SPINOZA AND EINSTEIN: MONISM IN EARLY MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND IN CONTEMPORARY FIELD THEORY The most important figure

in the history of monism in the modern era is Benedict Spinoza. Spinoza was born in 1632 and published his major work, The Et hics, in 1677. Spinoza was a member of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, but w as excommunicated for his heretical views in 1656. Spinoza was widely attacked in his own day as an atheist, and the term "Spinozism" was a term of violent co ndemnation in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rather in the way th at "Communism" has been in this century. Even in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Germany, the claim that the playwright Gotthold Lessing was a Spinozist caused a minor scandal. Yet, Spinoza was called by the poet Novalis "a God intoxicated man." It is ironic that Spinoza was excluded from his commun ity for his religious views, for he is now universally considered to have been a saintly man. He pursued no worldly ambitions and had a career as a lens grinde r. Spinoza's political views and views on the bible as a historical document to be approached critically were far ahead of his time. Spinoza's Tractatus Philosophico-Politicus was so threatening to literal ist biblical religion that was first published not only anonymously, but witho ut the real name of the publisher due to fear of reprisal. Spinoza has been cla imed to be strongly imbued in the medieval Jewish mystical tradition, and after being expelled from the synagogue associated with those involved in communal pol itical movements, such as the Mennonites, descended from the revolutionary Anaba ptists, and the Quakers. Spinoza' communal political orientations parallel his monistic metaphysics. Spinoza's views not only were important for all subsequent philosophical reflection on the topic of monism but have also been known to have been appreci ated by Albert Einstein. Spinoza begins his philosophical work with a criticism of the views of Rene Descartes. He accepts Cartesian dualism insofar as he hol ds that there is mental and physical realm. However, where Descartes treats min d and matter as separate substances, Spinoza treats them as aspects of a single substance neither mental nor material. He also follows Descartes' identificatio n of space with extended substance, matter. For Descartes and Spinoza all matte r is extended in space, and all space is filled with matter. In other words there is no empty space. Parmenides explicitly denied th e notion of empty space by denying non-being. Descartes, on the other hand (in a more physical manner, and following his supposed nemesis, Aristotle here), den ies the notion of empty space byasserting the absence of the vacuum or holding a so-called plenum theory of space, in which all space is filled with something. Spinoza accepts Descartes' doctrine of space as extension and rejects De scartes' view that there is a separate mental substance. Because of the difficul ties of accounting for the interaction of mind and body in Descartes, as well as for other metaphysical reasons, Spinoza claims that there is only one kind of s ubstance that has both mental and physical aspects. Spinoza goes further in cla iming that there is only one substance, that is both God and nature. Spinoza's pantheism, his identification of God with the universe, led to the mistaken char ge of atheism against him. For Spinoza, the one ultimate substance has various attributes. Among t hose are the attribute of extension and the attribute of thought. Spinoza seems to leave open the possibility that there are many other attributes of God or th e universe that we are not equipped to know. (The usual interpretation is that there are infinite more infinite attributes.) Thought and extension may indeed be, so to speak, only two "dimensions" or sets of dimensions in a infinite dimen sional abstract "space" of attributes. For our human concerns, at least, though t and extension are the two attributes of the universe or God. Spinoza holds wh at was later called a "double aspect" theory of mind and matter. Mind and matte r are not separate substances but are aspects of one unitary substance that is n ot intrinsically mental or material in its ultimate nature, but has both mind an d extension as its attributes. Einstein had great affection for Spinoza's views in several respects. Ei

