In the introductory note to PART IV – PROLEGOMENA TO A NEW CONCEPT OF NATURE of the book The Nature of Physical Existence (1972), the American author, philosopher Ivor Leclerc, remarks on the reason why he developed such an articulated exploration into the conception of nature, i.e., the physical existent (from the Greek term ‘physis’, φύσις), between historical, linguistic, metaphysical and physical considerations: ‘We are in our time in the process of the development of a new concept of nature, of physical existence.’[1] In the remaining PART IV, which is the extended subject of the present article, Leclerc elaborates on this new concept of nature, starting from the criticism of the modern conception of nature developed, after Newton, by authors like Leibniz, Kant, and Whitehead, especially. The result of this criticism will lead Leclerc to develop his personal position, which is indeed very much indebted to Whitehead. We may sum up Leclerc’s ultimate conviction as the necessity to restore the intrinsic relevance of the philosophy of nature to bridge the gap between science and philosophy, which are ‘two complementary and mutually dependent aspects of knowledge.[2]
We are in our time in the process of the development of a new concept of nature, of physical existence. This concept is still far from having been achieved, and what is being done here does not pretend to be more than a contribution to the prolegomena to such a concept.
As a personal statement, representative of the arguments that I’m presenting here, at RSaP, my position — that is, my understanding of nature as a whole and unitary, all-embracing place of processes — is very close to the position advanced by Leclerc, based on Whiteheadian considerations, especially. This is particularly true for the concepts of place and space, and the necessity to rethinking them according to the line of inquiry that I am arguing for here; a necessity and a line of inquiry which find a natural alliance with, and expression in Leclerc’s work.
PART IV – Prolegomena to a New Concept of Nature
20. Matter, Body, and Extension
Leclerc takes two different paradigms to show the ultimate truth behind the aforementioned quotation on the development of a new concept of nature: the paradigm of science, exemplified by Milič Čapek’s text The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics, in which the Czech–American author shows the untenability of the traditional concepts of matter, space, time and motion for contemporary physics; and the paradigm of philosophy, exemplified by Alfred N. Whitehead’s Process and Reality, in which the mathematician and philosopher presents a new vision of nature starting from the criticism to traditional epistemological, ontological and physical doctrines. Leclerc, in this final part of The Nature of Physical Existence, will adopt the latter philosophical approach, with a more historical bias if compared to Whitehead’s strict metaphysical approach — Leclerc admits. Leclerc’s thesis for a new conception of nature runs parallel with the necessity for the restoration of a natural philosophy, or the philosophy of nature, as a way to give a common background to philosophical and scientific inquiries.
It is precisely the loss of insight, due to the complete separation of philosophy from science, which, according to Leclerc, took us to the present situation of stasis, concerning our understanding of the principles of nature. That ‘stasis’ is the outcome of a lack of clarity regarding such fundamental concepts as matter, place, space, time and motion.
Concerning matter, the XVII-century conception accorded it an actual and ‘independent status as itself substance, as the physical existent’, devoid of internal change, and characterized by being physically extensive:[3] this was the basis for the development of the modern atomic conception of matter. That conception has been radically criticized by Leibniz, but his criticism — Leclerc says — was too radical and its significance was lost; the result was that two main varieties of the conception of matter survived: one, as we have just said, characterized by being fully actual, devoid of any change, and having extension as its essence (this is Descartes’s conception); the other, in addition to extension, also considered solidity or impenetrability as a characteristic aspect, that is, matter was also considered ‘extensive full’ (this view was common to Basso, Gassendi, Hobbes and Newton).[4]
Leclerc focuses on Leibniz’s analysis of extension to show the untenability of the modern conception of matter. I call the reader’s attention to this question since it is directly implicated in the relationships between the concepts of place, space and matter, and the necessity to rethink those concepts to find a better correspondence with the ongoing development of a new conception of nature, or physical existence (this senseof nature as ‘physical existence’ is directly connected to the recovery of the primordial Greek sense of ‘physis,’ φύσις, i.e., the physical existent — the Latin ‘natura’).
First, according to Leibniz, ‘the concept of extension is incomplete in the sense that it is not itself some kind of existent, but is the “extension of” some existent’, which means that extension, by itself, cannot be a fundamental character of nature (this is a criticism that I often use against traditional interpretations of the concept of space, as a ‘physical’ notion). ‘Further — Leclerc continues explaining Leibniz’s criticism of extension — extension implies parts, and… entails plurality. And, this division into parts is infinite’, which means that extension is continuous.[5]This characteristic of extension rules out material atomism (it would be illogical to think that there is an inferior limit at which we can stop divisibility), as well as Descartes’s hypothesis of one single physical substance. According to Leibniz, unity can only exist in an abstract sense. Those logical passages take the definition of ‘extension’ to be an abstract entity (which also means that space is an abstract entity): ‘extension is not a character which can pertain to any single existent. Rather, it is a character of plurality… there is extension only in relation to a plurality’ — Leclerc sums up before concluding with the following quote by Leibniz himself: ‘Extension is itself, for me, an attribute resulting from many substances existing continuously at the same time.’[6]
According to Leibniz, extension is not an attribute of substance or body; extension is an attribute of relation resulting from many substances. Therefore, extension is abstract, and space, which is fundamentally a modality to characterize extension, is abstract as well.
