Talk:Philosophy of Spinoza

Suggestions on references

These are guidelines rather than hard rules, but are different from WP.

In general, we respect the writer's expertise to pick the single best reference on a point. When I see [1][2][3], I wonder if [2] and [3] are essentially establishing the same point as [1], or if, perhaps, there are nuances that could be developed from [2] and [3].

--Howard C. Berkowitz 14:40, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi Howard. This article existed for a month or so on Wikipedia before being overwritten. The reason for the repeated references was "the more the better"; I'm a Wikipedia veteran, and I always tried to put more references in to try to keep stuff from being deleted. But it may not be necessary here on CZ. I don't think I put much thought into "which reference was best" but definitely I'll try to avoid multiple references if this is against CZ policy; I've only been on CZ a day or so now, and am trying to adjust. Do you know about philosophy?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:47, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't consider myself a philosopher, except in narrow areas such as military and medical ethics. Reasonably eclectic, though -- I'm an Editor for Military, Medical and Engineering, and frequent contributor to Politics, Health Sciences, Visual Arts, Geography, Media and a few other things.

Also, and again an informal convention, we've tended not to put quotes into citations. If they are significant, they belong in the main article — the reader doesn't know to click footnotes to find supplementary text beyond the bibliographic.

I'm delighted, though, to see you jumping in. While I'm not a Spinoza expert or philosophy editor, I am somewhat interested in his work, and can give you the lower-case-e perspective of a nonspecialist reader. --Howard C. Berkowitz 15:00, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, great, I'll remove the quote parts of the references as you suggest; didn't know this was a convention; I started this practice in my WP days as a way to help fact-checkers find the right fact (and to keep my stuff from being deleted). But here it's not necessary, good.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:24, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Created article

I wrote this article initially for Wikipedia back in November 2009 perhaps? It's generally solid but there are some problems and I hope to fix them as I get around to it.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The initial idea of this article was to present an outline of Spinoza's philosophy in clear and simple terms so that it would be accessible to even high school students. To make the subject less dry, I avoided difficult words whenever possible, and wrote this from the ground up in a hopefully user-friendly way, working into difficult concepts slowly, such as substance, and with plenty of pictures to emphasize key ideas like cause-and-effect. But I'm a layman, not a scholar or professor; so I borrowed heavily from two professionals; one was Henry Allison who wrote a book about "The Ethics"; and another a professional named Steven Nadler who wrote "Spinoza's Ethics: An Introduction" which is a well-written introduction. So the article has a strong basis in reliable fact; I had perhaps around 40 to 50 quotes of Nadler's book here. I emailed him and showed him the draft on Wikipedia, but he objected to being quoted extensively (copyright issues?) and suggested I stick with direct quoting of Spinoza. And he didn't offer any help fixing it up either. So I spent another day or so removing references to Nadler, rewriting explanations when suitable in my own words. In addition, the only translation of Spinoza online which I could find was Elwes (100+ years ago). According to Nadler, the best translations of Spinoza are Curley or Shirley (unsure which) since they're both newer, more accepted; but they're not online. So, sooner or later I'll try to get a copy of one of these and switch the Elwes references around.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, I ran into problems with several editors regarding the Spinoza article. One didn't like the animations (Newton's Cradle, etc) since they supposedly consumed too much bandwidth. Another claimed to be a graduate student in philosophy who said the article was "all wrong" and, in very insulting terms (much of the talk page was overhauled -- click on the "archives" if interested in seeing the insults), took it over and rewrote it. I'm still not sure what was going on here; most likely, the second editor looked at my user page, saw I was a handyman, and assumed the article was "all wrong" without perhaps reading it much? I don't know -- it didn't help that all of the references to Nadler's book were removed, which pulled out the foundation of the article. So I let the article get overwritten; I wanted to see what would result from the new effort; plus, I wasn't sure if this new editor was, in fact, a philosophy grad student like he (she?) claimed. As of Feb 17th 2010, the current version on Wikipedia is (in my view) extremely difficult to read, much shorter, minus the pictures, and is more like a bare-bones outline of some of Spinoza's more difficult ideas. I don't think anybody looking at the article would be interested in learning more about Spinoza, after reading the current Wikipedia article; but that's my sense of it. But I began having more problems with Wikipedia and abandoned my work there around January 2010, and felt it wasn't worth the effort.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

So, I'm thinking this article still has a solid base, but it would be helpful if there are CZ editors who know about philosophy to help me improve it.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 14:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Harrumph. As an Engineering Editor, I would very much appreciate a "handyman's" input on nut (fastener), drill (tool), chisel, screw (fastener) and the like. --Howard C. Berkowitz 22:43, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Good ideas. I used to work on the WP article "Handyman" and have an interest in tools. Tool I use most often, surprisingly, is the tape measure.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 22:45, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Updates

I can make another drawing of a circle so that it's the same size. For some reason one of my circles is bigger than the other; but do you want me to have two circles without writing? It's easy to make the diagrams and upload them from my Paint program.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 22:04, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Also is this article too long, does it need splitting; I'm not sure how to do this in CZ.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 22:05, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

It's well-organized; I'm not sure where to split it. What I will do, which you can revert, is to move the definitions of emotions to Philosophy of Spinoza/Catalogs, and remove redundant citations there.

Good idea. I'll follow your lead here. Generally does CZ not like lists? If so perhaps I can rewrite the section on the emotions. Wondering what the CZ thinking is about when articles are "too long" -- is there a number or length when it gets too long?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 22:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

By the circle, I meant the one that has the word "circumference" in it and is centered -- for some reason, I don't see the image statement. --Howard C. Berkowitz 22:32, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

OK I'll try to fix the circles in the next day or so; the problem is one of the circles came from Wikimedia Commons, the other one I made myself, so they didn't line up; but if I do both myself (without the words perhaps?) then maybe it will be better?--Thomas Wright Sulcer 22:44, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Hopefully fixed circles so they're comparable. Removed the verbiage from one of them. Hope that's what you wanted for the circles.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 23:28, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) I ordered the Edwin Curley translation of Spinoza so when it arrives I hope to use it to help improve this article. Curley is viewed as the best translation of Spinoza's Ethics.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 15:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Footnotes

Those footnotes make the article very hard to read (at least for me). Wikilinks + footnotes, isn't that overdoing it?--Paul Wormer 16:20, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree. I originally wrote this on WP and the footnotes were a kind of defensive measure; but here it's not necessary. I'm planning to rework this article substantially, possibly splitting it apart into multiple articles. Probably in the next few weeks but I'm reconsidering how to approach this; I've learned new stuff (see my talk page here if interested. Basically I want to create a thicket of articles to boost readership & usefulness. I've got the Curley translation from Amazon (a more accurate translation than Elwes, according to S.Nadler (a Spinoza expert)). Tell me your sense about how the footnotes should work -- would a single footnote (if applicable) after a paragraph be too much? Also there's some formatting issue making something in the footnote section bold that I'll fix. Or do a bibliography instead? --Thomas Wright Sulcer 16:55, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

On the whole at CZ we trust authors to quote correctly the literature given in the bibliography. Personally I use footnotes only for references to historically important papers/books or when I quote a personal opinion that is debatable (I never give my own personal opinion). I use as an example the Encyclopedia Britannica; you will hardly see any footnotes in the EB. --Paul Wormer 17:23, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

No quoting? Okay. Will remove quotes when I work on this (probably over next week or so). Can I quote you about "no quoting"? :)--Thomas Wright Sulcer 18:03, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Paul that the references (footnotes) in this form are neither efficient nor helpful, and some are not needed at all. The sources (full bibliographic data and links) belong into the bibliography. It makes no sense to repeat the same information again and again. However, a page reference to a particular statement may well be justified (but could often be included in the text (abbreviated)). The practice of quotes and citations is quite different in philosophy (and humanities) than in science. --Peter Schmitt 22:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

So, the general sentiment is: occasionally quote when something is helpful. I'll try to do this. Feel free to remove quotes as necessary but I'm going to be reworking this, adding to it; new sections & stuff; I have better source material I can work from now. My aim is to make difficult hard-to-grasp concepts available, to try to explain stuff without dumbing it down. I'm interested in a bunch of areas: Spinoza's political philosophy; the emotions; his take on religion; and I plan to add articles on these subjects and I'll probably be asking for advice as I go along. I love to have beautiful pictures in articles as much as possible to try to attract readers, while hopefully staying relevant.--Thomas Wright Sulcer 00:19, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Pictures

Since you mention the pictures: I can hardly see any relevance. They do not help to understand the abstract philosophical ideas. What is the purpose of the moving balls? (They illustrate a physical concept.) What has the Gauguin picture to do with Spinoza? etc. (An exception may be the circle, but equilateral triangles can characterize the circle, too.) --Peter Schmitt 00:41, 21 March 2010 (UTC)