About this topic
Summary Within the Anglophone philosophical world, Leibniz is recognized chiefly as a metaphysician, logician, and mathematician. However, he made wide-ranging contributions to the natural sciences of his day, participating in a number of discussions and controversies in fields as diverse as physics--in which he developed a science of force or "dynamics"--the sciences of life, medicine, optics, and geology. In scientific investigation, Leibniz relied on theoretical principles such as continuity, non-contradiction, and sufficient reason to constrain proposed hypotheses, and he maintained the compatibility of efficient and final causal explanation. As an inventor and a designer, he developed an early mechanical calculator, and, famously, failed in an attempt to harness wind-power to extract water from flooded mines in the Harz mountains. This theoretical and practical work was coupled by a life-long interest in furthering the growth of natural knowledge, including his project of a general science and encyclopedia aimed at organizing existing knowledge and aiding discovery. Leibniz also promoted the development of scientific societies, and was the founder and first president of what is now the Berlin-Brandenburgische Academy of Sciences and Humanities.  
Key works The following primary texts, listed chronologically in terms of their composition by Leibniz and in English translation, have been selected to provide the reader with an overview of Leibniz's approach both to particular sciences including physics, cosmology, and geology, as well as to general topics of scientific discovery and methodology such as hypothesis, causal explanation, and the organization of knowledge in encyclopedic form. They also exhibit Leibniz's views regarding the utility of scientific knowledge for human life and highlight the interconnection of Leibniz's natural philosophy and metaphysics. Leibniz 1678-79? is an outline of an unrealized book on physics composed in the late 1670s, and is followed by a useful appendix on scientific methodology. In a text known as the Project of a New Encyclopedia to be Written Following the Method of Invention (Leibniz 1679), we find one of Leibniz's many sketches for an Encyclopedia that would organize, catolog, and promote the growth of knowledge. In the Brief Demonstration (Leibniz 1686), Leibniz provides an important critique of Cartesian physics focusing on the correct formulation of conservation laws. The Protogaea (Leibniz et al 2008) is Leibniz's speculative geological treatise on the origins of the Earth that was intended (in Leibniz's typically ambitious, incisive, yet diffuse intellectual manner) to serve as the opening of his never completed history of the House of Hannover. The Specimen Dynacum (Leibniz 1989) presents Leibniz's new science of force, or dynamics. In the Tentamen Anagogicum (Leibniz 1696), Leibniz defends the use of final causes in physics and features an early version of the principle of least action. Leibniz argues in De Ipsa Natura (Leibniz 1698) that a coherent philosophy of nature requires the postulation of an inherent force within natural substances. The New Essays on Human Understanding (Leibniz 1981) represents Leibniz's point by point critique of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and covers a number of topics related to the philosophy of science. The Leibniz-Clarke correspondence (Leibniz et al 2000) is Leibniz's well-known debate with the Newtonian Samuel Clarke, highlighting the differences between the Leibnizian and Newtonian accounts of nature.
Introductions For a general overview of Leibniz's scientific methodology, see Duchesneau 1993. Smith 2011 focuses on Leibniz's involvement with the life sciences of his day, and reveals the tight connection between Leibniz's metaphysics and his attempts to explain the nature of living organic bodies..
Related

Contents
478 found
Order:
1 — 50 / 478
  1. Kant's Critique Of Leibnizian Theory Of Organisms: An Unnoticed Cornerstone For Criticism?Philippe Huneman - unknown - Yeditepe'de Felsefe (Philosophy at Yeditepe) 4.
  2. A LEIBNIZIAN, PLURALIST CONCEPTION OF BOTH BIOLOGICAL LIFE AND THEOLOGY. AntoninoDrago - forthcoming - In Proceedings of conference in Rome Tor Vergata sept. 2015 (in Italian).
  3. The Space Between and the Space Within: On the Definition, Conception, and Function of Space in Leibniz's Late Metaphysics.Julia Bursten - forthcoming - Think.
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  4. Leibniz and the Metaphysics of Powers.Peter Myrdal - forthcoming - Journal of the History of Philosophy.
