Spinoza and Contemporary Biology

Beyond a fecund commentary about Spinoza that will inflect future interpretations, more broadly, Atlan has long been a critic of the obfuscations arising from a dualist metaphysics setting mind and brain in opposition and this latest work brilliantly settles the score.--Alfred I. Tauber, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Boston University Based on a groundbreaking seminar on 'Complexity and Self-Organization: Spinoza, a Philosophy for Today, ' offered in 2007 at Johns Hopkins' Humanities Center where so-called French Theory was launched in the United States at a conference on the 'sciences of man, ' in 1966, Henri Atlan's new book is the brilliant and long-awaited sequel to his earlier magnum opus, the two-volume Sparks of Randomness, centered likewise around the 17th century sage from Amsterdam. While that work read Spinoza in light of Kabbalah, modern epistemology, and computational models of scientific reasoning, whose insights were beautifully laid out as if on a Talmudic page, Spinoza and Contemporary Biology greatly extends Atlan's philosophical project into the most advanced reaches of the science of life as well as the cognitive neurosciences with the deep probing and discursive rigour that marks his unique oeuvre overall. This massive tome provides an actual course and pedagogical tour de force in assessing the age-old philosophical problems regarding the elusive nexus between the living and the inanimate, mind and body, truth and error, in a radically novel perspective. In addition, Atlan's latest study helps us make sense of Spinoza's own most fundamental thoughts, the so-called 'small physics' and larger metaphysics, with its guiding concept of cause and three kinds of knowledge to begin with.--Hent de Vries, New York University