Richard T. W. Arthur - Böcker

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).

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is famous in mathematics predominantly for his invention of the differential calculus, and in philosophy for his metaphysics of monads and system of pre-established harmony. But at the heart of his thinking in both fields lay his profound meditations on the infinite. In the 1690s Leibniz was engaged in promulgating his thought on the infinite in both its mathematical and its philosophical aspects. On the one hand, he had advertised his intention to write a treatise on the Science of the Infinite, De scientia infiniti, in which he would give an account of the foundations of mathematics. On the other, he was much occupied in the same years with promoting his own metaphysical system, both as the foundation for his new science of dynamics in his revised conception of substance, and as a superior alternative to the occasionalism of Malebranche and Sturm.The selection of papers presented here should therefore be of great interest to scholars, since it contains material relevant to both projects, as well as throwing light on their interrelation. It consists of twelve texts written by Leibniz in the 1690s and early 1700s, none of which has appeared before in English translation. Ten of these are translations from new transcriptions made from original Latin manuscripts in the Leibniz Archives in Hanover (plus the texts given in Appendices 2 and 4); the remaining two are selections from Leibniz's correspondence with Johann Bernoulli, and excerpts from his written interchange with Gabriel Wagner, both translated from the Latin text of the Akademie edition. Each of the selected papers is accompanied by a detailed commentary explaining its significance for understanding Leibniz's thought, including substantial quotations from related sources and situating the text in relation to other writings in the Leibnizian corpus.

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.

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.

Indeed, the majority of modern theoretical physicists and philosophers of physics contend that the passing of time is incompatible with modern physical theory, and excluded in a fundamental description of physical reality.