Then, following Leibniz, since extension cannot be identified with substance in the material sense, as Descartes believed, two conclusions can be drawn: first, extension is an abstraction; second, even more fundamental, ‘what is truly to be taken as a substantial existent cannot be extensive.’[7] Here, the term ‘substantial existent’ has a particular connotation which needs some elucidation: it is important to focus on the subtle distinctions (or, sometimes, identity) between substance, body, and matter, otherwise, confusion or lack of clarity can arise, given that those concepts are surrounded by modern presuppositions, and, moreover, their use in Leibniz or Newton present different connotations. While, according to Leibniz, we can equate body with matter, in the sense that they are the representative terms for physical or corporeal, extended, entities, substance is different: substance is that out of which matter or body derives. Therefore, substance acts at a more primordial level than matter or body; between the two (substance on the one side, matter, or body, on the other side) there is an ontological difference. Substance, the fundamental level of that which exists, is identified with monads, by Leibniz. In the theory of material atomism, maintained among others by Newton, material bodies are considered composed entities, their composites being material atoms, that is, small particles which are in themselves extended, fully actual, impenetrable, and devoid of internal change/activity (which means they are endowed with their proper inertia, exactly like the compounds they are part of). Fundamentally, for the doctrine of material atomism, there is no ontological difference between parts (components) and whole (composed entities or bodies); that means that the basic components, material atoms, are the true substantial existent, not their aggregation. Therefore, with material atomism, substance acquired the modern connotation that is still valid, in the sense of that which is material/corporeal — i.e., matter — since there is no ontological derivation of body from substance. The important difference with respect to Leibniz’s doctrine is that, in Leibniz, monads — the substance out of which material bodies are made — are neither extended, nor corporeal or fully actual; this is why, for Leibniz, the connotation of substance diverges from matter or body. Then, the conceptions of matter maintained by Leibniz and corporeal atomism are radically different. And the same holds for the concepts of substance and extension (i.e., space) which are correlated to matter.
Now, the difficulty for Leibniz, Leclerc says, is to show how material bodies, which are extended and fully actual, can be derived from constituent substances (monads) which are non-extensive and non-actual. The solution to this question is that substances, i.e., monads, even if in themselves are not extended can be in extensive relation with each other (we already said that extension, for Leibniz, is the result of a relation between substances and not an attribute of substance): it is from this extensive relation of substances that extended bodies derive.
substances, i.e., monads, even if in themselves are not extended can be in extensive relation with each other: it is from this extensive relation between substances that extended bodies derive.
The peculiarity of this doctrine is that body is not substance (as it was thought to be in material atomism) but an aggregate, that is, a composite, whose essence is different from the essence of the constituents whence the body itself derives or emerges (I have introduced here the notion of ‘emergence’, which is not explicitly remarked by Leclerc, but, it seems to me, it can be an interpretative key which runs underneath the entire narration of the new conception of nature which Leclerc is presenting).
It is critical to understand the different status of extension and matter. According to Leibniz: ‘extension is merely something modal like number and time and not a thing, since it is an abstract designation of the continuous possible plurality of coexisting things, while matter is in fact this very plurality of things itself and hence an aggregate of the things… extension is not to be identified with matter, as by Descartes and the atomists. When we consider extension as such we are dealing with an abstract structure of possible relatedness [or] the order of possible existence’ and not with some kind of actual existent, Leclerc says concluding the analysis of Leibniz’s concept of matter and extension.[8] This will take Leibniz to the famous definitions of space and time, which he considers equivalent to extension and duration except for the context in which we use them:[9]
space is nothing but the order of existence of things possible at the same time, while time is the order of existence of things possible successively
Some important consequences can be drawn from Leibniz’s doctrine of matter, substance and extension: given that extension is not a character of actual existents, his status cannot be that of an attribute of an actual existent; the only alternative is that extension is accorded a status of possibility or potentiality. This, as we are going to see, has important consequences on the problems of the continuum, of infinite divisibility, and on the structure of the continuum itself with respect to the physical existent. In fact, problems concerning the nature of physical existence and the nature of continuity arise if we believe extension is actual (there is a contradiction between atomism — a finite limit of the existent — and infinite divisibility which is the notion at the base of continuity); conversely, if we consider extension abstract, as maintained by Leibniz or Whitehead, we can understand it as potentially continuous and infinite, without contradicting the actuality, finiteness or discreteness of physical existents. Returning to Leibniz’s doctrine, this means that monads are potentially infinite, and extension, being an abstract entity — an attribute of relation resulting from many substances or monads in interaction — is intrinsically continuous and infinite; conversely bodies (i.e., matter) deriving/emerging from the activity of monads, are actually finite, or discrete. In brief, Leibniz has reintroduced the category of potentiality and its distinction with actuality, which also characterized Aristotle’s doctrine. Let’s see what Leibniz says regarding that important distinction: ‘in actual bodies, there is only a discrete quantity, that is a multitude of monads or simple substances… But a continuous quantity is something ideal which pertains to possibles and to actualities in so far as they are possible. A continuum, that is, involves indeterminate parts, while on the other hand, there is nothing indefinite in actual things […]; the parts are actually in the real whole but not in the ideal whole…’.[10]
According to Leclerc, one of the few contemporary thinkers who understood that important difference, which has consequences on our understanding of spatial notions and matter (and, therefore, on our understanding of nature, which is intrinsically related to those notions) was Whitehead, who said: ‘some chief notions of European thought were framed under the influence of misapprehension, only partially corrected by the scientific progress of the last century. This mistake consists in the confusion of mere potentiality with actuality. Continuity concerns what is potential; whereas actuality is incurably atomic.’ [11]
I would add that the confusion that exists today between concepts of space and place is also derivative of that confusion between potentiality and actuality: space is commonly given an actual status which it does not have (at RSaP, I’m maintaining that such a status of actuality belongs to place as soon as we realize that things/physical entities are places—the place of actualized processes). Space has an ideal and potential dimension, it is an ideal ‘thing’, and to speak about space in actual, ‘concrete’ terms, in whatever domain of human knowledge — from physics to philosophy, from social sciences to architecture, from psychology to art — is a fallacy (a fallacy with a name: fallacy of misplaced concreteness), a hindrance to our understanding of the complex happenings and phenomena of nature.
