This is a picture of the first 3 dimensional model I ever made for a philosophical text. I was trying to understand several points and their relationships in Book II of Spinoza’s Ethics1 namely:
P7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
P11: The first thing that constitutes the actual being of a human Mind is nothing but the idea of a singular thing which actually exists.
P12: Whatever happens in the object of the idea constituting the human Mind must be perceived by the human Mind, or there will necessarily be an idea of that thing in the Mind, e.g., if the object of the idea constituting a human Mind is a body, nothing can happen in that body which is not perceived by the Mind.
P13 The object of the idea constituting the human Mind is the Body, or a certain mode of Extension which actually exists, and nothing else.
As I understand it, this part of Book II of the Ethics is Spinoza’s answer to Descartes’ Cogito (Meditation 2) which only affirms the Mind and requires further argument (through Meditation 6) to affirm the body.
Each layer in the model is a circle which represents the infinite (substance). The top layer is made of a defractive paper. It reflects different colors which are meant to represent the inifinite attributes of substance. Among the colors it reflects are red and green. The green circle in the model is “as if” the attribute of thinking could be separated from the first circle; the red circle is “as if” the attribute of extension could be separated from the first circle. The red circle has a grid drawn on it to represent that extension has the dimensions of space and time.
The stick going from left bottom to right top through the layers is meant to represent a mode, or a singular thing.
Suppose the mode cuts through the first circle at a place which reflects both green and red. Then it will be as if the stick went through the green layer and also through the red layer. This may be used to explain P13: The object of the idea constituting the human Mind (the stick going through the green layer at a particular point) is the Body (the stick going through the red layer at a particular point.)
It also turns out, however, that by placing the stick through the layers like this, the layers are connected. If one turns the circles around the center, the layers stay in the same relative relationship to each other and turn together. This helps us to understand P7: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
While this model was helpful in creating a (first) understanding of Spinoza’s text, like any model, it must be pursued with some care, since it may be misleading in ways. In this model, for example, the central stick is an “artifact” of the model. It does not represent anything in the text...I just needed a way to make the model stand up!
1Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).