nstein sympathized with Spinoza's Jewish heritage, his rejection of a personal G od, his belief in ultimate physical determinism, his moral outlook, and his way of life. In reply to an inquiry from a Rabbi concerning his religious views, Ei nstein replied that he believed "in Spinoza's God, who reveals himself in the ha rmony of all being, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of men." This meant that Einstein did not believe in a personal God, but was a pantheist whose God was the universe. Einstein also had a kind of reverential a we for the physical universe similar to that of Spinoza. Einstein, like Spinoza , believed in an absolutely deterministic universe, and is famous for saying tha t God does not play dice. He also claimed, like a good rationalist, that "I wis h to know what were the thoughts of God when He created the universe." In Einst ein's later (brief) writings on religion he refers to Spinoza's intellectual lov e of God as the basis of science and several times refers to Spinoza as an examp le of a person with a religious attitude who does not believe in a transcendent God (according to Einstein, does not believe in a God, assuming the latter must be transcendent.) However, despite reverence for Spinoza's detachment from wor ldly pursuits, his dedication to knowledge of reality as a way of life, his equa nimity, his rationalism, and his rejection of a transcendent God, Einstein never discusses Spinoza's conception of the universe as a single substance, the metap hysical part of Spinoza's views that might be related to his unified field theor y or theory of matter as space-time singularities. Despite his evident love of S pinoza as person and as thinker, Einstein deflected attempts by others to get hi m to write essays on Spinoza. The Spinozistic view of the universe is also found in Einstein's physica l theory. In General Relativity Theory the universe is a unified whole, a "sphe rical" structure of space-time. This mathematical "sphere" is reminiscent of Par menides' calling of the One a "sphere" in a metaphorical sense, and Parmenides' successors Melissus' and Empedocles' use of the term "sphere" in a more literal sense. (Empedocles, with typically comical naivet, calls the universe a well-roun ded sphere with "no feet, no swift legs, no generative organs.") On one interpretation of General Relativity Theory, which was sometimes held as an ideal by Einstein, and later developed in its extreme form by John Wh eeler in his geometrodynamics, considers material objects to be simply "bumps" i n the curvature of space-time. A precursor of this view was the "space theory o f matter" of the late nineteenth century mathematician W. K. Clifford, in which physical objects are merely curved regions of space. Just as a two-dimensional surface such as a sheet of paper or rubber can be either flat or curved, so geometers speak of a three-dimensional or four-dim ensional space being flat or curved, even though we cannot directly perceive the curvature of such a higher dimensional space. Also just as a two-dimensional sh eet such a wrinkled sheet of paper or a bumpy sheet of rubber can be more sharpl y curved in some areas than in others, so too four-dimensional geometry can have a variable curvature. This curvature can be said to be caused by gravity, or m ore accurately the curvature is the gravitational field. In the ordinary constr ual of General Relativity Theory, physical objects impart a curvature to the sur rounding space, proportionate to their mass. On the geometrodynamical interpret ation of General Relativity Theory the objects themselves are the curvature. Poi nt atoms or impenetrable particles are not objects in space-time, but rather par ticular pointy bumps or singularities in space-time. On this view, an object, su ch as Dusek, does not move in space, rather space is "Duseking up" in a certain direction. Recently the analytic historian of philosophy, Jonathan Bennett, in his A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, has incorporated the "field metaphysics" interpreta tion of Spinoza into the mainstream of philosophical scholarship on Spinoza. O n Bennett's view of Spinoza physical objects are qualities of regions of space. Bodies are "thickening"" of space. Empty space is "thin" space. This doctrine of "thickening" of space finds echoes in a number of earlier, ambiguous doctrin es. The earliest Presocratic Greek philosopher-scientists, such as Anaximenes, give accounts of reality in terms of condensation and rarefaction. The Chinese doctrine of ch'i, the fluid, plasma-like stuff sometimes identified with energy

in its neo-Confucian version, explains knowledge in terms of "clear" and "turbi d" ch'i. The Stoic pneuma, of the philosophers of later antiquity in the Roman Empire, is a fluid-like stuff that fills the universe (although it is distinguis hed from matter as a sort of ether in some versions of Stoicism.) Most interest ingly, for our purposes, pneuma takes on its material forms by being in a state of "tension." Some translators use the term "tenor" for this strain tension in the pneuma. The physicist and historian of physics Samuel Sambursky, in his Phy sics of the Stoics, brings out the extent to which Stoic physical theory resembl es that of a field theory. Although Sambursky has been accused of writing a "p resentist" history of physics, by emphasizing the similarities to modern science (primarily nineteenth century ether theory), he does restrain himself from draw ing one comparison that leaps to the eye, that with the mathematical tensors of general relativity theory. Certainly the Stoic pneuma is material stuff and is not identical with the space-time of relativity physics. However, there are his torical connections of Stoicism (most