — but I am happy to be corrected — that the implied pay-off of Newton’s first ‘rule of reasoning’ that (in the Cohen and Whitman translation) “Nature does nothing in vain” is a specific target of the famous appendix to the first part of Spinoza’s
Do scholars of Spinoza generally agree that when he attacks final causes, he is attacking not only the idea of God or gods creating natural things with certain purposes or end goals in mind, but also a more naturalistic Aristotelian notion where for example it's just part of the nature of a seed or growing embryo to be aiming for a given adult form, without there necessarily needing to be any mental intentionality either in the organism or a divine creator? I remember a reading of Aristotle starting on p. 326 at https://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/faculty/caston/epiphenomenalisms-ancient-modern.pdf that argued that his notion of final causes most closely resembles the idea that in modern terms would be called "strong emergentism", where there are special laws of nature for e.g. organisms that could not even in principle be deduced from whatever micro-laws govern its material parts in isolation, like mechanical forces (the paper highlights Aristotle's rejection of the 'harmonia' view of the soul to argue that he'd reject 'weak emergentism'). So I wonder if Spinoza's views would be clearly inconsistent with final causes in this sense of strong emergentism (like the tradition of 'British emergentism' discussed at https://people.stfx.ca/cbyrne/Byrne/McLaughlin-Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20British%20Emergentism.pdf ), or if they are more specifically about human-like mental intentionality and purpose in nature.
I actually think that's a complicated question. There are emergentist interpretations of Spinoza's, and arguably he influenced some of the British emergentists (like Alexander especially).
To anticipate the next installment, and to simplify, in Aristotle formal-final causes have a special interaction to make such emergentism possible. Spinoza keeps a lot of that explanatory structure, but with formal causes alone.
If you don't hear echoes of Leibniz' variational/optimality explanations here, I suggest you bend your ear more closely to the wind. Just thinking here of 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒, §19–§23. Now this was 1686, Newton might not have seen *it*, but Leibniz had been on the topic for some while, and in any case, as Lennox suggests, and Leibniz implicitly seconds, Aristotle's account of animal development is pretty widespread.
I don't. I first published on the subject in '72 in 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝐿𝑒𝑖𝑏𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎. It's in my book, '79. I have a paper in 𝐽𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑦 on the topic, and a major paper on the variational principle: https://www.academia.edu/36310506/The_Variational_Principles_How_Leibniz_Founded_a_Tradition_in_Physics_Which_Endures_Unto_Today. He mentions *none* of them. Either he discovered none of them, which indicts HIS scholarship; or he thinks them not worthy of merit, which indicts MY scholarship (and a bunch of editors and referees); or maybe guys from Harvard just don't cite guys from UMKC. Dunno. Go figger.
Do scholars of Spinoza generally agree that when he attacks final causes, he is attacking not only the idea of God or gods creating natural things with certain purposes or end goals in mind, but also a more naturalistic Aristotelian notion where for example it's just part of the nature of a seed or growing embryo to be aiming for a given adult form, without there necessarily needing to be any mental intentionality either in the organism or a divine creator? I remember a reading of Aristotle starting on p. 326 at https://ancphil.lsa.umich.edu/-/downloads/faculty/caston/epiphenomenalisms-ancient-modern.pdf that argued that his notion of final causes most closely resembles the idea that in modern terms would be called "strong emergentism", where there are special laws of nature for e.g. organisms that could not even in principle be deduced from whatever micro-laws govern its material parts in isolation, like mechanical forces (the paper highlights Aristotle's rejection of the 'harmonia' view of the soul to argue that he'd reject 'weak emergentism'). So I wonder if Spinoza's views would be clearly inconsistent with final causes in this sense of strong emergentism (like the tradition of 'British emergentism' discussed at https://people.stfx.ca/cbyrne/Byrne/McLaughlin-Rise%20and%20Fall%20of%20British%20Emergentism.pdf ), or if they are more specifically about human-like mental intentionality and purpose in nature.
I actually think that's a complicated question. There are emergentist interpretations of Spinoza's, and arguably he influenced some of the British emergentists (like Alexander especially).
To anticipate the next installment, and to simplify, in Aristotle formal-final causes have a special interaction to make such emergentism possible. Spinoza keeps a lot of that explanatory structure, but with formal causes alone.
If you don't hear echoes of Leibniz' variational/optimality explanations here, I suggest you bend your ear more closely to the wind. Just thinking here of 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒, §19–§23. Now this was 1686, Newton might not have seen *it*, but Leibniz had been on the topic for some while, and in any case, as Lennox suggests, and Leibniz implicitly seconds, Aristotle's account of animal development is pretty widespread.
Yes, I very much like what Geoff McDonough has done with that stuff.
I don't. I first published on the subject in '72 in 𝑆𝑡𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑎 𝐿𝑒𝑖𝑏𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛𝑎. It's in my book, '79. I have a paper in 𝐽𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐻𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑦 on the topic, and a major paper on the variational principle: https://www.academia.edu/36310506/The_Variational_Principles_How_Leibniz_Founded_a_Tradition_in_Physics_Which_Endures_Unto_Today. He mentions *none* of them. Either he discovered none of them, which indicts HIS scholarship; or he thinks them not worthy of merit, which indicts MY scholarship (and a bunch of editors and referees); or maybe guys from Harvard just don't cite guys from UMKC. Dunno. Go figger.
Ah, I see. Bummer. I tend to stay out of leibniz-land because i know i can't master the literature w/o a lifetime of effort.