Spinoza on Science and Stress

This site is dedicated to my nephew, Scott Allen Haley Christensen, May 4, 1970 – September 11, 2005. Suffering from Duchane’s Syndrome and unable to talk because of a trachea in his throat, Scott communicated with his spirit – and one finger, opening logic gates on his computer.

I was talking to Scott about Spinoza. Next thing I knew, he had brought up a website of the translated works of Spinoza.

“Oh, there is Curley,” I said. “He is the newest translator of Spinoza’s works.” Then I forgot the incident. Scott did not.

A Purlator truck pulled into the driveway. I was handed a package. Inside was Edwin Curley’s, A Spinoza Reader, (Princeton Press, 1994). Scott, despite his inability to speak, had ordered it online for me.

Several days later, I was reading it and these words changed my whole understanding of Spinoza: “The first thing which constitutes the actual being of a human mind is nothing but the idea of a singular thing which actually exists.” (Ethics, Part II, Prop II, p. 122, Curley).

Spinoza said we think because things exist.

Scott died a few months later and his soul melted into the fabric of the universe and accompanies my soul on its journey. “…the Soul is an Idea which is in the thinking thing, arising from the reality of a thing which exists in Nature.” (Chapter XXIII, p. 95, trans. A. Wolf in Spinoza Complete Works, Samuel Shirley, ed. Michael L. Morgan, Hackett Publishers, 2002).