obviously in ethics) with Descartes, who i dentified body with extension, that is, matter with space. There are also Stoic elements in Spinoza, who in this followed Descartes. Spinoza incorporated as w ell Biblical doctrines that identify God with place. These doctrines were exte nded in the earlier cabala and perhaps absorbed with it into the Christian cabal a of Reuchlin, Pico della Mirandola and Agrippa. These Renaissance versions in turn were utilized by Pierre Gassendi and early modern theories of space. Phil osopher of physics John Graves, in his Conceptual Foundations of General Relativ ity Theory, emphasized the similarities of Descartes' identification of body wit h extension to the view of geometrodynamics, that identifies matter with curvatu re structure in space-time, while failing to note the similarities to Spinoza. Thecomparison with Spinoza is even more striking, in that Spinoza held to a mon istic ontology. RECENT CRITICISMS OF THE BENNETT THESIS ON SPINOZA Three of the most learned contemporary philosophers who specialize in th e natural philosophy of the seventeenth century are highly critical of, and even contemptuous of Bennett's "field metaphysics" interpretation of Spinoza. Alan Gabbey, in a survey of Spinoza and the physics of his day, writes i n a footnote:"At all events, I intend to stay at a safe distance from that speci al corner of Spinoza studies where one finds congregating like wasps round a jam -jar, authors of bizarre meditations on 'Spinoza and' this or that twentieth cen tury scientist of scientific notion. Predictably, Einstein, Freud, Field Theori es and the Space-Time Continuum are the usual victims of these surreal diachroni c assignations....As a corrective to Bennett in this context, see Ariew ..." G abbey is a scholar of seventeenth century texts who has a strong sense of the di fficulties of translation from the Latin terminology of the day into contemporar y idiom, calling such translation "a near impossible" task. It is understandab le that if translation of such a deceptively simple phase as "the body moves" (o r is it "The body is moved"?) involves great difficulties, the translation of Sp inoza into Einsteinian or other field theory may seem ridiculous. However, it i s possible to extract a logical system of assumptions and consequences, or a mod el representing the inventory of the furniture of the world (ontology) of a thin ker, at least in the case of seventeenth century rationalists, who indeed were s triving for such a deductive system. If one can formulate a model of an ontolog y, then comparison of two systems of models should be possible, even if the cosm ologies they model are separated in time by centuries and conceptually by develo pment of new mathematical languages. (An ironic product of such disciplinary na rrow-mindedness is that some late twentieth century philosophers find no trouble in comparing the views of Greek Presocratics to contemporary analytic philosoph ical views, but find it absurd to compare such ancient thinkers to modern views in physical cosmology.) Two other leading historians of philosophy of the science of the sevent eenth century similarly dismiss Bennett's account of Spinoza. Roger Ariew and D aniel Garber professe not to understand what Bennett means by a "field metaphysi

cs." If these professions of lack of comprehension came from actually followin g that caricature or misrepresentation of ordinary language analysis of the 1950 s, in which anything not learned in Public School or heard in the common room wa s dismissed as nonsense, one might understand their puzzlement. But both of the se reviewers specialize in discussing preestablished harmonies and other odd cos mologies in science and philosophy. Could their expertise be so specialized tha t they have never heard of any physics after 1800, while being world-class autho rities on physics previous to that date? Garber is most puzzling. He claims "I for one see Spinoza's modes as things and find the field metaphysic Bennett att ributes to Spinoza difficult to understand and alien to Spinoza's thought, that was more Cartesian or Hobbesian in inspiration, at least in my view." John Gra ves' presentation of Descartes as forerunner of the geometrodynamical world-view is on target, even if a bit overly enthusiastic. Indeed, Garber's own stress in his excellent study of Descartes' physics on Descartes' anti-atomism hardly links Descartes with Hobbes the way so many others do. Roger Ariew, in the dismissive review recommended by Gabbey above, puts more content in his denial of ability to understand the field metaphysics. Ariew claims: "I am reasonably secure in thinking that there is no univocal concept o f field (no single metaphysic) that persists through Faraday's lines of force, M axwell's various attempts at Newtonian aether-fields, Lorentz's non-Newtonian ae ther fields, Einstein's relativistic fields, and the fields of quantum theory." I think one reason for this is that two of the theories Ariew searches for a c ommon thread of field theory are full field theories in the metaphysical sense ( at