Whitehead, Leclerc says, agrees with Leibniz (and Aristotle) on that important question concerning the relation between actuality and potentiality, the physical and the ideal. Leibniz is even more explicit:
I acknowledge that time, extension, motion and the continuum in general… are only ideal things — that is, they express possibilities… Even Hobbes has defined space as a phantasm of the existent. But to speak more accurately, extension is the order of possible coexistence, just as time is the order of possibilities that are inconsistent but nevertheless have a connection… space and time taken together constitute the order of possibilities of the one entire universe, so that these orders – space and time, that is — relate not only to what actually is but also to anything that could be put in its place… this inclusion of the possible with the existent makes a continuity which is uniform and indifferent to every division.[12]
Image 1: ‘Space… A phantasm of the existent’ according to Hobbes, i.e., an abstract or ideal entity, often misplaced for a concrete entity (i.e., a fallacy of misplaced concreteness). Taking Leibniz’s logical arguments to the extreme, the very notion of place is at risk of becoming an abstract or ideal entity in the form of position or situation (situs) in a system of abstract spatial relations. On this, I agree with Edward Casey, who, in The Fate of Place, affirms: ‘even if salutary for space, Leibniz’s achievement proved to be disastrous for place—disastrous for its survival as a viable concept in its own right.’[13] That’s why it is also necessary to rethink the traditional meaning of place, if we want to recover its fundamental physical and metaphysical value: the processual and systemic/organic sense that I am attributing to place, here, at RSaP, is one possibility in that direction.
In Leibniz, it is clear the ontological distinction of space and time from actuality: ‘they are not actual but constitute the order of possibilities for actual existence’.[14] As Leclerc observed, Leibniz embraced the necessity, already seen by thinkers since the XVI century, to separate place (that is the field of spatial and temporal possibilities) and body (the field of actual matter or energy). Later, Whitehead developed an analogous position with his notion of an ‘extensive continuum’, which is ‘the most general scheme of real potentiality, providing the background for all other organics relations… This extensive continuum is one relational complex in which all potential objectifications find their niche. It underlies the whole world, past, present, and future… This extensive continuum expresses the solidarity of all possible standpoints throughout the whole process of the world. It is not a fact prior to the world; it is the first determination of order — that is, of real potentiality — arising out of the general character of the world.’ [15]
Regarding that quotation, with an eye to the notion of place that I am maintaining at RSaP and to my understanding of reality as One whole and unitary, all-embracing place of processes, and, for certain aspects, to point out the closeness of my position to the positions maintained by Whitehead and Leibniz, I would have used the expression ‘find their proper place’ instead of ‘find their proper niche’: this is to say that the revised concept of place that I am arguing for at RSaP can be both the place of potentiality (and, as such, the abstract nurturing place for any possibility to become actual), and the place of actuality (that is, the place of objectification, where processes become actual in the form of discrete, finite entities). Here, place, understood as the place of potentiality or possibility, would resume Whitehead’s sense of the ‘extensive continuum’, or even Leibniz’s space-time structure as the order of possibility for the existence of material bodies. In this way any spatial structure is ultimately subsumed to place, which would embrace both being and becoming, actuality and potentiality, sensible matter and ideal form (that choral aspect of place is also typical of Plato’s spatial notion ‘chōra’, the receptacle understood as the in-between the sensible and the intelligible). In this regard, Images 3a, 4, 5, 6, and 7, in the article Place, Space and the Fabric of Reality, some of which I’m going to repropose in a paragraph below (see Images 3 and 4, below), try to offer a hypothetical visualization of this continuity between the realm of potentiality and the realm of actuality, both of them understood as ‘place of processes’, that is the place where potential processes can become actualized processes — this is ‘the whole process of the world’ Whitehead speaks of in the quotation above. Continuing the analogy between Whitehead’s ‘extensive continuum’ (or Leibniz’s space-time structure) and the ‘place of processes’ I have ‘visualized’ in that article, Whitehead says that ‘actual entities atomize the extensive continuum. This continuum is in itself merely the potentiality for division; an actual entity effects this division’;[16] in my model, actual entities deriving from the continuum are ‘atomized’ in the form of simple or compound bodies — I have pictured a monkey, an insect, a flower, or a rock, see Image 4 below, but the same holds for microparticles or for any actual entity — which are the specific place where certain processes in the continuum become actual (physicochemical processes in the case of the rock, physicochemical and biological processes, at least, in the case of living beings, physical processes only, if the case of simple elements or particles).
Leclerc’s conclusion for this chapter is that the modern concept of matter is untenable (that is matter understood as substance, actually extended, impenetrable, devoid of change, and impenetrable; here, ‘substance’ has the literal and original connotation of that which is fundamental, or that which ‘stays under’ what appears, or even the principle of physical existence), as already shown by Leibniz or, more recently, by Whitehead and contemporary physics. Concerning this latter aspect, following Leclerc, I redirect the interested reader to Milič Čapek’s The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics, which, in many important parts, is a readable text even for non-physicists).[17]
So, now, even if this conclusion concerning matter is quite clear, the question for Leclerc is to see more in detail ‘whether matter can be considered tenable as the physical existent, that is, whether the physical existent is to be conceived “material” at all.’[18] This is the subject of the next chapters.
21. Matter, Motion, and Substance
Among the other aspects of the modern concept of matter (extension, mass, impenetrability), we find its conception as fully inert. Yet, that characteristic aspect could not account for all the changes that we see in nature; therefore, soon, the necessity to find some active principle that could sustain motion or change emerged. All leading thinkers, such as Descartes, Gassendi, and Newton recognized the necessity of an active principle for matter that could account for motion (change); yet, all their doctrines entailed a ‘deus ex machina’ to provide that principle. Newton’s position on this subject is a bit problematic since he maintained God was within the structure of nature and not outside of it, as many interpreters of Newton’s doctrine believed (I redirect you to the Chapter on Newton in the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence).
Conversely, Leibniz believed in the necessity to find the active principle of motion/change within matter, without taking refuge in God, as an external agent. In his ‘Specimen Dynamicum’ (1695) — Leclerc says — Leibniz expressed his understanding of the nature of bodies (i.e., matter) not merely with respect to extension and mass, but also with respect to force: ‘after trying to explore the principles of mechanics itself in order to account for the laws of nature which we learn from experience, I perceived that the sole consideration of extended mass was not enough but that it is necessary, in addition, to use the concept of force’.[19] Similarly, in the essay ‘On Nature Itself, or on the Inherent Force and Actions of Created Things’ (1698), he maintained that extension and impenetrability could not account for action and motion, since those were purely passive characters; therefore, the origin of action and motion had to come from another source, that is, the source of motion couldn’t be ascribed to matter per se, but had to be ascribed to something related to it. That ‘something’ was substance (i.e., monads in Leibniz’s doctrine), which — we have seen —, was that out of which matter or body derived. As Leclerc puts it, Leibniz’s fundamental position was that ‘activity pertains to substance, that is, substance is an acting entity above else, and only substance is in this sense active… it is the activity of substance which manifests itself as the motion of matter.’[20] We have seen in the previous article on Leclerc’s The Nature of Physical Existence that this fundamental ontological position which attributes the principle of motion to substance had an antecedent in the doctrine of Aristotle ‘according to which the physical existent is that which had the principle, source, of its kinesis in itself.’[21] We have now to establish — Leclerc says — the details of this connection between matter, motion and substance in Leibniz’s doctrine, that is, we have to see how the motion of matter, or body, derives from the activity of substance.
We have now to establish the details of this connection between matter, motion and substance in Leibniz’s doctrine, that is, we have to see how the motion of matter, or body, derives from the activity of substance.
First of all, Leibniz is aware that motion refers to body, which is what we experience through perception: ‘I admit that motion cannot be conceived apart from body’, but, Leibniz continues, ‘in the concept of motion there are included not only body and change, but a reason and a determinant of change as well, which cannot be found in a body if its nature I considered purely passive, that is, to consist in extension alone or even in extension and impenetrability’.[22] That is an important passage: given that, for Leibniz, extension is a relation of many things together (order of coexistence — this is space) which coexists continuously (order of succession — this is time), he can find a connection not only between motion and body, on the basis of an abstract/potential spatiotemporal understanding of active substance; he also finds a connection between motion and plurality, in addition to the reinstatement of the old Aristotelian concept of entelechy to which adducing the reason and determination of change in the passage from pure potentiality to actuality (according to Aristotle, ‘entelecheia’ is one of the determinations of the concept of the physical existent, ‘physis’ – see the paragraph The Nature of Physical Existence: PART II – The Concept of the Physical (Summary), in the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence). Concerning the latter point, in the paper ‘On the Correction of Metaphysics and the Concept of Substance’ (1694), Leibniz says that the true concept of substance includes ‘the concept of active force or power [which] contains a certain act or entelechy and is thus midway between the faculty of acting and the act itself and involves a conatus [that is an effort, an endeavour, a striving for]. It is thus carried into action by itself and needs no help’.[23]Fundamentally, Leibniz is saying that the origin of motion and the reason for it intrinsically belong to the acting substance from which matter derives. In the paper ‘A New System of Nature’ (1695), he equates his concept of force or primitive forces — ‘which contain not only the actuality or the completion of possibility but an original activity as well’ — to the Aristotelian concept of ‘substantial forms’, which — Leibniz says — Aristotle calls ‘first entelechies’.[24] As in Aristotle, the important difference between possibility, or potentiality, and actuality is recovered in full by Leibniz’s understanding of substance as the physical existent — physis —, and its connection with matter and motion.
To sum up these important passages, according to Leibniz’s doctrine ‘a body is constituted by a plurality of acting monads or substances. That is, body as such is a derivative entity. What Leibniz calls active or primitive force is the force of acting of each individual monad. Body, which is derivative, manifests this force derivatively [through motion]… Motion, Leibniz maintains, pertains to body and not to individual monads. Motion […] is not to be identified with derivative force; it is a consequence of derivative force’.[25] ‘Motion — Leibniz says — being change, follows from such force.’[26] Then, the acting of monads with reference to each other entails a ‘change of situation of the monads, and consequently of bodies, relatively to each other. It is this resulting change of situation relatively to each other which is motion’, Leclerc concludes.[27]
Two important questions deserve to be remarked on, here: first, as Leclerc observed interpreting Leibniz, motion is a concept related to a plurality; therefore, motion is a relative concept, a question of relation between a number of individuals. Second, motion, being a question of ‘situation’ of substance before than body, entails a different understanding of locomotion — change of place — which cannot be simply reduced to the apparent different positions of bodies. Even more meaningful, locomotion (which is originally and etymologically ‘change of place’) is intrinsically connected to the existence and action of the physical existent as substance (i.e., monads).
