Abstract
One of Leibniz’s most original ideas is his conception of the living individual as a hierarchical network of living beings whose relationships are essential to the proper functioning of its organic body. This idea is also valid to explain any existing order in nature that depends on the set of relationships of living beings that inhabit it. Both ideas are present in the conception of the natural world that Leibniz presents in his Monadology (§§ 63–70) through his idea of biological infinitism. According to this idea, nature consists of infinite theatres (some within others and some unfolding from others) where living beings unfold their vital functions. Through this idea Leibniz defines both the biological complexity of nature and the living individual, which is in turn a portion of nature that unfolds from an infinite set of inferior living beings. The thesis that I defend in this work is that this Leibnizian understanding of the living individual and the natural complexity that includes infinite hierarchical levels of individuality has a marked ecological sense, as we would say today. This Leibnizian metaphysics of individuality that we could call biological is also interesting in light of the recent studies in the philosophy of biology.
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Notes
In addition to the intrinsic difficulty of Leibnizian thought, interpreters are faced with another obstacle: most Leibnizian writings on what we might call 'life sciences' (medicine, anatomy, physiology) have not been transcribed or published yet.
This Leibnizian conception of the individuality as a hierarchical order of individuals has been developed mainly by O. Nachtomy and J.E.H. Smith through their idea of ‘nested individuality’ (Nachtomy et al. 2002; Nachtomy 2007, chapter 9, 2014; Smith 2011, chapter 4). As Nachtomy shows, at this point Leibniz breaks with traditional metaphysics that defends the thesis of ‘a body, a substance’ (Nachtomy 2007, p. 221 and Smith 2011, p. 139).
I would like to understand my paper as a complement to the recent work on the subject published by P. Phemister under the title Leibniz and the environment (Phemister 2016). Phemister's book addresses in much greater depth the implications of an ecological interpretation for Leibnizian thought. I refer any interested reader to this work, whose many achievements I will not be able to mention in this paper for reasons of space.
The first reference corresponds to the edition of the text in the original, the second to the translation used. For the abbreviations of the original editions see the list of references at the end of the paper.
I cannot stress enough the relevance of analysing in depth these three problems. However, it is important to say that Leibniz's departure from these three problems from the idea of biological infinitism is something that we only find in his mature monadological philosophy, which made this idea gain a key position in Leibniz's metaphysic as compared to its earliest formulations. For a more extensive development of these problems, I recommend reading the exhaustive work of P. Phemister Leibniz and the natural world (2005). On the problem of the continuum, see also: Arthur (1998) and Orio de Miguel (2011).
One of the most original parts of Phemister’s ecological interpretation of Leibniz (Phemister 2016) is precisely the analysis of this psychic dimension (perceptive–appetitive) of Leibniz's theory of space (chapters 6 and 7).
The idea of machine or mechanism is present in most of Leibniz's contemporaries. As Andrault (2016) shows in her study on this subject, the meaning that each one of them gives to this idea is different.
Although on an epistemological level Leibniz recognizes the heuristic value of mechanisms in describing the bodies of living beings, these descriptions are still fictions of our understanding, which do not (cannot) account for the reality of the living world. For Leibniz, the definitions we have of natural species are 'provisional and proportional to our knowledge'. We know little, he says, both about the internal constitution of biological species and about their natural generation (see New Essays, book III, chapter VI). At an ontological level an ecological interpretation of Leibnizian conception of the natural world and living organisms is more appropriate than a mechanistic reading.
They could be others, for example, in human societies.
The idea of entity, being or unit by aggregation is discussed at length in Leibniz's correspondence with A. Arnauld and B. Des Bosses. The idea of ‘substantiated being’ not only appears in the correspondence with B. Des Bosses (GP II, pp. 403, 439, 459), which must be cited with caution due to its peculiarity (see Look 1999), but is also present in other texts (Couturat, p. 13, GP VI, p. 625 or LH, I, I, 4, fol.48, manuscript translated and published in Velarde Lombraña 2001, pp. 137–138). The question of the reality of aggregates (bodies or communities of living beings) is problematic and would merit further analysis. Leibniz is ambiguous and even sometimes contradictory on this issue.
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Acknowledgments
A previous version of this article was presented at the Workshop related to the project ‘The origins of modern science in Europe: G.W. Leibniz’ (Acción Integrada Hispano-Portuguesa, Lisboa 14-15 september 2018). I am grateful to all participants for their comments. This paper has also benefited from the suggestions and comments of Sabina Leonelli (editor in chief of HPLS) and two anonymous reviewers. I would especially like to thank Bernardino Orio de Miguel for his comments.
Funding
Funding was provided by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (Grant No. FJCI-2017-33649 and PGC2018-094692-B-I00) and Basque Goverment (ES) (Grant No. IT1228-19).
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Escribano-Cabeza, M. Fish and fishpond. An ecological reading of G.W. Leibniz’s Monadology §§ 63–70. HPLS 42, 23 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00319-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-020-00319-w