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Notes
2 Joshua 10:12–13.
1 See R. H. Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans: The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic: 1575–1750, History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands, 1 (Amsterdam: Edita KNAW, 2002), 241–2.
3 Subsequent references to Galileo's Letter will be to: Galileo Galilei, ‘Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina’, in The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History, edited and translated by M.A. Finocchiaro, California Studies in the History of Science, 1 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 87–118. For a history of the sources influential upon Galileo, see B.R. Goldstein, ‘Galileo's Account of Astronomical Miracles in the Bible: A Confusion of Sources’, Nuncius, 5 (1990), 1–16. Goldstein argues that Galileo depended upon Magalhaens's Commentary on Joshua for much of his source material. He also emphasizes the importance of Gersonides' commentary upon Joshua, a point to which I shall return below.
4 See B. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, translated by S. Shirley (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), Preface, 53. For a discussion of Spinoza's conception of miracles, see N. Jolley, ‘The Relation between Theology and Philosophy’, in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, edited by D. Garber and M. Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 386.
5 Spinoza, Tractatus, 74.
6 See T.M. Rudavsky, ‘The Hermeneutics of Interpretation: The Case of Spinoza and Galileo’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2001), 611–31.
7 See, for example, B. Spinoza, The Correspondence of Spinoza, edited and translated by A. Wolf (New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1966), Letter 26, 198–9.
8 R.H. Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans, 247.
9 Galileo, Letter, 89.
10 See M.A. Finocchiaro, ‘The Biblical Argument against Copernicanism and the Limitation of Biblical Authority: Ingoli, Foscarini, Galileo, Campanella’, in Nature and Scripture in the Abrahamic Religions: Up to 1700, edited by J. M. van der Meer and S. Mandelbrote, Brill's Series in Church History, 36 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2008), vol. 2, 95.
11 Spinoza, Correspondence, Letter 31, 206.
12 Spinoza, Tractatus, Preface, 53.
13 Spinoza, Tractatus, Preface, 52.
14 Spinoza, Tractatus, Preface, 53–4.
15 The phrase is attributed to visiting Dutch savant Olaus Borch in his journal. See J.I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity: 1650–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 163.
16 See E. McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, edited by P. Machamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 273. See also E. McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, in The Church and Galileo, edited by E. McMullin, Studies in Science and the Humanities from the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 88–116.
17 These tensions are discussed in R. Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: Political Inquisition Or Critical Dialogue? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). It is worth noting that McMullin does not agree with this assessment, and claims that there is no evidence that the Church objected to his use of Scripture per se: the charge ‘of his using Scripture to make his own case for Copernicanism is nowhere mentioned’. Cf. McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, 112.
18 See S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For reasons and details of the excommunication, see S. Nadler, Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001); S. Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
19 See Nadler, Spinoza's Heresy, 17–41 for a discussion of those views most likely to have elicited such a stern response on the part of the Portuguese Jewish leaders (parnassim).
20 N. Maull, ‘Spinoza in the Century of Science’, in Spinoza and the Sciences, edited by M. Grene and D. Nails, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 91 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel [Kluwer Academic Publishers], 1986), 3.
21 For discussion of this point, see E.M. Curley, ‘Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece: Spinoza and the Science of Hermeneutics’, in Spinoza: The Enduring Questions, edited by G. Hunter, Toronto Studies in Philosophy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 65–99; H. Siebrand, ‘Spinoza and the Rise of Modern Science in the Netherlands’, in Spinoza and the Sciences, edited by M. Grene and D. Nails, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 91 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel [Kluwer Academic Publishers], 1986), 62; Also, S. Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, 183.
22 See Spinoza, Correspondence, Letter 26, 199–200.; Letter 32, 213; Letter 36, 225–6; Letter 39, 231–2; Letter 40, 232–5; Letter 46, 263–4. See also, Israel, Radical Enlightenment.
23 Curley, ‘Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece’, 65. See also D. Savan, ‘Spinoza: Scientist and Theorist of Scientific Method’, in Spinoza and the Sciences, edited by M. Grene and D. Nails, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 91 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel [Kluwer Academic Publishers], 1986), 95–124; Israel, Radical Enlightenment.
24 See A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 28.
25 P. Machamer, ‘Galileo's Machines, His Mathematics, and His Experiments’, in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, edited by P. Machamer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 67.
26 Benedictus Spinoza, ‘Ethics’, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by E.M. Curley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 441.