Here, I want to point out the primordiality of the concept of ‘situation’ — this is the precise term used by Leibniz — which is nothing other than an abstract term for ‘place’. Given that, for me, place can have both a connotation of possibility and actuality, and given that, for me, place has an intrinsic relational meaning that includes the connotation of position or situation of an existent with respect to position or situation of other existents (whether potential or actual), I understand ‘place’ as an appropriate or alternative term for Leibniz’s ‘situation’. Given that ‘place’ (the kind of systemic and ‘all-embracing’ notion I’m maintaining at RSaP) supports all the characters of the physical existent — ‘physis’ (which regards potentiality, actuality, and, intrinsically, ‘entelechy’, as the end of actualization) — following my perspective, the formula ‘change of place’ may resume within itself both a change with reference to the ‘external’ world (because we are in a relational hypothesis as Leibniz is telling us) and a more profound ‘internal’ change, concerning the internal disposition of the parts of the substance subjected to change. Ultimately, I’m saying that locomotion — change of place — cannot be merely understood as an external change of the body (the apparent external motion due to its different position or location with respect to other bodies) detached from other aspects of change (which we could call ‘internal’, e.g., generation, perishing, etc.), as in the modern tradition, but it is also connected with a more profound internal change, which is hardly detectable, or not detectable at all in the current mechanical perspective. For example, I hope it does not sound too misleading or simplistic if I say that the functioning of a machine in Las Vegas, a hot, arid climate, is different from the functioning of the same, identical, machine in London, a humid, cold climate: this means that, hypothetically, the change of place affects the whole machine or its parts not merely in external sense — this is the external change, or locomotion between Las Vegas and London —, but also internally — e.g., perishing, decaying, etc. of the inner parts of the machine — this is the internal change of the machine, which is somehow bound with the aspect of external change as locomotion; in this sense, locomotion, change of place, would be just one of the aspects — that which appears ‘external’ — of a more profound ‘internal change’. I will return to this important question, which is decisive to understanding the new conception of matter and nature, in the forthcoming article Place, Space, and the Philosophy of Nature.
The important ‘spatial/placial’ (and temporal) question regarding matter (i.e., body), motion, and substance (i.e., monads) — which I have just pointed out with respect to my own understanding of a reformed notion of place which directly affects our understanding of substance and/or matter — is expressed by Leibniz in these different terms: ‘every change, spiritual as well as material, has its own place [sedes], so to speak, in the order of time, as well as its own location in the order of coexistents, or space. For, although monads are not extended, they nevertheless have a certain kind of situation [situs] in extension, that is they have a certain ordered relation of coexistence with others, namely, through the machine which they control [i.e., body]. I do not think that any finite substances exist apart from body… Extended things involve a plurality of things endowed with position, but things which are simple, though they do not have extension, must yet have a position in extension, though it is impossible to designate these positions precisely as in the case of [bodies].’[28]
In a subsequent passage, Leclerc explains how impenetrability (of bodies) derives its character from the activity of substance (monads), as was the case for extension. Very briefly, from the encounter of monads each one having a certain force, it can happen that certain monads have a ‘contrary striving’ with respect to other monads, therefore offering resistance to the action of other monads. So, there are aspects of activity and passivity related to such primitive forces, out of which the behaviour of bodies results. In this way not only can Leibniz account for the impenetrability of bodies, but he can also account for other universal characteristics of bodies like ‘vis inertiae’ or even their mass, which results from extension, impenetrability and inertia together.
To sum up this chapter on the concepts of matter, motion and substance (in Leibniz, especially), we have seen that matter, or body, cannot be taken as substance, but is derivative from a plurality —the acting monads (that is, matter is derivative from substance, the two are different entities); it follows that the characteristic aspects that traditional thinkers attributed to matter — i.e., extension, impenetrability, inertia and mass — are all features of a plurality and not of a single, individual ‘material’ substance. Ultimately, also motion pertains to a plurality and not to a single substance. Plurality, fundamentally, means ‘relation’ (either of monads or of bodies), which is the next concept under Leclerc’s scrutiny.
Interpreting the ultimate scope of Leclerc’s criticism, I would add, to the benefit of the reader, that we are not simply witnessing a historical retrospective on Leibniz’s fundamental concepts: these are critical issues for the development of a new conception of nature, which, excluding contemporary scientific findings, has in Leibniz, Whitehead, and, for many fundamental aspects, Aristotle the major advocates. This is the main reason why this final PART IV of Leclerc’s The Nature of Physical Existence deserves a separate article from the previous PART I, II and III, which I have presented in the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence: those parts had a more descriptive and historical bias with respect to the present PART IV, which has a more proactive critic function.