    The notion of force is at the heart of Leibniz’s metaphysics. One of his central theses is that powers are to be reconceived as forces. Connectedly, he maintains that force is essential to the very account of substance. The paper contends that these claims have not been well-understood due to an inadequate understanding of the notion of force itself. Against a common reading, I argue that Leibnizian force is not fundamentally dispositional, but an activity. Taking seriously this idea means reconsidering (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  5. The Principle of Sufficient Reason in Early Modern Philosophy of Science: Leibniz, Du Châtelet, and Euler.Aaron Wells - forthcoming - In Fatema Amijee & Michael Della Rocca (eds.), The Principle of Sufficient Reason: A History. Oxford University Press.
    I distinguish three ways in which early modern rationalists seek to apply the principle of sufficient reason to empirical science, and critically assess some of their attempts to do so. I focus especially on how these thinkers assume substantive theories of explanation and intelligibility--which are indebted to the mechanist and experimentalist traditions--in many of their deployments of this rationalist principle. A recurring problem is that these philosophers deploy their standards of intelligibility inconsistently: some of their own favored explanations do not (...)
    Remove from this list  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  6. Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason.Katherine Brading & Marius Stan - 2023 - New York: Oxford University Press USA.
    From pebbles to planets, tigers to tables, pine trees to people; animate and inanimate, natural and artificial; bodies are everywhere. Bodies populate the world, acting and interacting with one another, and they are the subject-matter of Newton's laws of motion. But what is a body? And how can we know how they behave? In Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason, Katherine Brading and Marius Stan examine the struggle for a theory of bodies. At the beginning of the 18th century, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  7. Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century.Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.) - 2023 - Springer.
    This addresses the transformations of metaphysics as a discipline, the emergence of analytical mechanics, the diverging avenues of 18th-century Newtonianism, the body-mind problem, and philosophical principles of classification in the life sciences. An appendix contains a critical edition and first translation into English of Newton's scholia from David Gregory's Estate on the Propositions IV through IX Book III of his Principia.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  8. Frugal nature: on the principle of optimality in Leibniz’s physics: Jeffrey K. McDonough: A miracle creed: the principle of optimality in Leibniz's physics and philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, 250 pp, $74.00 HB. [REVIEW]Ansgar Lyssy - 2023 - Metascience 32 (3):341-344.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  9. Leibniz’s Vectorial Model of Rational Decision-Making and Bounded Rationality.Markku Roinila - 2023 - Rivista di Filosofia 2023 (1):13-34.
    G. W. Leibniz developed a new model for rational decision-making which is suited to complicated decisions, where goods do not rule each other out, but compete with each other. In such cases the deliberator has to consider all of the goods and pick the ones that contribute most to the desired goal which in Leibniz’s system is ultimately the advancement of universal perfection. The inclinations to particular goods can be seen as vectors leading to different directions much like forces in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  10. Beyond Newton, Leibniz and Kant: Insufficient Foundations, 1687–1786 (2nd edition).Marius Stan - 2023 - In Wolfgang Lefèvre (ed.), Between Leibniz, Newton, and Kant: Philosophy and Science in the Eighteenth Century. New York, NY, USA: Springer Verlag. pp. 295-310.
    Early modern foundations for mechanics came in two kinds, nomic and material. I examine here the dynamical laws and pictures of matter given respectively by Newton, Leibniz, and Kant. I argue that they fall short of their foundational task, viz. to represent enough kinematic behavior; or at least to explain it. In effect, for the true foundations of classical mechanics we must look beyond Newton, Leibniz, and Kant.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  11. The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Leibniz, the Wolffians, and Kant on Matter and Monads.Anja Jauernig - 2022 - In Karl Schafer (ed.), The Sensible and Intelligible Worlds: New Essays on Kant's Metaphysics and Epistemology. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 185-216.
    The problem at the center of this essay is how one can reconcile the continuity of space with a monadological theory of matter, according to which matter is ultimately composed of simple elements, a problem that greatly exercised Leibniz, the Wolffians, and Kant. The underlying purpose of this essay is to illustrate my reading of Kant’s philosophical development, and of his relation to the Wolffians and Leibniz, according to which, (a), this development was fueled by ‘home-grown’ problems that arose within (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  12. A Miracle Creed: The Principle of Optimality in Leibniz's Physics and Philosophy.Jeffrey K. McDonough - 2022 - New York,NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    "This book introduces Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Principle of Optimality and argues that it plays a central role his physics and philosophy, with profound implications for both. Each chapter begins with an introduction to one of Leibniz's ground-breaking studies in natural philosophy, paying special attention to the role of optimal form in those investigations. Each chapter then goes on to explore the philosophical implications of optimal form for Leibniz's broader philosophical system. Individual chapters include discussions of Leibniz's understanding of teleology, the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  13. Sobreposições metateóricas do espaço em Kant, Leibniz e Newton (3rd edition).Marcos César Seneda - 2022 - Kant E-Prints 17:56-78.
