Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Letters to Lelong' and 'A New Kind of Science'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / c. Forces
Force in substance makes state follow state, and ensures the very existence of substance [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: By the force I give to substances, I understand a state from which another state follows, if nothing prevents it. ...I dare say that without force, there would be no substance.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Lelong [1712], 1712), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 7.1
     A reaction: [the whole quote is interesting] This remark, more than any other I have found, places force at the centre of Leibniz's metaphysics. He is using it to resist Spinoza's one-substance view.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 4. Substantival Space
Space and its contents seem to be one stuff - so space is the only existing thing [Wolfram]
     Full Idea: It seems plausible that both space and its contents should somehow be made of the same stuff - so that in a sense space becomes the only thing in the universe.
     From: Stephen Wolfram (A New Kind of Science [2002], p.474), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence 17 'Philosophy'
     A reaction: I presume the concept of a 'field' is what makes this idea possible.