Hobbes also contributed to modern psychology and sociology by applying mechanistic principles in an attempt to explain human motivation and social organization. Spinoza constructed a remarkably precise and rigorous system of philosophy that offered new solutions to the mind-body problem, the conflict between religion and science, and the mechanistic elimination of ethical values from the natural world. According to this treatise the universe is identical with God, who is the uncaused substance of all things. For Spinoza, the concept of substance is not that of a material reality but rather of a metaphysical entity, the comprehensive and self-sufficient basis for all reality. Attempting to demonstrate that God, substance, and nature are identical, Spinoza arrived at the pantheistic conclusion that all things physical objects or ideas are aspects or modes of God, and that God and substance are one.
Modes are transitory, and their existence assumes temporal form.
The infinite attributes of thought and extension are considered to depend on and exist in the ultimate reality of the one substance, or God. Parallelism was a construction that explained the apparent causal interactions between material objects and ideas. Cartesian dualism that mind and matter are two distinct substances failed to explain how mind and body interact. Spinoza s solution to Descartes mind-body problem was based on this theory of parallelism . Born and raised a Jew, Spinoza was excommunicated for his unorthodox views and banished from the city of Amsterdam.