least with respect to their authors' intended models). Maxwell's mechanical models of his equations with paddle wheels and idle wheels are not field models. Maxwell's equations, insofar as they model Faraday's lines of force and lend t hemselves to interpretation as a pure field theory, are those of a field theory. Lorentz's ether theory, atomizes the ether and because of this is not a full f ield theory in its metaphysics. Einstein recaptured the true field content of Maxwell's equations and returned to a genuine field metaphysic after there had b een various partial retreats from Faraday's daring model. Indeed, I should sugg est that Cartan's calculus of differential forms captures the field metaphysics more directly than even vector and even Einstein's use of tensor calculus, let a lone Maxwell's cumbersome coordinate by coordinate representation. Ariew thinks that Bennett's characterizations of a field metaphysic would apply equally well to Descartes, as if this is a reductio. But Descartes' system can be seen as h aving characteristics that could be developed into a proto-field theory as well as the potentiality for being incorporated into an atomistic reconstruction of t he continuum. One issue that I think Ariew and others miss is that a physical continuum theory is not itself sufficient for a full field theory. The eighteen th century continuum theorists and the 19th century appliers of continuum mechan ics to the ether, dubbing their approach "the mechanical world-view" are not fie ld theorists, they are mechanists. It is to continuum mechanics, not particle m echanics, they are driven. This misleads some interpreters who assume that reje ction of particle mechanics automatically leads to full field theory. As for quantum field theory, it is true that this theory has a field as well as a particle aspect. But it is interesting that one of the most astute re cent philosophical commentators on quantum field theory, Paul Teller, claims tha t Fock space (the abstract space whose rays are numbers of indistinguishable par ticles) can be interpreted such that there is one substance, the universe, and t he quanta are its properties. Teller makes no reference to Spinoza, but this i s about as Spinozistic as a physicist can get. However the "Spinoza model" one m ight get from Teller does not identify the one entity with space-time, but rathe r with the abstract "space" of the Fock space. There is some resemblance here to Curley's semantic model of Spinoza, in which the modes are not things but facts, and the metaphysics mirrors in the ca usal dependence among facts, the logical connections between propositions. The abstract space would become a "logical space" in the sense of Wittgenstein's Tra ctatus. I do not think the latter is the correct model of Spinoza's metaphysics , but it might be combined with Teller's Fock space to make a kind of quantum-lo

gical space interpreted as a "single substance." Part of Ariew's animus seems to be directed against what he and many oth er historians of science calls the "Whig theory of history." He criticizes Benn ett for analyzing Spinoza's text directly, with little reference to historical c ontext. This issue of course divides analytical history of philosophy from hist oricist history of philosophy (what I call the contextual, social, version). Th e accusation of Whiggism was of course directed by historians of science against the version of the history of science that, taking (usually an oversimplified a nd ideological) version of the "latest truths of science" and then divided past figures into White Hats (precursors) and Black Hats (wrongheaded anti-empiricist s). The reaction against this simplistic approach by historians is justifiable. Very loose, superficial analogies between aspects of past doctrines and presen t science, and an ignorance that present science (or worse, more commonly, the p opularized and vulgarized interpretation of it) does not represent the final Tru th, and that it too shall pass, has led historians of science to claim that they would study the old theories "the way they really were" in the words of the nin eteenth century German historian Leopold von Ranke. However, I think the reaction against Whiggism has gone too far. For o ne thing there were not such terms as physicist or even scientist until the 1830 s. So the compleat anti-Whig ought not even to say she is studying the history or science or physics. Perhaps she is studying natural philosophy, thought abou t nature or writings about nature. This problem is particularly clear in the st udy of non-Western science. China had technology galore and much knowledge in a dvance of the West concerning biology, geology, cartography, and other fields. There were medical practitioners, and court astronomers, yet there was nothing c orresponding to "science" in general in the sense of a profession. There was a huge mine of observations and speculations concerning nature in writings on medi cine, religion, philosophy, and in miscellaneous literary essays. When we study the history of Chinese "natural science" we are collecting