A metaphysician for the metaverse?Baruch Spinoza, the 17th century rationalist philosopher, seems an unlikely candidate to explain one of the hottest technology trends of the 2020s. Spinoza is known for many things—his bold criticism of religious dogma, his contributions to the Enlightenment, his conflation of “God or nature,” and his prescient description of human emotions. However, though he contributed to an important technology of his age by grinding lenses for telescopes, his philosophy ...