27 Spinoza, ‘Ethics’, 492.
28 Spinoza, Tractatus, 74.
29 That was the exegetical problem as seen by Bellarmine and inherited by Galileo. See R.J. Blackwell and P.A. Foscarini, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible: Including a Translation of Foscarini's Letter on the Motion of the Earth (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 36.
30 See McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, 105.
31 Galileo, Letter, 91.
32 Galileo, Letter, 93.
33 See McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, 94.
34 Galileo, Letter, 92.
35 Galileo, Letter, 92.
36 See McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, 292; McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, 97.
37 Galileo, Letter, 96.
38 Galileo, Letter, 101–2.
39 See Galileo, Letter, 104.
40 For further discussion of Maimonides' attitude toward statements that have not been proven demonstratively, see T.M. Rudavsky, Maimonides, Blackwell Great Minds (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).
41 See McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, 294; McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, 93.
42 Galileo, Letter, 93.
43 Galileo, Letter, 93.
44 See McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, 295; McMullin, ‘Galileo's Theological Venture’, 96.
45 Galileo, Letter, 94.
46 Galileo, Letter, 94.
47 Galileo, Letter, 94.
48 Galileo, Letter, 96.
49 Galileo, Letter, 100.
50 See McMullin, ‘Galileo on Science and Scripture’, 316. For a different reading of this apparent conflict, see Finocchiaro, ‘The Biblical Argument against Copernicanism’, 649. Finocchiaro argues that Galileo accepts the authority of Scripture ‘not only for questions of faith and morals, but also for the weighing of probable testimony in history, for undecidable questions in natural philosophy, and for questions of presumption of truth for unsupported claims’.
51 Spinoza, Tractatus, 54.
52 See Curley, ‘Notes on a Neglected Masterpiece’, 79. Curley quotes Luther's ‘Scriptura sui ipsius interpres’.
53 Spinoza, Tractatus, 232.
54 In the Ethics, Spinoza returns to the notion of truth in more detail, and elaborates three distinct epistemic levels of truth, which he articulates in terms of imagination, reason, and intuitive science. According to Spinoza, the knowledge of the first kind (imagination) is the cause of falsity, whereas knowledge of the second and third orders is necessarily true. Spinoza goes on to argue in the demonstration to Ethics 2:41 that the first kind of knowledge concerns all those ideas that are inadequate and confused.
55 Spinoza, Tractatus, 120.
56 See Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 213. The Hebrew phrase occurs numerous times in the Babylonian Talmud. See, for example, Berakhot 31b.
57 For an extended discussion of this treatment of this phrase in Jewish philosophy, see D. Shatz, ‘The Biblical and Rabbinic Background to Medieval Jewish Philosophy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, edited by D.H. Frank and O. Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 16–37.
58 For further discussion of this point, see Rudavsky, Maimonides.
59 Spinoza, Tractatus, 131.
60 Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, 278. See also Nadler, A Book Forged in Hell, 125–31.
61 See S.B. Smith, Spinoza, Liberalism, and the Question of Jewish Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 59.
62 J.I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism: 1550–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), xii.
63 Spinoza, Tractatus, 141.
65 Spinoza, Tractatus, 156–7.
64 See Spinoza, Tractatus, 228.
66 Encycopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. ‘Spinoza, Baruch (Bento, Benedictus) de’. Similarly S. Nadler argues in A Book Forged in Hell, for the radical and momentous force of Spinoza's critique.
67 Goldstein, ‘Galileo's Account’, 15.
68 See Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom), The Wars of the Lord, edited and translated by S. Feldman (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1999), vol. 2.
69 See Gersonides, Wars, 491.
70 Gersonides, Wars, 495.
71 Goldstein, ‘Galileo's Account’, 15.
73 Spinoza, Tractatus, 79.
72 Sundogs, sometimes called Parhelia or Mock Suns, are often seen when the sun is low. Each ‘dog’ is red colored towards the sun and sometimes has greens and blues beyond.
74 Galileo, Letter, 117.
76 Galileo, Letter, 115.
75 Galileo, Letter, 114.
77 Galileo, Letter, 115.
78 Galileo, Letter, 115.
79 Galileo, Letter, 118.
80 See Spinoza, Tractatus, 134.
81 Spinoza, Tractatus, 125.
82 Spinoza, Tractatus, 126.
85 Spinoza, Tractatus, 79.
83 Spinoza, Tractatus, 79.
84 Spinoza, Tractatus, 79. See T. Verbeek, Spinoza's Theologico-political Treatise: Exploring the Will of God (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2003), 100ff for further discussion of this point.
86 Spinoza, Tractatus, 86.
87 Spinoza, Tractatus, 124–5.
88 Spinoza, Tractatus, 135.
89 Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, 151.
90 Quoted in Nadler, Spinoza: A Life, 151; see also T. Verbeek, Descartes and the Dutch: Early Reactions to Cartesian Philosophy: 1637–1650 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), chapters 2 and 3; Nadler points out that the ‘new science’, represented by the mechanistic materialism of Galileo and Descartes, threatened to dispense with many of the categories of Aristotelian thought.
91 For discussions of the influence of Jewish philosophers upon Spinoza's intellectual development, see H.A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of Spinoza, Meridian Giants, 16 (New York: Meridian Books, 1934). Spinoza's Jewish predecessors are discussed as well in T.M. Rudavsky, ‘Jewish Philosophical Influences: Maimonides, Crescas, Abrabanel, Menasseh ben Israel, Delmedigo’, in The Continuum Companion to Spinoza, edited by W. van Bunge, H. Krop, P. Steenbakkers, and J. van de Ven (London: The Continuum International Publishing Group, Ltd., 2011).
92 For details of Spinoza's library and belongings, see J. Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas in Quellenschriften, Urkunden und Nichtamtlichen Nachrichten (Leipzig: Verlag, 1899).
93 See D.B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 134. Ruderman himself does not offer a study of Sefer Elim, choosing to concentrate instead upon Delmedigo's Matzref la-Hokhma, a defense of Kabbalah, and Mikhtav Ahuz, a condemnation of Kabbalistic thought.
94 J. Delmedigo, Sefer Elim (Amsterdam: 1629; Reprinted Odessa: 1864–7).
95 See Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 48–62. See especially 54ff.
96 I.E. Barzilay, Yoseph Shlomo Delmedigo (Yashar of Candia): His Life, Works and Times, Studia Post-Biblica, 25 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974), 153.
102 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 433. Note also his comment: ‘I asked permission to observe it [Mars] through the telescope, and it appeared to me elongated, not round […] Jupiter however, I found to be round, and Saturn […] egg-shaped’ (301).
97 See Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 300, 304, 315.
98 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 301; See also H. Levine, ‘Paradise Not Surrendered: Jewish Reactions to Copernicus and the Growth of Modern Science’, in Epistemology, Methodology and the Social Sciences, edited by R.S. Cohen and M.W. Wartofsky (Dordrecht: D. Reidel [Kluwer Academic Publishers], 1983), 208–9.
99 See Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 317–19, 432.
100 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 300.
101 See Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 301. Delmedigo mentions Galileo's telescope several times. Cf. Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 417, 432. He discusses as well the phases of Venus; the ‘mountains of the moon’ and new views with regard to the Milky Way, meteors, etc. See Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 300–301; 432–3.
104 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 292–3. Barzilay suggests that this passage attests to Delmedigo's acquaintance with the views of Giordano Bruno, whose tract On the Infinite Universe and its Worlds was published in 1584. See Barzilay, Delmedigo, 158.
103 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 304. See also A. Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541–1613) and His Times, Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).
105 Freudenthal, Die Lebensgeschichte Spinozas, 161.
106 On page 35 d'Ancona says that ‘the work ABSCONDITA SAPIENTIAE by Joseph Delmedigo is found among the books in his [Spinoza's] library, and it appears to me very likely that also ELIM constituted a part of Spinoza's book collection and that this is the work that in the inventory immediately follows ABSCONDITA SAPIENTIAE and that is referred to as “A Rabbinic Mathematical Book.” We should therefore think that this inventory was done by someone who apparently did not understand much Hebrew and that the first edition of ELIM contained many mathematical figures [illustrations].’
107 J. Adler, ‘J.S. Delmedigo as Teacher of Spinoza; The Case of Noncomplex Propositions’, Studia Spinozana, 16 (2008), 181.
108 Adler, ‘J.S. Delmedigo, 181.
109 Delmedigo, Sefer Elim, 398.
110 Barzilay, Delmedigo, 302.
111 See Z. Levy, Baruch or Benedict: On Some Jewish Aspects of Spinoza's Philosophy, American University Studies: Series V, Philosophy, 81 (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 27.
112 Barzilay, Delmedigo, 170. We find in Barzilay the suggestion that Spinoza's naturalization of miracles is strongly adumbrated in Delmedigo. See Barzilay, Delmedigo, 303, quoting Tractatus chapters 2, 11, and 14.
113 See Spinoza, Tractatus, 134.
114 My thanks to my student David Frankel who assisted in editing and improving this paper, as well as to the anonymous reader who caught several infelicities on my part.