Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza was a 17th-century philosopher who proposed that everything in the universe is part of one singular substance, which he called "God or Nature." For Spinoza, this means that everything that exists is interconnected and follows natural laws. He rejected the idea of a personal God who intervenes in the world. Causality is central to his thought; he believed that everything occurs through natural cause and effect. Essence, for Spinoza, refers to what something truly is at its core. Essentially, he emphasized understanding the universe rationally, seeing divinity in the very fabric of reality itself.