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Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz

:	Ohad Nachtomy, Justin E. H. Smith
:	Justin E. H. Smith, Ohad Nachtomy
:	Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz
:	Springer-Verlag
:	9789400700413
:	1
:	CHF 85.50
:

:	Allgemeines, Lexika
:	English

:	208
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:	PDF

In recent decades, there has been much scholarly controversy as to the basic ontological commitments of the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The old picture of his thought as strictly idealistic, or committed to the ultimate reduction of bodies to the activity of mind, has come under attack, but Leibniz's precise conceptualization of bodies, and the role they play in his system as a whole, is still the subject of much controversy. One thing that has become clear is that in order to understand the nature of body in Leibniz, and the role body plays in his philosophy, it is crucial to pay attention to the related concepts of organism and of corporeal substance, the former being Leibniz's account of the structure of living bodies (which turn out, for him, to be the only sort of bodies there are), and the latter being an inheritance from the Aristotelian hylomorphic tradition which Leibniz appropriates for his own ends. This volume brings together papers from many of the leading scholars of Leibniz's thought, all of which deal with the cluster of questions surrounding Leibniz's philosophy of body.

Justin E. H. Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the author of Divine Machines: Leibniz and the Sciences of Life (Princeton University Press, 2010). In 2011 he will be a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Ohad Nachtomy is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. He is the author of Possibility, Agency, and Individuality in Leibniz's Metaphysics (Springer, 2007).

	Foreword	6
	References	10
	Acknowledgement	11
	Contents	12
	Contributors	14
	1 Introduction	15
	References	23
	2 Leibniz Versus Stahl on the Way Machines of Nature Operate	24
	1 Mechanism Versus Stahls Heterogeneous Organism	25
	2 Resorting to Physical-Chemical Models	32
	3 Conclusion	39
	References	41
	3 Leibnizs Animals: Where Teleology Meets Mechanism	42
	1 Macroteleology Versus Microteleology	42
	2 Teleology and Mechanism in the Big Picture	43
	3 Five Theories: Idealism, Parallelism, Hylomorphism, Panpsychism, and Animal	43
	3.1 Idealism	43
	3.2 Parallelism	44
	3.3 Hylomorphism	45
	3.4 Panpsychism	46
	3.5 Animal	46
	4 Comparison with an Exclusive Idealist Interpretation	49
	5 Conclusion	50
	References	50
	4 Monads and Machines	51
	1 Preliminaries	52
	2 Distinguishing Living and Non-Living Machines	57
	2.1 Self-Motion	63
	2.2 Self-Preservation and Nutrition	64
	2.3 Reproduction	67
	3 Conclusion	71
	References	71
	5 Leibniz on Artificial and Natural Machines: Or What It Means to Remain a Machine to the Least of Its Parts	73
	1 Some Background and Motivation	73
	1.1 Erwin Schr'dinger's What Is Life	73
	1.2 Kant's Third Critique	75
	2 Descartes and the Analogy Between Natural and Artificial Machines	77
	3 Leibnizs Distinction Between Natural and Artificial Machines	80
	4 Does Leibnizs Distinction Make Sense	82
	5 A Structural Reading of What It Means To Remain a Machine to the Least of Its Parts	84
	6 A Functional Reading of What It Means To Remain a Machine to the Least of Its Parts	89
	7 Conclusion	91
	References	92
	6 The Organic Versus the Living in the Light of Leibnizs Aristotelianisms	93
	1 Back from the Dead	93
	2 The Essentials of Essence	93
	3 An Ambiguous Aristotelianism	95
	4 Ubi Manet	98
	5 That Ole Devil	101
	6 No Living Organisms	102
	7 A New Transcendental	105
	References	106
	7 The Machine Analogy in Medicine: A Comparative Approach to Leibniz and His Contemporaries	107
	1 Introduction	107
	2 Description of the Modus Operandi and Explanation of Functions	110
	3 The Autonomy of Bodies: The Machine Analogy Versus Corpuscularian Epigenesis	119
	References	126
	8 Sennert and Leibniz on Animate Atoms	127
	1 Introduction	127
	2 Animate Atoms and the Question of Palingenesis	129
	3 Sennert on Animate Atoms and Emanative Causation	133
	4 Leibniz on Animate Atoms and Emanative Causation	136
	5 Concluding Remarks	138
	References	140
	9 Continuity or Discontinuity Some Remarks on Leibnizs Concepts of Substantia Vivens and Organism	143
	1 Introduction	143
	2 The Substantia Vivens of the 1680s	144
	3 From unum per se to unum Dominans	147
	References	155
	10 The Organism, or the Machine of Nature: Some Remarks on the Status of Organism in the Substantial Composition	156
	1 Machine of Nature: A Component of the Corporeal Substance	157
	2 Is Organism Merely a Microphysical Concept	160
	2.1	160
	2.2	162
	2.3	163
	2.4	164
	3 Substantial Composition, Dominant Monad and Organism	164
	References	167
	11 Action, Perception, Organisation	168
	1 Perceptual Action: A Way of Understanding the Machine of Nature	170
	2 Situs: The Question of Continuity Between the Monad and the Organic Body	175
	3 What Reality for Organic Bodies	178
	3.1 A Worthwhile Digression on Chemistry	180
	4 Conclusion	183
	References	184
	12 Perceiving Machines: Leibniz's Teleological Approach to Perception	185
	1 Introduction	185
	2 Perceptio est cogitatio	186
	3 Cogitatio est expressio	188
	4 Animal Perception	190
	5 Perception of the External World	194
	6 Conclusions	195
	References	196
	Appendix: PRINCIPIUM RATIOCINANDI FUNDAMENTALE	197
	Appendix: The Fundamental Principle of Ratiocination	204
	Name Index	209
	Subject Index	211