very miscellaneous p assages about nature under a category of our own devising. The problem is less extreme with respect to pre-1800 Western physics, but still is a problem. Even those historians of science who claim to study witchcraft, alchemy or whatever w ith no "Whiggish" intent, select the materials and problems from a viewpoint wit h interests in topics in science as we know it. We should admit our interests a nd focus at the basis of the selection of topics and texts. To admit an interest in traditional philosophers or "scientists" that is guided in selection of issues and aspects by modern concerns is not Whiggism but honest y. To pretend we can approach past thinkers totally in their own terms, oblivio us to all we have heard, learned or been told from the later centuries is self-d eception. This is not to deny that we can attempt to understand the historical context of the meanings of words, nor is it to claim that we should blindly cate gorize thinkers in terms of superficial agreement with modern opinions. It is, however, a mistake (particularly with respect to thinkers who concern themselves with the new physics of the seventeenth century and beyond) to pretend that we approach earlier physical thinkers without possessing conceptions or analytical tools that they did not have. In the case of Spinoza, to associate him with fie ld metaphysics is not to impose an alien, modern notion on an old thinker, but t o note a structural similarity. Modern conceptions of fields give us clear form al models against which we can compare earlier ideas. These can play a role in terms of structural models similar to that which analytical or logical reconstru ction plays. True, these modern models may have excess structure or lead us to read things into older informal models that are not there, but they also can hel p us see more clearly the consequences of certain simple notions. In the case of Spinoza, to see him as a precursor of field theory is not to be guilty of "precursoritus," of which modern historians of science may be q uick to accuse us. Rather, there is a line of influence, devious and indirect, via Jacobi to Herder and Schelling, directly from Schelling to rsted, and through Coleridge and Davy to Faraday. There is also a structural isomorphism (at leas t in the large) recognized by the later Einstein, and recognizable in Paul Telle r's comment on the metaphysics of Fock space.

ENDNOTES: SPINOZA TO EINSTEIN . Twentieth century attempts to lift the ban have failed. In Minister Ben Gurian of Israel attempted to have the ban lifted. , Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason, Princeton, . Rabbi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel in 19533, refused to rule , but ruled that reading Spinoza was allowed. the 1950s Prime Yirmiyahu Yovel 1989, p. 202-203 on the banitself

Parmenides had a minor and more naive follower, Melissus, who turned Parmenid es' abstract One into a materialistic plenum doctrine. See Barnes, op. cit., pp . 143-150. Arnold Sommerfeld, "To Einstein's Seventieth Birthday," in Paul Arthur Schilp p, ed., Albert Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist, New York: Harper and Row, 1959, p. 103. . See Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, New York: Crown Books, 1954, pp. 38 , 45, 52. Michel Paty, "Einstein and Spinoza," in Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails, Spino za and the Sciences, Dortrecht: D. Reidel, 1986, p. 267ff. Parmenides in Burnet, op. cit., p. 176. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, VII xxix 13 in Barnes, op. cit., p. 179. . I owe this turn of phrase to Stephan Koerner in his lectures. . Bennett does not refer to Einstein's Spinozism or the parallel with the geom etrodynamic interpretation of General Relativity Theory, but does, however, refe r to field theory, to an article by the physicist Mendel Sachs, and the popular book on physics and mysticism, Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics , Hackett Publishing Company, 1984 , pp. 91-91, citing Mendel Sachs,"Maimonides, Spinoza, and the Field Concept in Physics," Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 37, pp. 125-131, and Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu-li Masters, New York: Quill Books, Morrow, 1979, p. 2 00. . Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, I vii 1-9 in Barnes, op. cit., p. 77 . Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China, Cambridge, Massachu setts: Harvard University Press, 1985, pp. 180-184, compares Anaximander and Chi theory. . Shmuel Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd ., 1959, reprinted London: Hutchinson and Co., 1971. . See Max Jammer, Concepts of Space, with an intro. by Albert Einstein, New Yo rk: Harper Torchbooks, 1960, pp. 27-32. . Graves, John Cowperwaithe, The Conceptual Foundations of Contemporary Relati vity Theory, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971. Alan Gabbey, "Spinoza's natural Science and Methodology," in Don Garrett, The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge U. P., 1996, p. 183 n6.