    O presente texto parte do pressuposto de que a radical irredutibilidade da estética às representações lógicas está no limiar do programa de pesquisa de Kant anunciado como uma filosofia transcendental. Valendo-nos de Newton da Costa, tentaremos mostrar, primeiramente, as condições de contorno que balizavam essa discussão, e o modo como Leibniz e Newton as interpretaram e construíram suas respectivas teorias. Na sequência, tentaremos indicar que na gênese dessa descoberta de Kant tem papel relevante um fato cognitivo singular, as contrapartidas incongruentes, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  14. Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity.Richard T. W. Arthur - 2021 - New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This book presents fresh interpretations of Gottfried Leibniz's theories of time, space, and the relativity of motion, based on a thorough examination of Leibniz's manuscripts as well as his published papers. These are analysed in historical context, but also with an eye to their contemporary relevance.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  15. How physics flew the philosophers' nest.Katherine Brading - 2021 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 88 (C):312-20.
  16. François Duchesneau, Organisme et corps organique de Leibniz à Kant, Paris, Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2018, 522 pages. [REVIEW]Emmanuel Chaput - 2021 - Philosophiques 48 (2):426-429.
  17. The Notion of Vegetative Soul in the Leibniz-Stahl Controversy.François Duchesneau - 2021 - In Fabrizio Baldassarri & Andreas Blank (eds.), Vegetative Powers: The Roots of Life in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Natural Philosophy. Springer. pp. 407-418.
    In the controversy that arose between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Georg Ernst Stahl following the publication of the latter’s Theoria medica vera, both theoreticians strove to distance themselves from what they took to be the classical conception of the vegetative soul, while relating and partly reducing their opponent’s doctrine to it. I shall first attempt to establish their respective meanings for such a soul and the reasons why they would challenge the relevance of that notion for physiology. I shall then (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  18. Force, Motion, and Leibniz’s Argument from Successiveness.Peter Myrdal - 2021 - Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 103 (4):704-729.
    This essay proposes a new interpretation of a central, and yet overlooked, argument Leibniz offers against Descartes’s power-free ontology of the corporeal world. Appealing to considerations about the successiveness of motion, Leibniz attempts to show that the reality of motion requires force. It is often assumed that the argument is driven by concerns inspired by Zeno. Against such a reading, this essay contends that Leibniz’s argument is instead best understood against the background of an Aristotelian view of the priority of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  19. Imaginative Animals: Leibniz's Logic of Imagination.Lucia Oliveri - 2021 - Stoccarda, Germania: Steiner Verlag.
    Through the reconstruction of Leibniz's theory of the degrees of knowledge, this e-book investigates and explores the intrinsic relationship of imagination with space and time. The inquiry into this relationship defines the logic of imagination that characterizes both human and non-human animals, albeit differently, making them two different species of imaginative animals. -/- Lucia Oliveri explains how the emergence of language in human animals goes hand in hand with the emergence of thought and a different form of rationality constituted by (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  20. Mediating actio in distans: Leibniz, Clarke and Newton on the communicability of forces.Florian Sprenger - 2021 - Empedocles European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication 12 (1):57-74.
  21. G.W. Leibniz: Sign and the Problem of Expression.Dimitri A. Bayuk & Olga B. Fedorova - 2020 - Epistemology and Philosophy of Science 57 (1):146-165.
    The disciplinary differentiation of sciences attracted Leibniz’s attention for a long period of time. From nowadays prospects it looks very well grounded as soon as in Leibniz’s manuscripts a modern scholar finds clue ideas of any research field which would tempt him to consider Leibniz as one of the founders of this particular discipline. We argue that this is possible only in retrospection and would significantly distort the essence of Leibniz’s epistemology. Our approach implies, in contrary, the investigation of the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  22. Leibniz on Animal Generation.Alessandro Becchi & Osvaldo Ottaviani - 2020 - The Leibniz Review 30:63-106.
