Spinoza's Cat

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One can think of substance as an infinite space. Some regions of this one space are hard and brown (rocks), other regions of space are green, juicy, and soft (plants), while still other regions are furry, orange, and soft (cats), etc. As a cat walks across the room all that happens in Spinoza’s view is that different regions of space become successively furry, orange, and soft (See Bennett 1984: 88-92 for more on space and the extended substance in Spinoza).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/spinoz-m/

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That's an exact depiction of what a computer generated toon is, and what it does!  I made another new toon today, and took all of today!, and named him Pspinoza...I wanted to write that P.Spinoza (and have italics, but game wont take that, and periods for names), as it's the species name of a very hard wood shrub/tree with a lot of thorns called Ironwood, or Blackthorn...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_spinosaI wanted to use the name Blackthorn for my new warlock dwarf, and customized him with dark skin and hair and black beard, and Blackthorn, if I remember right, is one of the wow story characters, so I couldn't have it, that name, so I settled on Pspinoza, harking to the species name--wow players are astute, and may see this...names in wow are like racing horse names--they can be anything...but I like making them up, and each of my toons has one that has some lore to it...anyway, I got to looking at it, and remembered Spinoza was somebody in history, and searched, and oh yeah, I'd read about him, a 17th century lens maker and philosopher--died young from inhaling glass...so, I thought, that's cool, plant species and a philosopher in my toon's name,  and took note that my warlock has a minion, and on thinking of a name for the minion (as it turns out, one cant do this, minion names are chosen at random by the computer), 'Cat' came to mind, as in Spinoza's Cat...now, I've heard of Schrodinger's Cat, cant understand the thought experiment, but got to thinking maybe Spinoza had a thought-experiment-cat too, and indeed he did!... see link above...and how I got to Blackthorn was by looking up what weapon clubs are made of...in searching for a Chumash animal name, and then just an Indian name, I happened on a maker of Indian throwing clubs, taking note Indian clubs were made from Blackthorn...and got to looking at weapon clubs in general, and what wood they are made of, having settled on calling my warlock after a wood used to make clubs--one has to have some kinda menace in a wow toon's name!...so that's, well, that...but I've been thinking my ownself about how the toons in the game move....it's kinda like a wave in the ocean...the water molecules go up and down, disturbed by the wave, and themselves giving shape to the wave one knows...but the molecules don't travel....so too the toon disturbs the pixels as it moves across the screen, or whatever it's doing, and the pixels give the image of the toon in action, but the pixels themselves are rooted in place...there must be a better analogy to help one picture this!...and it may be one has to just play these games on the computer, and so experience it...Cat pic from old GG post...same Cat out along the back cinder block wall this morning...he's Spinoza now!...clear hot warm...inland Desert dwellers are noting it has been over a 100 days of 100 degree plus weather...one forgets, what with irrigation, even along the Coast socal is Desert!

and, and, of course I had to do a Muir Spinoza search...probably a lot out there...but here's one, making a long post longer!

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The next hero of Pantheism was Baruch Spinoza in the 17^th Century. He was excommunicated by the Jewish establishment as well as rejected by both Protestants and Catholics. Spinoza attended Quaker meetings, corresponded with Margaret Fell, incorporated many Quaker perspectives in his work, and his writings had some influence on Quakerism. But Spinoza was even more blunt and plain-spoken than the Quakers and their ideas were not nearly radical enough for Spinoza.

Next in the Pantheist history were the Romantic poets, Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Blake, and others. Then came the Transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the poet Walt Whitman, and the naturalist John Muir. More controversially, she suggests that D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf were also Pantheists.

Her history of Pantheism ends with a quote from poet Robinson Jeffers, a summary of contemporary Pantheism:

“I believe that the universe is one being, all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole. … The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it and to think of it as divine.”

Standing in the light: my life as a pantheist by Sharman Apt Russell. New York: Basic Books, 2008.

http://ecouke.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/quaker-pantheism/

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quote is from the book, and it was being quoted and reviewed at the site linked...I eschew 'isms my own self!