22. Relation, Action, and Substance
The concept of relation as such is quite vague, so, Leclerc says, we will circumscribe to spatial, temporal, and causal relation, which are relevant to our understanding of the concept of nature. In this regard, it is of primary importance that relation be grounded in the ultimate existents. Here we find the first important difference between Newton and Descartes on the one side, and Leibniz, on the other side: the first two thinkers understood substance as matter, and this entailed that relation between substances (or matter) be completely and exclusively external.
Concerning Newton’s doctrine ‘the spatial and temporal relations between material substances were grounded in the spiritual substance, God. Since God’s activity is everywhere and everywhen, it is this which constitutes the ultimate places of the material substances… These relations are primarily specified by God in his activity, and secondarily so by finite minds through their comprehension of mathematics.’[29] Basic to their comprehension, the old Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrine of Ideas or Forms: ‘the finite comprehension of mathematics was constituted by the possession by finite minds of mathematical Ideas or Forms, the archetypes of which are in the mind of God.’[30]
Regarding the nature of relations, there are similarities and differences between Newton and Descartes: according to Descartes ‘“res extensa” was the actual mathematical explication of God’s thought, so that the quantitative relations of bodies are derivative from the mathematical structure of “res extensa” as matter. Thus, in Descartes’s doctrine, the quantitative relations of bodies (which are not themselves substances) are grounded in “res extensa”. Thinking, as the essence of “res cogitans”, is ultimately mathematical, and consists in the explication of the mathematical Ideas innate in finite minds by God’s creation, and accordingly, the comprehension of pure mathematics is the comprehension of the essence of matter, and thereby derivatively, in applied mathematics, the quantitative relations between bodies are specifiable’. [31] Ultimately, Leclerc notes, both Descartes’s and Newton’s doctrines are explicable in terms of the Platonic theory of Ideas or Forms rather than in the Aristotelian terms of mathematics understood ‘as a conceptual abstraction from the physical.’ [32]
Leibniz’s doctrine had an apparently different position in terms of the fundamental ground of relation; having rejected the theory of substance as matter, he provided a theory where relations were grounded in the activity of the monads as substance (therefore an activity ‘internal’ to matter or body, where the attribute ‘internal’ refers directly to the monads — i.e., the substance or substrate. ‘Substances for him [Leibniz] are essentially acting, and this relation must be grounded in the acting of the non-material substances’).[33] Monads, by virtue of their actings, are in relation to each other; this necessarily involved a certain order or relatedness, Leclerc says. Here, the question is to establish the nature of such order of relatedness, which, in turn, brings us to the nature of the acting of the substances/monads. The conclusion is fundamentally similar to Newton and Descartes. Again, Plato’s theory of Ideas is also determinative for Leibniz’s doctrine of the monads and their relations: ‘Mental activity or operation [the reference is to the activity of the monads] consists in explicating the Ideas implanted in the mind by God. There is a correspondence between the Ideas in the mind and things because, in terms of the Platonic doctrine, the Ideas also inform things. Because through God’s activity the same Ideas inform respectively things and minds, the correspondence between the two will be perfect. This is Leibniz’s theory of pre-established harmony.’[34] Ultimately,the nature of the relational actings of the monads is grounded in God, like in Descartes’ and Newton’s doctrines.
In terms of his doctrine, this is reflected in the conception that mental activity was the fundamental acting of monads or substance, since ‘matter must be denied the status of substance, the only alternative, Leibniz concluded, is that substance must be what Descartes termed “res cogitans”.’[35] An immediate consequence of this position was that relations between substances couldn’t be anything other than ideas in the individual substances or monads, or, put it otherwise, using Leclerc words: ‘a relation cannot be an “ens reale”; it can only be an “ens mentale”. This means that a relation is a “phenomenon”, an appearance, and not any kind of thing in itself.’[36]
a relation cannot be an “ens reale”; it can only be an “ens mentale”. This means that a relation is a “phenomenon”, an appearance, and not any kind of thing in itself.
If relation is a phenomenon, extension (space), which ‘is the order of possible relatedness between coexistents’, cannot be anything else but phenomenal.[37] To put it otherwise: space is an ‘ens mentale’. Other important consequences follow: just like extension, other features of bodies like impenetrability or mass, which are the result of the relational acting of monads, are phenomenal as well. And if the specific characters of a body are phenomenal, the overall status of the body must be that of a phenomenon. Let’s see this directly from Leibniz: ‘since only simple things are true things [i.e., monads] … the rest are things by aggregation and therefore phenomena… a body is not a true unity; it is only an aggregate… a collection like a heard. Its unity comes from our perception. It is a being of reason, or rather, of imagination, a phenomenon.’[38] Of course, also motion is phenomenal, being derived from body-a phenomenon. If we remind what we’ve said in the past article regarding the theory of material substance in authors like Basso, Galileo and, finally, Locke, who fixed the characters of body dividing them into primary qualities belonging to body (extension, shape, impenetrably and mass), and secondary qualities caused by body but belonging entirely to the observing mind (colours, heat, sound, smell, taste), with Leibniz we have also the complete passage of the so-called ‘primary qualities’ to a phenomenal status, a status of appearance, which is distinguished by the phenomenal status of colors, heat, sound, etc. by the fact that extension, mass, impenetrability, etc. are phenomena bene fundata,[39] that is, well-grounded phenomena, in accord with his theory of pre-established harmony, according to which ideas inform things with the following procedure: ‘Because through God’s creative activity the same Ideas inform respectively things and minds, the correspondence between the two will be perfect.’[40]
