Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Hermarchus, Gottfried Leibniz and Ned Markosian

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14 ideas

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
12907 Each possible world contains its own laws, reflected in the possible individuals of that world [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: As there exist an infinite number of possible worlds, there exists also an infinite number of laws, some peculiar to one world, some to another, and each individual of any one world contains in the concept of him the laws of his world.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.06)
     A reaction: Since Leibniz's metaphysics is thoroughly God-driven, he will obviously allow God to create any laws He wishes, and hence scientific essentialism seems to be rejected, even though Leibniz is keen on essences. Unless the stuff is different...
13194 God's laws would be meaningless without internal powers for following them [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: To say that, in creation, God gave bodies a law for acting means nothing, unless, at the same time, he gave them something by means of which it could happen that the law is followed.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Body and Force, Against the Cartesians [1702], p.253)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern rebellion against the medieval view of laws as imposed from outside on passive matter. Unfortunately for Leibniz, once you have postulated active internal powers, the external laws become redundant.
13177 An entelechy is a law of the series of its event within some entity [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: I recognize a primitive entelechy in the active force found in motion, something analogous to the soul, whose nature consists in a certain law of the same series of changes.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1699.03.24)
     A reaction: This is his 'law-of-the-series', which is a speculative attempt to pin down the character of the active essence of things which gives rise to activity. The law of such activity is within the things themselves, as scientific essentialists claim.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism
11854 If there is some trace of God in things, that would explain their natural force [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: If the law of God does indeed leave some vestige of him expressed in things...then it must be granted that there is a certain efficacy residing in things, a form or force such as we usually designate by the name of nature, from which the phenomena follow.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) [1698], §06)
     A reaction: I wouldn't rate this as a very promising theory of powers, but it seems to me important that Leibniz recognises the innate power in things as needing explanation. If you remove divine power, you are left with unexplained intrinsic powers.
11856 Qualities should be predictable from the nature of the subject [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Whenever we find some quality in a subject, we ought to believe that if we understood the nature of both the subject and the quality we would conceive how the quality could arise from it.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref 66)
     A reaction: This is the idea that powers are prior to properties, which seems right to me. I take essence to be something like the best explanation of qualities.
12994 Gold has a real essence, unknown to us, which produces its properties [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: The complex idea of gold includes its being something which has a real essence whose detailed constitution is unknown to us, except for the fact that such qualities as malleability depend upon it.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.10)
     A reaction: This is precisely the view of modern scientific essentialism. The underlying idea I take to be the conception of essence as the thing which explains the properties.
12808 Part of our idea of gold is its real essence, which is not known to us in detail [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: It is very true that it is part of the complex idea of gold that it is a thing which has a real essence, the constitution of which is not otherwise known to us in detail.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 6.6.345), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences p.201
     A reaction: See also Idea 12807. This is the clearest possible statement of Leibniz's clear-cut scientific essentialism, here presented in opposition to Locke (thought I take the latter to be only bothered by our inability to know the hidden constitution).
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws
19403 Each of the infinite possible worlds has its own laws, and the individuals contain those laws [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: As there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, some proper to one, another to another, and each possible individual of any world contains in its own notion the laws of its world.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Sufficient Reason [1686], p.95)
     A reaction: Hence Leibniz is not really a scientific essentialist, in that he doesn't think the laws arise out of the nature of the matter consituting the world. I wonder if the primitive matter of bodies which attaches to the monads is the same in each world?
12725 Leibniz wanted to explain motion and its laws by the nature of body [Leibniz, by Garber]
     Full Idea: Leibniz seeks the big picture: the nature of body as a grounding for an account of motion and its laws.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
     A reaction: Garber is contrasting this with Newton's approaches, who just pleads ignorance of the bigger picture. Essentialists must beware of inventing a bigger picture simply because they desperately want a bigger picture.
16507 The law within something fixes its persistence, and accords with general laws of nature [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Nothing is permanent in a substance except the law itself which determines the continuous succession of its states and accords within the individual substance with the laws of nature that govern the whole world.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690], G II:263), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance 3 epig
     A reaction: An interesting link between the law-of-series within a substance, and the broader concept of laws outside it.
11945 In addition to laws, God must also create appropriate natures for things [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: It isn't sufficient to say that God has made a general law, for in addition to the decree there has also to be a natural way of carrying it out. It is necessary, that is, that what happens should be explicable in terms of the God-given nature of things.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letter to the Editor about Bayle [1698], p.205)
     A reaction: Thus Leibniz is an ancestor of scientific essentialism, but he was too frightened to take the next step, which is to see that once God has endowed the natures, he doesn't need to wield his laws as well. The natures will do the whole job.
13198 Gravity is within matter because of its structure, and it can be explained. [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: I believe that both gravity and elasticity are in matter only because of the structure of the system and can be explained mechanically or through impulsion.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Thomas Burnett [1703], 1699 draft)
     A reaction: The significance of this remark is that gravity is held (in full knowledge of Newton's work) to be within matter, and not imposed from the outside. I believe we now postulate a particle as part of the explanation.
13093 The only permanence in things, constituting their substance, is a law of continuity [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Nothing is permanent in things except the law itself, which involves a continuous succession ...The fact that a certain law persists ...is the very fact that constitutes the same substance.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Burcher De Volder [1706], 1704)
     A reaction: Aristotle and Leibniz are the very clear ancestors of modern scientific essentialism. I've left out a few inconvenient bits, about containing 'the whole universe', and containing all 'future states'. For Leibniz, laws are entirely rooted in things.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 10. Closure of Physics
7859 Leibniz had an unusual commitment to the causal completeness of physics [Leibniz, by Papineau]
     Full Idea: Unlike most philosophers prior to the twentieth century, Leibniz was committed to the causal completeness of physics.
     From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4
     A reaction: It has been suggested that Leibniz was actually, in private, a determinist (see Idea 7841), which would fit. Leibniz is enigmatic, but he may have proposed the closure of physics to glorify God, only to find that God was beginning to look irrelevant.