Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics
Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics

Author: Tzuchien Tho

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-08-12

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 9783319865386

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This book presents a systematic reconstruction of Leibniz’s dynamics project (c. 1676-1700) that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concepts of physical causality in Leibniz’s work and 17th century physics. It argues that Leibniz’s theory of forces privileges the causal relationship between structural organization and physical phenomena instead of body-to-body mechanical causation. The mature conception of Leibnizian force is not the power of one body to cause motion in another, but a kind of structural causation related to the configuration of integral systems of bodies in physical evolution. By treating the immanent philosophy of Leibniz’s dynamics, this book makes explicit the systematic aims and inherent limits of Leibniz's physical project, in addition to providing an alternative vision of the scientific understanding of the physical world in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences
Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences

Author: Vincenzo De Risi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-01-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 3030255727

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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 these fields with 19th- and 20th-Century conceptions of them. All of them have special care in framing Leibniz’s work in historical context, and sometimes offer wider historical perspectives that go much beyond Leibniz’s researches. A special emphasis is given to effective mathematical practice rather than purely epistemological thought. The book is addressed to all scholars of the exact sciences who have an interest in historical research and Leibniz in particular, and may be useful to historians of mathematics, physics, and epistemology, mathematicians with historical interests, and philosophers of science at large.

Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics
Vis Vim Vi: Declinations of Force in Leibniz’s Dynamics

Author: Tzuchien Tho

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-06-29

Total Pages: 154

ISBN-13: 3319590553

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This book presents a systematic reconstruction of Leibniz’s dynamics project (c. 1676-1700) that contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the concepts of physical causality in Leibniz’s work and 17th century physics. It argues that Leibniz’s theory of forces privileges the causal relationship between structural organization and physical phenomena instead of body-to-body mechanical causation. The mature conception of Leibnizian force is not the power of one body to cause motion in another, but a kind of structural causation related to the configuration of integral systems of bodies in physical evolution. By treating the immanent philosophy of Leibniz’s dynamics, this book makes explicit the systematic aims and inherent limits of Leibniz's physical project, in addition to providing an alternative vision of the scientific understanding of the physical world in the late 17th and early 18th century.

Leibniz's Metaphysics and Adoption of Substantial Forms
Leibniz's Metaphysics and Adoption of Substantial Forms

Author: Adrian Nita

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9789401799577

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This anthology is about the signal change in Leibniz's metaphysics with his explicit adoption of substantial forms in 1678-79. This change can either be seen as a moment of discontinuity with his metaphysics of maturity or as a moment of continuity, such as a passage to the metaphysics from his last years. Between the end of his sejour at Paris (November 1676) and the first part of the Hanover period, Leibniz reformed his dynamics and began to use the theory of corporeal substance. This book explores a very important part of the philosophical work of the young Leibniz. Expertise from around the globe is collated here, including Daniel Garber's work based on the recent publication of Leibniz's correspondence from the late 1690s, examining how the theory of monads developed during these crucial years. Richard Arthur argues that the introduction of substantial forms, reinterpreted as enduring primitive forces of action in each corporeal substance, allows Leibniz to found the reality of the phenomena of motion in force, and thus avoid reducing motion to a mere appearance. Amongst other themes covered in this book, Pauline Phemister's paper investigates Leibniz's views on animals and plants, highlighting changes, modifications and elaborations over time of Leibniz's views and supporting arguments and paying particular attention to his claim that the future is already contained in the seeds of living things. The editor, Adrian Nita, contributes a paper on the continuity or discontinuity of Leibniz's work on the question of the unity and identity of substance from the perspective of the relation with soul (anima) and mind (mens).

Historical Dictionary of Leibniz's Philosophy
Historical Dictionary of Leibniz's Philosophy

Author: Stuart C. Brown

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2023-04-30

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 1538178451

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Historical Dictionary of Leibniz's Philosophy, Second Edition contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has more than 500 cross-referenced entries on Leibniz’s philosophy, written work, teachers, contemporaries, and philosophers influenced by him.

Kant: Natural Science
Kant: Natural Science

Author: Immanuel Kant

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-10-04

Total Pages: 821

ISBN-13: 0521363942

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Brings together work by Kant never before available in English, along with new translations of his most important publications in natural science. The volume is rich in material for the student and the scholar, with extensive linguistic and explanatory notes, editorial introductions and a glossary of key terms.

Infinitesimal Differences
Infinitesimal Differences

Author: Ursula Goldenbaum

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2008-11-03

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 3110211866

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The essays offer a unified and comprehensive view of 17th century mathematical and metaphysical disputes over status of infinitesimals, particularly the question whether they were real or mere fictions. Leibniz's development of the calculus and his understanding of its metaphysical foundation are taken as both a point of departure and a frame of reference for the 17th century discussions of infinitesimals, that involved Hobbes, Wallis, Newton, Bernoulli, Hermann, and Nieuwentijt. Although the calculus was undoubtedly successful in mathematical practice, it remained controversial because its procedures seemed to lack an adequate metaphysical or methodological justification. The topic is also of philosophical interest, because Leibniz freely employed the language of infinitesimal quantities in the foundations of his dynamics and theory of forces. Thus, philosophical disputes over the Leibnizian science of bodies naturally involve questions about the nature of infinitesimals. The volume also includes newly discovered Leibnizian marginalia in the mathematical writings of Hobbes.

Leibniz and the Natural World
Leibniz and the Natural World

Author: Pauline Phemister

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1402034016

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In the present book, Pauline Phemister argues against traditional Anglo-American interpretations of Leibniz as an idealist who conceives ultimate reality as a plurality of mind-like immaterial beings and for whom physical bodies are ultimately unreal and our perceptions of them illusory. Re-reading the texts without the prior assumption of idealism allows the more material aspects of Leibniz's metaphysics to emerge. Leibniz is found to advance a synthesis of idealism and materialism. His ontology posits indivisible, living, animal-like corporeal substances as the real metaphysical constituents of the universe; his epistemology combines sense-experience and reason; and his ethics fuses confused perceptions and insensible appetites with distinct perceptions and rational choice. In the light of his sustained commitment to the reality of bodies, Phemister re-examines his dynamics, the doctrine of pre-established harmony and his views on freedom. The image of Leibniz as a rationalist philosopher who values activity and reason over passivity and sense-experience is replaced by the one of a philosopher who recognises that, in the created world, there can only be activity if there is also passivity; minds, souls and forms if there is also matter; good if there is evil; perfection if there is imperfection.