Alan Gabbey, "Exercises in Near-Impossibility: Reflections on Translating Sci entific and Philosophical Texts of the Past," oral presentation and abstract, Fi rst International HOPOS (History of Philosophy of Science Working Group) Confere nce, April 20, 1996. Daniel Garber, Review of Jonathan Bennett, A Study of Spinoza's Ethics, Ethics, (July 1985), p. 961. Daniel Garber, Review, op. cit., p. 962. John C. Graves, ibid. Daniel Garber, Descartes' Metaphysical Physics, Chicago U. P., 1992, Ch. 5, "Descartes Against the Atomists," pp. 119-120. . Roger Ariew, review of Bennett, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vo l. 47 (1986-7) , no. 4 (June), pp. 649-654, p. 653. See Simon Saunders and Har vey R. Brown, "Reflections on Ether," in The Philosophy of the Vacuum, ed. by Si mon Saunders and Harvey R. Brown, Oxford U. P., 1991, pp. 29-36. John C. Graves, op. cit., Ch 6, pp. 79-101. See also Garber, Descartes', op. cit., Ch. 5, "Descartes Against the Atomists," esp. 120-126. . Paul Teller, An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Princeton UP, 1995, p. 15. Fock himself (of Fock space) was a Soviet Marxist physicist o f great talent who wrote critically about Einstein's relativity theory (rejectin g relativism for the "theory of harmonic coordinates"--Robert Palter, "Copernica nism Old and New," The Monist, 1964, pp. 143-184 and Loren Graham, Science, Phil osophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union, Columbia U. P.,1987, pp. 320-352, 367-377.) Several of Fock's criticisms of Einstein's own understanding of Gener al Relativity Theory are now common currency in American physics, though Fock an d his Marxism (understandably) are rarely credited. However, see Hans C. Ohania n, Gravitation and Spacetime, New York: W. W. Norton, Inc., 1976, pp. x, 276, f or favorable reference in a contemporary American text. Fock emphasized that Ge neral Relativity is no more relative than special relativity, and is not really a theory of relativity at all, that covariance hardly picks out Einstein's equat ions, as most equations can be made covariant, and that Mach's principle is high ly ambiguous. He also wrote critically on Bohr's interpretation of the quantum theory, again criticizing the subjectivistic and positivist elements in the Cope nhagen interpretation, and possibly influenced Bohr in his later years to take a more realist stance, or at least to emphasize the realist strand in his thought ( p. 337). Fock's Marxism was not lip service as he sometimes defended it agai nst the official Soviet line on science. See Graham. But as far as I know he n ever wrote on quantum field theory or its Spinozistic interpretation. Soviet ph ilosophy heavily emphasized Spinoza along with Bruno, following George Plekhanov 's late 19th century Spinozistic Marxism. Plekhanov's major work is subtitled (a nd often in English translation now so titled, The Development of the Monist Vie w of History (Moscow 1956). So such an interpretation of quantum field theory a s Spinozistic would have harmonized well with Soviet Marxism, if it could have b e understood. I do not know whether Fock or anyone else attempted to do this. (George Kline, Spinoza in Soviet Philosophy, 1957, is an old source in English on the topic described by its title.) Boris Kuznetsov, Einstein, transl. By V. T almy, New York: Phaedra, 1970, is a Soviet work that frequently mentions Einstei n's affinity for and similarity to Spinoza, but does not document the connection from Einstein's writings. See E. M. Curley, Spinoza's Metaphysics: An Essay in Interpretation, Harvard U. P., 1969, p. 55. I leave this exercise to someone with the algebraic logical talents of Bas van Fraassen to fill in the details, though he probably wouldn't be interested, and no one else would be capable.

The article on "Whig History," by C. B. Wilde in the Dictionary of the Histo ry of Science, ed. W. F. Bynum, E. J. Browne, and Roy Porter, Princeton UP, 1981 concludes that "'Whig criteria are still generally applied by historians of sci ence in choosing subjects of study" (p. 446), although naively believing that Al exandre Koyre "interprets the past on its own terms" (p. 445), as if Koyre's bac kground in Russian theosophy and Husserlian phenomenology did not effect his int erpretation of Galileo as Platonic metaphysician, who did not perform his famous experiments and was uninfluenced by his social surroundings. Aristides Baltas, "On the Harmful Effects of Excessive Anti-Whiggism," in Trends in the Historiog raphy of Science ed. by Kostas Gavroglu, Jean Christianidis, and Efthyumios Nico laidis, Dortrecht: D. Reidel, 1994, pp. 107-120 may initiate a reaction against denunciation of any comparison of past scientific theories with present ones as "Whiggism."