    We edited and translated a so far unpublished manuscript ("Sur la generation des insectes et d'autres petits animaux") drafted by Leibniz in 1714. The text is written on the same paper of the first draft of the "Monadology" and, as we show, there is a connection between these two texts of the late Leibniz, as far as in the "Monadology" , the rejection of the traditional theory of the spontaneous generation of small animals (like insects) is considered by Leibniz as (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  23. Newton and Leibniz.Julia Jorati - 2020 - Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences.
    It is easy to get the impression that Newton and Leibniz do not see eye to eye on anything. Yet, as is so often the case, a closer look reveals that matters are much more complicated. Despite their disagreements, the two are frequently on the same side of central scientific and philosophical debates. This entry discusses some of the main agreements and disagreements between Newton and Leibniz, starting with their methodologies and then turning to their views on space, motion, and (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  24. Monads, Composition, and Force: Ariadnean Threads through Leibniz’s Labyrinth, by Richard Arthur. [REVIEW]Julia Jorati - 2020 - Mind 129 (514):664-673.
    Monads, Composition, and Force: Ariadnean Threads through Leibniz’s Labyrinth, by ArthurRichard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. ix + 329.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  25. Continuity, containment, and coincidence: Leibniz in the history of the exact sciences: Vincenzo De Risi (ed.): Leibniz and the structure of sciences: modern perspectives on the history of logic, mathematics, and epistemology. Dordrecht: Springer, 2019, 298pp, 103.99€ HB.Christopher P. Noble - 2020 - Metascience 29 (3):523-526.
  26. Between Laws and Norms. Genesis of the Concept of Organism in Leibniz and in the Early Modern Western Philosophy.Antonio M. Nunziante - 2020 - In Andrea Altobrando & Pierfrancesco Biasetti (eds.), Natural Born Monads: On the Metaphysics of Organisms and Human Individuals. De Gruyter. pp. 11-32.
    The word “organism” represents an original keyword of the early-modern philosophical world. As it was first developed by Leibniz, it seems to blend together two different conceptual paradigms: the Cartesian model of the “machines” and the Aristotelian legacy of the “individual natures”. According to the first, nature represents itself the prototype of any good mechanical functioning, but at the same time its inner development is explained by the occurrence of a normative dimension that rules the world of primitive forces in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  27. Samuel Clarke.Timothy Yenter - 2020 - In Dana Jalobeanu & Charles T. Wolfe (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences.
    Samuel Clarke (1675–1729) profoundly shaped early eighteenth-century European philosophy with an a priori demonstration of the existence of God and influential defenses of substance dualism and human freedom. Throughout his works, he defended absolute space, the passivity of matter, and constant divine activity in the world, which jointly provided a metaphysical basis for the quickly popularizing Newtonian thought.
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  28. Cause and Effect in Leibniz’s Brevis demonstratio.Laurynas Adomaitis - 2019 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (1):120-134.
    Leibniz’s argument against Descartes’s conservation principle in the Brevis demonstratio (1686) has traditionally been read as passing from the premise that motive force must be conserved to the conclusion that motive force is not identical to quantity of motion and, finally, that quantity of motion is not conserved. In a lesser-known draft of the same year, Christiaan Huygens claimed that Descartes had in fact never held the view that Leibniz was attacking. Huygens is right as far as the traditional reading (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  29. Equivalence of hypotheses and Galilean censure in Leibniz: A conspiracy or a way to moderate censure?Laurynas Adomaitis - 2019 - Revue d'Histoire des Sciences 72 (1):63-85.
    Spending six months in Rome in 1689 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) occupied himself with the question of Copernican and Galilean censure. An established reading of the Rome papers suggests that Leibniz’s attempt to have the Copernican censure lifted was derived solely from the equivalence of hypotheses stemming from the relativity of motion; and involved Leibniz’s compromising his belief in the truth of the Copernican hypothesis by arguing that it should only be interpreted instrumentally; and that Leibniz believed in the unrestricted (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  30. Organisme et corps organique de Leibniz à Kant, by F. Duchesneau.Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero - 2019 - The Leibniz Review 29:107-119.
  31. Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences: Modern Perspectives on the History of Logic, Mathematics, Epistemology.Vincenzo De Risi (ed.) - 2019 - Springer.
    The book offers a collection of essays on various aspects of Leibniz’s scientific thought, written by historians of science and world-leading experts on Leibniz. The essays deal with a vast array of topics on the exact sciences: Leibniz’s logic, mereology, the notion of infinity and cardinality, the foundations of geometry, the theory of curves and differential geometry, and finally dynamics and general epistemology. Several chapters attempt a reading of Leibniz’s scientific works through modern mathematical tools, and compare Leibniz’s results in (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  32. A Reply to M. F. Camposampiero.François Duchesneau - 2019 - The Leibniz Review 29:121-128.
