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Single Idea 7560

[filed under theme 26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 7. Later Matter Theories / a. Early Modern matter ]

Full Idea

Leibniz seems never to have made up his mind completely on how to accommodate bodies within a metaphysic which recognises only soul-like entities as fully real.

Gist of Idea

Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities

Source

comment on Gottfried Leibniz (works [1690]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Intro

Book Ref

Jolley,Nicholas: 'Leibniz' [Routledge 2005], p.10


A Reaction

[The soul-like entities are his 'monads']. His choice must be to either say they are unreal, or that they are real and separate from the monads, or that they are a manifestation of the monads. His problem, not mine.


The 10 ideas with the same theme [general 17thC views on matter]:

Mass is central to matter [Newton, by Hart,WD]
I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke]
Secondary matter is active and complete; primary matter is passive and incomplete [Leibniz]
Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz]
Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz]
Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz]
Leibniz struggled to reconcile bodies with a reality of purely soul-like entities [Jolley on Leibniz]
No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley]
We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume]
In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau]