Seminar: Cavendish and Spinoza on Metaphysical Structure

Laura Georgescu and Christian Henkel cordially invite you to the next meeting of the GCMEMT (Groningen Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Thought) scheduled for next week, October 28, 18.30–20.00 (CET). Our speaker is Alison Peterman (University of Rochester), and her talk is entitled Cavendish and Spinoza on Metaphysical Structure (see abstract below).

If you wish to join this event, please use the following link

https://zoom.us/j/96427734479?pwd=RVIybVZQeVZSM09IZWR0amxWT1N3QT09

Meeting ID: 964 2773 4479

Passcode: 767019

Cavendish and Spinoza on Metaphysical Structure Abstract: There are two ways of explaining the deep metaphysical structure of nature that keep cropping up in the history of philosophy: part-whole structure and substance-property structure. How do these two kinds of structure relate to each other? Are they at the same level of fundamentality? Are they complimentary, or in tension? Maybe, if you’re building a metaphysics from scratch, you should emphasize one of these over the other, in the name of parsimony or coherence? In this talk, I'll give an example of someone who tries to eliminate part-whole structure in favor of substance-predicate structure - Spinoza - and someone who tries to eliminate substance-predicate structure in favor of part-whole structure - Cavendish. I'll spend most of the time on Cavendish.