Regarding the important question of the status of relations, a different voice was expressed in this century by Alfred North Whitehead, who acknowledged relations as ‘real’ rather than apparent or phenomenal. Like Leibniz, he believed relations had to be grounded in substances— in the acting of substances: he proclaimed that ‘the acting of substances is a grasping, a prehending (…) of other substances. By its act of prehending, a substance or actual entity effects a contact with another, thereby including the character of efficacy of that other in itself… the relation is effected by the prehending entity, by its act of prehending’.[41] The entity prehended is not itself active and this relation, this process of progressive prehension of ‘inactive entities’ by active entities is also called ‘concrescence’, that is, a growing together of antecedent data into a new unity. The fact, Leclerc observes with reference to Whitehead, is that ultimately, this process of prehending was conceived of as essentially ‘perceiving’ by its author, thereby leaving unaltered the question of the phenomenal value of relations.[42] Nonetheless, Leclerc is doubtful regarding the possibility to consider the processuality described above in terms of ‘perception’, in the traditional sense of that term (here, the question of the correct interpretation of Whitehead’s ‘theory of prehension’ and the meaning of ‘perception’ arises: I am certainly not an interpreter of Whitehead, but having read all of his books I have not understood that theory in traditional ‘perceptual’ terms, as Leclerc is saying in regard to Whitehead; for me, the very introduction, by Whitehead, of terms such as ‘prehension’ or ‘concrescence’ suggests a connotation, and therefore an interpretation of that doctrine, not in mere ‘abstract’ terms or as the traditional interpretation of ‘perception’ seems to imply; those terms, ‘prehension’ and ‘concrescence’, remind me of a progressive physical action of appropriation of something other than the self which erases any distance between the self and the other). In the end, Leclerc himself says that the theory of prehension cannot be adequately construed as ‘perception’. [43]
Coming back to the question of substance and relation, now Leclerc focuses on how Leibniz considered the nature of substance—its fundamental character. On the one hand, Leibniz said that ‘force’ or ‘power’ was fundamental in a substance: ‘the concept of forces or powers… for whose explanation I have set up a distinct science of dynamics, brings the strongest light to bear upon our understanding of the true concept of substance’;[44] on the other hand, we have already seen, he also conceived the action of substance (i.e., monads) in phenomenal terms, as perception. So, we have this final consideration which brings the two conceptualizations together: ‘I found then that their nature [the nature of substances, i.e., monads] consists of force and that there follows from this something analogous to sense and appetite.’[45] Now, Leclerc says, we have to establish the true connection between force, or power, and perception to elucidate the nature of the activity of substance. To do that an analysis of the concept of force is worth exploring.
we have to establish the true connection between force or power and perception to elucidate the nature of the activity of substance; to do that an analysis of the concept of force is worth exploring.
According to Leibniz force or power, ‘is to be estimated from the quantity of its effect’, that is, motion.[46] It is clear that being derivative from the forces or powers acting in substance, motion has a different ontological status with respect to those forces or powers. Force, Leibniz says, is something more real, while motion is not something entirely real. This is also due to the consideration that motion, as we have already seen, is relative to a plurality (the acting monads), and, as such, it is phenomenal. This means that ‘the force which enters into physics (as the science of bodies in motion) is … “derivative force”. The “primitive force” from which this is derivative is the acting of the individual monads.’ [47] Force, in Leibniz, is a striving for acting intrinsic in monads, which is guided by ‘appetition’ — the principle of change in the monad. Yet, Leclerc, at this point, makes a criticism on the difference between ‘force’ and ‘power’, which, in Leibniz, seem interchangeable or synonyms (e.g., see the citation above — [41] — where Leibniz speaks about ‘forces or powers’): in Leibniz’s account of motion, any explanation of ‘power’ — in the sense of ‘motive power’ — is almost absent, Leclerc says; it is true that monads can be considered ‘the principle or source of the motion of bodies’, but, Leclerc concludes, in this analysis of motion the factor of power — ‘as the “motive power” [of monads], whereby there is motion’ — has been lost.[48]
To gain insight from the analysis of the concept of force and its relation with substance, Leclerc at first redirects to Whitehead (without obtaining fruitful results, since that concept is not directly present in Whitehead’s doctrine), then to Kant’s pre-critical thought. At first, Leclerc refers to Kant’s Monadologia Physica (1756): influenced by Leibniz, Kant recognizes a force internal to body, which he considers a compound of ultimate simple entities (monads); this force, which is the action of the monads, is therefore prior to extension (which, like Leibniz, he considers a relation) and prior to motion, ‘which is the external appearance of this force… and has its basis in the activity of the monads’.[49] However, differently from Leibniz, Kant did not consider the activity of the monads as merely ‘perceiving’, that is an inner kind of acting, a mental kind of acting, but he considered that activity ‘outward directed, an acting on another’ because a motive force, the acting of substance, ‘must be more than only a process of internal change’.[50] So, for Kant, the concept of active force, is both inward and outward-directed: it has an efficacy on (other monads), and this efficacy is determined by an inner change in the substances (monads): ‘Kant entirely rejects Leibniz’s doctrine of monads as existing without any direct effect from (and upon) each other. For Kant, therefore, monads must necessarily be in relation with each other; that is, the acting which is fundamental to the being of monads is essentially an activity of relating itself to others.’[51] This brings to the foreground the concept of relation which, ‘is essential to substance, as an intrinsic feature of its acting.’[52]
