Monads, Composition, and Force
Monads, Composition, and Force

Author: Richard T. W. Arthur

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-26

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 019254215X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leibniz's monads have long been a source of fascination and puzzlement. If monads are merely immaterial, how can they alone constitute reality? In Monads, Composition and Force, Richard T. W. Arthur takes seriously Leibniz's claim of introducing monads to solve the problem of the composition of matter and motion. Going against a trend of idealistic interpretations of Leibniz's thought, Arthur argues that although monads are presupposed as the principles making actual each of the infinite parts of matter, bodies are not composed of them. He offers a fresh interpretation of Leibniz's theory of substance in which monads are enduring primitive forces, corporeal substances are embodied monads, and bodies are aggregates of monads, not mere appearances. In this reading the monads are constitutive unities, constituting an organic unity of function through time, and bodies are phenomenal in two senses; as ever-changing things they are Platonic phenomena and as pluralities, in being perceived together, they are also Democritean phenomena. Arthur argues for this reading by describing how Leibniz's thought is grounded in seventeenth century atomism and the metaphysics of the plurality of forms, showing how his attempt to make this foundation compatible with mechanism undergirds his insightful contributions to biological science and the dynamical foundations he provides for modern physics.

Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity
Leibniz on Time, Space, and Relativity

Author: Richard T. W. Arthur

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-01-15

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 0192849077

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, Arthur gives 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. Leibniz's views on relativity have been extremely influential, first on Mach, and then on Einstein, while his novel approach to geometry in his analysis situs inspired many later developments in geometry. Arthur expounds the latter in some detail, explaining its relationship to Leibniz's metaphysics of space and the grounding of motion, and defending Leibniz's views on the relativity of motion against charges of inconsistency. The brilliance of his work on time, though, has not been so well appreciated, and Arthur attempts to remedy this through a detailed discussion of Leibniz's relational theory of time, showing how it underpins his theory of possible worlds, his complex account of contingency, and his highly original treatment of the continuity of time, providing formal treatments in an appendix. In other appendices, Arthur provides translations of previously untranslated writings by Leibniz on analysis situs and on Copernicanism, as well as an essay on Leibniz's philosophy of relations. In his introductory chapter he explains how the framework for the book is provided by the interpretation of Leibniz's metaphysics he defended in his earlier Monads, Composition, and Force (OUP 2018, winner of the 2019 annual JHP Book Prize for best book in the history of philosophy published in 2018).

Monads, Composition, and Force
Monads, Composition, and Force

Author: Richard T. W. Arthur

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-25

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0192542168

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Leibniz's monads have long been a source of fascination and puzzlement. If monads are merely immaterial, how can they alone constitute reality? In Monads, Composition and Force, Richard T. W. Arthur takes seriously Leibniz's claim of introducing monads to solve the problem of the composition of matter and motion. Going against a trend of idealistic interpretations of Leibniz's thought, Arthur argues that although monads are presupposed as the principles making actual each of the infinite parts of matter, bodies are not composed of them. He offers a fresh interpretation of Leibniz's theory of substance in which monads are enduring primitive forces, corporeal substances are embodied monads, and bodies are aggregates of monads, not mere appearances. In this reading the monads are constitutive unities, constituting an organic unity of function through time, and bodies are phenomenal in two senses; as ever-changing things they are Platonic phenomena and as pluralities, in being perceived together, they are also Democritean phenomena. Arthur argues for this reading by describing how Leibniz's thought is grounded in seventeenth century atomism and the metaphysics of the plurality of forms, showing how his attempt to make this foundation compatible with mechanism undergirds his insightful contributions to biological science and the dynamical foundations he provides for modern physics.

The Monadology
The Monadology

Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2018-03-13

Total Pages: 26

ISBN-13: 9781986704465

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Monadology (French: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads. In it, he offers a new solution to mind and matter interaction by means of a pre-established harmony expressed as the 'Best of all possible worlds' form of optimism.

Leibniz's Final System
Leibniz's Final System

Author: Glenn A. Hartz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-10-19

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1135989184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the central figures of seventeenth-century philosophy, and a huge intellectual figure in his age. This book from Glenn A. Hartz (editor of the influential Leibniz Review) is an advanced study of Leibniz's metaphysics. Hartz analyzes a very complicated topic, widely discussed in contemporary commentaries on Leibniz, namely the question of whether Leibniz was a metaphysical idealist, realist, or whether he tried to reconcile both trends in his mature philosophy. Because Leibniz is notoriously unclear about this, much has been written on the subject. In recent years, the debate has centered on whether it is possible to maintain compatibility between the two trends. In this controversial book, Hartz demonstrates that it is not possible to maintain compatibility of idealist and realist views - they must be understood as completely separate theories. As the first major work on realism in Leibniz's metaphysics, this key text will interest international Leibniz scholars, as well as students at the graduate level.

Real World Haskell
Real World Haskell

Author: Bryan O'Sullivan

Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."

Published: 2008-11-15

Total Pages: 714

ISBN-13: 0596554303

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This easy-to-use, fast-moving tutorial introduces you to functional programming with Haskell. You'll learn how to use Haskell in a variety of practical ways, from short scripts to large and demanding applications. Real World Haskell takes you through the basics of functional programming at a brisk pace, and then helps you increase your understanding of Haskell in real-world issues like I/O, performance, dealing with data, concurrency, and more as you move through each chapter.

Enriched Meanings
Enriched Meanings

Author: Ash Asudeh

Publisher: Oxford Studies in Semantics an

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 0198847858

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book develops a theory of enriched meanings for natural language interpretation that uses the concept of monads and related ideas from category theory, a branch of mathematics that has been influential in theoretical computer science and elsewhere. Certain expressions that exhibit complex effects at the semantics/pragmatics boundary live in an enriched meaning space, while others live in a more basic meaning space. These basic meanings are mapped to enriched meanings only when required compositionally, which avoids generalizing meanings to the worst case. Ash Asudeh and Gianluca Giorgolo show that the monadic theory of enriched meanings offers a formally and computationally well-defined way to tackle important challenges at the semantics/pragmatics boundary. In particular, they develop innovative monadic analyses of three phenomena - conventional implicature, substitution puzzles, and conjunction fallacies - and demonstrate that the compositional properties of monads model linguistic intuitions about these cases particularly well. The analyses are accompanied by exercises to aid understanding, and the computational tools used are available on the book's companion website. The book also contains background chapters on enriched meanings and category theory. The volume is interdisciplinary in nature, with insights from semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, psychology, and computer science, and will appeal to graduate students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines with an interest in natural language understanding and representation.

The Labyrinth of the Continuum - Writings on the Continuum Problem 1672-1686
The Labyrinth of the Continuum - Writings on the Continuum Problem 1672-1686

Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Publisher:

Published: 2013-08-01

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780300205053

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of matter entails perfect points, whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favor of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force.Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations.