The Concept of 'Force' and Its Role in the Genesis of Leibniz' Dynamical Viewpoint

The Concept of 'Force' and Its Role in the Genesis of Leibniz' Dynamical Viewpoint GEORGE GALE 1. Leibniz' interests knew no boundaries. His knowledge encompassed the total range of subjects investigated by seventeenth-century scientists. It is because of this diversity of interests that his philosophy contains such a varied mixture of elements. Any given essay might refer in turn to ethical principles, legal maxims, physical data, and metaphysical consequences. Given such a melange, it is obvious that later scholarship has had to discover, classify, and interpret possible interactions between one discipline and another in the production of the Leibnizian system. Although interesting in itself, and valuable simply as scholarly work, such investigation additionally has practical value, since it can (and does) suggest to our own minds possible pathways of intellectual stimulation and cross-fertilization. Properly utilized, such knowledge tends, for example , to keep the Physics Department's door open to visiting philosophers (and vice versa, as I hope to show in the present essay). Given these values, we can see good reason to make the try at understanding the communication which went on between the various and sundry departments of Leibniz' knowledge. Past scholarship has made varied claims along these lines. Couturat, for example, daimed that Leibniz' logical ideas were of great significance in the later development of his philosophical notions.' Russell, whose own dissertaLouisCouturat , "On Leibniz'Metaphysics,"in H. G. Frankfurt,ed., Leibniz (NewYork: Doubleday&Co.,AnchorBooks,197~),t9. An earlierversionof Sec.4 was presentedat the Symposiumon Leibniz'Dynamics,held in Loccum,W. Germany,July 198~. I have benefitedconsiderablyfromthe commentsof J. E. McGuireand HowardBernsteinonearlierversionsofthisessay. [45] 46 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 26:1 JANUARY 1988 tion had barely preceded Couturat's in the making of the same claim,~later forcefully seconded Couturat's analysis in a review published soon after the appearance of the latter's influential piece.s This line of interpretation, that is, conceiving the development of Leibniz' systematic thought as if it had originated in his logical fundamentals, remains a strong and viable force even in contemporary Leibnizian studies. For example, it is not entirely unfair to locate Rescher's main focus within this tradition, although, of course, his strong arguments for the logical fundamentality of the Principle of Perfection constitute a clear and valuable addition both to the power of the logistical interpretation of Leibniz and to our own general understanding of the great thinker.4 On the other hand, there is also a tradition of long standing which finds a main region of Leibniz' cross-fertilization to lie along the physics-tometaphysics axis. In the present century, a main contributor to this line of thought is Gueroult.5 Gueroult argues---against a host of his contemporary commentators--that the mature Leibnizian physics and metaphysics make much more than "a fortuituous and superficial contact with one another. ''6 In more recent scholarship, we find Ian Hacking seconding Gueroult's claim over against the logistics, although he does not himself present any especially new arguments about the physics-metaphysics conception.7 In my own work over the last few years I have also argued for the significance of the influence of Leibniz' physics upon his metaphysics, although from a point of view quite different from Gueroult. 8 However, it has slowly become clear to me that both my own and Gueroult's analysis are incomplete in a certain way. In particular, both view the relationship between Leibniz' physics and metaphysics too simply, as if the influences ran in one direction only. This now seems wrong to me. As I will attempt to show, Leibniz' physical views and his metaphysical views were knit together in a strongly communicating network. At one moment, influence might run along the physics-to-metaphysics axis. Yet, at the very next moment , the influential flow would be reversed. My examination focuses upon what Leibniz himself claimed was the direct connection between physics and metaphysics, namely, the interpretation of ' B. Russell,A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz (London: Allen& Unwin, Ltd., a937),v. 3 B. Russell,"RecentWorkson the Philosophyof Leibniz,"in Frankfurt, Leitraiz, 336. 4 N. Rescher,The PhilosophyofLeibniz (EnglewoodCliffs,N.J.: PrenticeHall, t967). 5 M. Gueroult, Leibniz: Dynamique et Metaphysique (Paris...