  33. Machines of Nature and Machines of Art: Christian Wolff's Reception of Leibniz.Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero - 2019 - Rivista di Storia Della Filosofia 3:431-452.
  34. Teleology and Realism in Leibniz's Philosophy of Science.Nabeel Hamid - 2019 - In Vincenzo De Risi (ed.), Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences. Berlin: Springer. pp. 271-298.
    This paper argues for an interpretation of Leibniz’s claim that physics requires both mechanical and teleological principles as a view regarding the interpretation of physical theories. Granting that Leibniz’s fundamental ontology remains non-physical, or mentalistic, it argues that teleological principles nevertheless ground a realist commitment about mechanical descriptions of phenomena. The empirical results of the new sciences, according to Leibniz, have genuine truth conditions: there is a fact of the matter about the regularities observed in experience. Taking this stance, however, (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  35. Leibniz und die moderne Naturwissenschaft.Jürgen Jost - 2019 - Berlin, Germany: Springer.
    Examines the thinking of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz from the perspective of modern science, including Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum physics, elementary particle physics, logic, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science. Conversely, by systematically using Leibniz' principles, it can also shed new light on contemporary debates in the sciences.
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  36. Immaterial Mechanism in the Mature Leibniz.Christopher P. Noble - 2019 - Idealistic Studies 49 (1):1-21.
    Leibniz standardly associates “mechanism” with extended material bodies and their aggregates. In this paper, I identify and analyze a further distinct sense of “mechanism” in Leibniz that extends, by analogy, beyond the domain of material bodies and applies to the operations of immaterial substances such as the monads that serve, for Leibniz, as the metaphysical foundations of physical reality. I argue that in this sense, Leibniz understands “mechanism” as an intelligible process that is capable of providing a sufficient reason for (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (4 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  37. Leibniz on the Divine Preformation of Souls and Bodies.Christopher P. Noble - 2019 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 9 (2):327-342.
    For the mature Leibniz, a living being is a created substance composed of an infinitely complex organic body and a simple, immaterial soul. Soul and body do not interact directly, but rather their states correspond according to a harmony preestablished by God. I show that Leibniz’s theory faces challenges with respect to the question of whether substances need to possess knowledge of how they bring about their effects, and I argue that, to address these challenges, Leibniz turns to a concept (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  38. Locke and Leibniz on Matter and Solidity.Idan Shimony - 2019 - In Adriano Fabris & Giovanni Scarafile (eds.), Controversies in the Contemporary World. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: pp. 49-67.
    In this paper I analyze the virtual debate between Locke and Leibniz on solidity as proposed in Leibniz’s chapter on solidity in his New Essays on Human Understanding. I first track the oddities of the dialogue presented in the New Essays’ chapter on solidity. In this virtual dialogue, Leibniz’s representative often digresses and sometimes overlooks or misrepresents some of Locke’s most important insights. I then argue that these oddities reflect Leibniz’s sentiment that a productive controversy on this issue cannot be (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  39. Universal Gravitation and the (Un)Intelligibility of Natural Philosophy.Matias Slavov - 2019 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 101 (1):129-157.
    This article centers on Hume’s position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. To that end, the controversy surrounding universal gravitation shall be scrutinized. It is very well-known that Hume sides with the Newtonian experimentalist approach rather than with the Leibnizian demand for intelligibility. However, what is not clear is Hume’s overall position on the intelligibility of natural philosophy. It shall be argued that Hume declines Leibniz’s principle of intelligibility. However, Hume does not eschew intelligibility altogether; his concept of causation itself (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  40. Burchard de Volder and the Age of the Scientific Revolution.Andrea Strazzoni - 2019 - Cham: Springer Verlag.
    This monograph details the entire scientific thought of an influential natural philosopher whose contributions, unfortunately, have become obscured by the pages of history. Readers will discover an important thinker: Burchard de Volder. He was instrumental in founding the first experimental cabinet at a European University in 1675. The author goes beyond the familiar image of De Volder as a forerunner of Newtonianism in Continental Europe. He consults neglected materials, including handwritten sources, and takes into account new historiographical categories. His investigation (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  41. The Immanent Contingency of Physical Laws in Leibniz’s Dynamics.Tzuchien Tho - 2019 - In Rodolfo Garau & Pietro Omodeo (eds.), Contingency and Natural Order in Early Modern Science. Springer Verlag. pp. 289-316.
    This paper focuses on Leibniz’s conception of modality and its application to the issue of natural laws. The core of Leibniz’s investigation of the modality of natural laws lays in the distinction between necessary, geometrical laws on the one hand, and contingent, physical laws of nature on the other. For Leibniz, the contingency of physical laws entailed the assumption of the existence of an additional form of causality beyond mechanical or efficient ones. While geometrical truths, being necessary, do not require (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  42. Leibnizian Conservation in d’Alembert’s Traité de dynamique.Tzuchien Tho - 2019 - In Lloyd Strickland & Julia Weckend (eds.), Leibniz’s Legacy and Impact. New York and Oxford: Routledge. pp. 129-164.
  43. Leibniz’s Legacy and Impact.Julia Weckend & Lloyd Strickland (eds.) - 2019 - New York: Routledge.
    This volume tells the story of the legacy and impact of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz made significant contributions to many areas, including philosophy, mathematics, political and social theory, theology, and various sciences. The essays in this volume explores the effects of Leibniz’s profound insights on subsequent generations of thinkers by tracing the ways in which his ideas have been defended and developed in the three centuries since his death. Each of the 11 essays is concerned (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  44. Leibniz' System in Seinen Wissenschaftlichen Grundlagen..Ernst Cassirer - 2018 - Marburg,: Wentworth Press.
    This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   19 citations  
  45. How to Connect Physics with Metaphysics: Leibniz on the Conservation Law, Force, and Substance.Shohei Edamura - 2018 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 74 (2-3):787-810.
    Leibniz once argued that scholastic substantial forms do not exist, but he later emphasized that bodies have substantial forms. This implies that he assumed that bodies have intrinsic powers to act by themselves. In order to understand the change of his metaphysics, we need to identify the resources of his motivation to introduce a new view. On the basis of Leibniz’s early works in the 1670s and 80s, this paper explores how his discovery of the law that the quantity of (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  46. Space and Time as Relations: The Theoretical Approach of Leibniz.Basil Evangelidis - 2018 - Philosophies 3 (2):9-0.
    The epistemological rupture of Copernicus, the laws of planetary motions of Kepler, the comprehensive physical observations of Galileo and Huygens, the conception of relativity, and the physical theory of Newton were components of an extremely fertile and influential cognitive environment that prompted the restless Leibniz to shape an innovative theory of space and time. This theory expressed some of the concerns and intuitions of the scientific community of the seventeenth century, in particular the scientific group of the Academy of Sciences (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  47. Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, Brain in a Vat, Five-Minute Hypothesis, McTaggart’s Paradox, etc. Are Clarified in Quantum Language [Revised version].Shiro Ishikawa - 2018 - Open Journal of Philosophy 8 (5):466-480.
    Recently we proposed "quantum language" (or, the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"), which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes=Kant epistemology. We believe that quantum language is the language to describe science, which is the final goal of dualistic idealism. Hence there is a reason to want to clarify, from the quantum linguistic point of view, the following problems: "brain in a vat argument", "the Cogito proposition", (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  48. Leibniz's Psychologie: Ein Beitrag Zur Geschichte Der Philosophie Und Naturwissenschaft.Friedrich Kirchner - 2018 - Wentworth Press.
    This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  49. Theoretical construction in physics – The role of Leibniz for Weyl's ‘Philosophie der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft’.Norman Sieroka - 2018 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 61:6-17.
  50. Substantivalism and Relationism as Bad Cartography: Why Spatial Ontology Needs a Better Map.Edward Slowik - 2018 - In S. Wuppuluri & F. A. Doria (eds.), The Map and the Territory: Exploring the Foundations of Science, Thought and Reality. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 185-198.
    While there are numerous difficulties with the standard spacetime ontological dichotomy, namely, substantivalism versus relationism, this investigation will focus on two specific issues as a means of examining and developing alternative ontological conceptions of space that go beyond the limitations imposed by the standard dichotomy. First, while Newton and Leibniz are often upheld as the progenitors of, respectively, substantivalism and relationism, their own work in the natural philosophy of space often contradicts the central tenets of that dichotomy. Second, while the (...)
    Remove from this list   Direct download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
1 — 50 / 478