Vico’s Ring
221
Spinoza then goes on to offer a fairly dogmatic-sounding rela-
tivization of experiments: «One can never confirm it by chemical
or any other experiment. […] I pass on to the experiments which
I put forward so as to confirm my explanation not in any abso-
lute sense but, as I expressly said, to some degree». On the other
hand, at the end of this section on fluidity, he acknowledges the
value of experimental data: «Not that I therefore dismiss this
piece of research as pointless. On the contrary, if in the case of
every liquid such research were done with the greatest possible
accuracy and reliability, I would consider it most useful for un-
derstanding their individual differences […]». He can hold both
views at the same time, and furthermore, personally enjoy con-
ducting experiments (within his technical means), on the basis
that, by the complexities of his epistemic system, (a) viewed
“negatively”, experimental data belong to the first kind of
knowledge, and (b) viewed positively, they are still to be accepted
as formal elements of the overall epistemic structure
518
. His disa-
greement with Boyle
519
, and other early modern scientists, includ-
ing Bacon
520
, rather is that, in his view, they were ignorant of,
and ignored, the true structure of reality, and thus were unable to
give epistemic primacy and priority to the «notions that are
pure», as properly explicated in his works.
In
Letter 13
, we possess a follow-up discussion of
Letter 6
that
covers the same ground as the earlier letter, and in which Spino-
za restates his position on the homogeneity of nitre and a
“mechanistic” explanation of chemical reactions. However, the
letter is also pertinent to the exploration of Spinoza’s epistemo-
logical commitments in matters of science. Whereas it seems that
in
Letter 6
, the contentious issue with Boyle was the epistemic
status of experiments, which for Spinoza belong to the first kind
of knowledge, in the new letter the epistemological arguments
shift to the next level, the second kind of knowledge. While ref-
erences to the second kind of knowledge are already present in
the previous letter (when he speaks of “drawing conclusions”),