display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
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. |
5492 | How can essences generate the right powers to vary with distance between objects? [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: In Newtonian physics the distance between two objects determines the attractive forces between them, but then the objects will have to be sensitive to the distance, in order to 'know' what forces to generate; but distance isn't a causal power. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (Two Problems for Essentialism [2001], p.170) | |
A reaction: Ellis replies that he is not troubled, because he believes in essential properties which are separate from their causal roles. Indeed, how else could you explain their causal roles? Still, distance must be mentioned when explaining gravity. |
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. |