An imagined gathering
1665 · Amsterdam, Netherlands
Spinoza grinds lenses and argues about substance with Leibniz and Newton, two mathematicians who will not stay for long.
Spinoza's room in Amsterdam smells of glass dust and tobacco, and he works as he talks, shaping a lens on a wooden lathe. Leibniz has come to see the man whose Theological-Political Treatise is being passed around in secret; Newton, then twenty-two and unknown, is on a visit to the Dutch Republic.
The conversation turns on substance and on method. Spinoza holds that there is only one substance and that mind and body are its two aspects; Newton, who is already thinking about motion and force, finds the metaphysics beside the point and wants to know how the lens is ground. Leibniz takes notes and asks about the infinite. They eat soused herring, oysters in ale, coarse bread, and gingerbread, and the two mathematicians leave together, arguing.
Host: Baruch Spinoza
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz — Young diplomat and mathematician, collecting ideas wherever he goes.
Isaac Newton — Unknown still, and already working out the mathematics of motion.
First course
a period dish
First course
a period dish
First course
a period dish
Baruch Spinoza
Spinoza's single infinite substance in which mind and body are two aspects of the same reality.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
The mathematics of change and accumulation, invented independently by Newton and Leibniz and the subject of a bitter priority dispute.
Isaac Newton
Newton's claim that the same force pulling an apple down holds the Moon in its orbit and binds the planets to the Sun.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.