abstract: A tradition associated with Aristotle, essentialism , emphasizes the effort to show how effects follow from laws distinctive of the thing in which they occur. A different tradition, associated with the scientific revolution, unificationism , emphasizes the effort to show that nature conforms to laws because it is in some ways uniform. In his accounts of laws and nature in the Ethics , Spinoza defends exceptionless, detailed versions of essentialism and unificationism.
Michael LeBuffe (2026) studied this question.