The question of relation takes us back to the question of extension and space. Concerning those concepts there is an agreement between pre-critical Kant and Leibniz: extension, and thus space, is determined by the relational activity of monads, therefore extension and/or space are relative concepts. Extensive relation is fundamental for Kant: without relation between monads, that is, if substances had no power to act beyond themselves, there would be no space, no extension, no order, and ultimately, no place. Therefore, space is not a preexistence, a container: space is the result of the relational acting of monads; and given that this acting is not simply phenomenal, as Leibniz believed, but outward directed, space is not phenomenal. Ultimately, like in the case of Leibniz or Newton, the activity of ultimate substance (monads) is grounded in the mind of God: ‘finite substances, solely by their existence, do not stand in relation with each other, and clearly comprise no community, except to the extent that they are sustained conformally in mutual dependence by the common source of their existence, namely the mind of God.’ [53] As we know, Kant’s position on the conception of space turned upside down years later passing from a relative to an absolute conception (one conjecture, Leclerc says, was the growing dissatisfaction in the XVIII century with the role attribute to God in the physical order of substance and/or matter). The occasion for this turn was Kant’s 1768 paper ‘On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space’: according to Kant ‘with a conception of space as relative to substance it is impossible to account for the fact of incongruent counterparts [see Image 2, below]. This fact implies that there must be a certain absoluteness of direction in space which is totally missing if space be derivative from the actings of the physical monads on each other.’ [54]
Image 2: Hands are an example of ‘incongruent counterparts’, that is, ‘objects that are perfectly similar except for being mirror images of each other… [Kant] called them “counterparts” because they are similar in nearly every way, “incongruent” because, despite their similarity, one could never be put in the place of the other.’ [55]
But this is not Kant’s definitive position on the concept of space; a couple of years after the publication of the aforementioned paper on ‘chirality’ (this is another modern term, derived from chemistry – and from the Greek ‘cheir’, which means ‘hand’ – to identify the problem of incongruent counterparts), in the 1770 Inaugural Dissertation ‘De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis’, Kant adopted a still different position: ‘space, and time, while still conceived as relational, are grounded, not in the activity of the physical monads, but in perceiving substances as the a priori form of their perceiving.’[56] That position will be later elaborated on, and finalized in his 1781 Critique (where space and time became absolute, a-priori forms of knowledge).
However,for the moment, the position adopted by pre-critical Kant on relation and substances, that is, his conception concerning the acting of physical monads, results in a concept of space entirely without substantiality (like Leibniz), but which is the effect of relations, which fill an assignable space, unlike Leibniz, for whom relations are ‘entia mentalia’. A monad which ‘fills a space’, Leclerc says with reference to Kant, does not mean that space is an attribute of substance (the monad), rather, it means that the monad ‘determines the little space of its present not through a plurality of substantial parts, but through a sphere of activity by which it keeps at a distance those external and present on both sides of itself.’ [57] This is to remark that, differently from Leibniz’s understanding of relation in mere phenomenal terms, which leave monads indifferent to change, Kant understands the acting of a physical monad as ‘an outward directed power, effecting a change in other monads.’[58] Any monad encountering another monad ‘encounters the active power of that other, and encounters it as a repulsive force’;[59] in this way Kant, similarly to Leibniz, explains the specific characters of a body — i.e., impenetrability, extension, inertia, elasticity and motion. So, in Kant, relations retain that connotation of power as acting on, which is absent in Leibniz; ultimately, Leclerc concludes, ‘Kant’s pre-critical doctrine can be regarded as rescuing body from the phenomenal status to which Leibniz’s doctrine consigns it.’ [60]
Kant’s pre-critical doctrine can be regarded as rescuing body from the phenomenal status to which Leibniz’s doctrine consigns it
To introduce the following chapter, Leclerc observes that the conception of acting substances affecting real relations, which was the hallmark of Kant’s Monadologia Physica, needs a more careful inspection; this, Leclerc says, inevitably takes us to a further inquiry into the nature of the physical existent.
23. The Physical Existent and Body
The metaphysical position of material atomism on the nature of the physical existent is that it must be identified with the final constituents of compounds; therefore, compound entities or bodies (that is, aggregates of elements) cannot be considered as the physical existent, or substance.
The metaphysical position of material atomism on the nature of the physical existent is that it must be identified with the final constituents of compounds; therefore, compound entities or bodies cannot be considered as the physical existent, or substance.
This modern view on the nature of the physical existent is in opposition with Aristotle’s doctrine. According to Aristotle, who took organic body as a reference, a body was characterized by being ‘one single unitary whole, the principle of its unity being its form.’[61] This meant that, for Aristotle, such a unitary whole was one single substance (ousia), which was considered different from a mere aggregate of elements; for example, Leclerc observes, an ox is a single substance, since it is characterized by its substantial form as one organic, indivisible body; if we remove a part of the ox or if we divide it, it ceases to exist in the form of the original substance (the ox), and another substance (the butcher’s meat) originates. From a different perspective — I add — we can think of the ox, as a whole, unitary entity, which is more that its constituent parts (this is the definition of what a ‘system’ is in contemporary terms, properly). If we take a stone — I’m still following an example offered by Leclerc —, that is a mere aggregate of smaller stones: if we divide the original stone, we obtain smaller stones: the division does not destroy its substantial character as in the previous example — the stone remains a stone, its character (its nature) does not change.
As we have seen in the previous article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence, in the early XVII century many thinkers rejected that Aristotelian thesis, medical men especially; for them, an organic body was not one single substance, but a compound entity, whose true substances were its ultimate constituents, that is its tiny parts (material atoms). According to the new modern scheme, the unity that Aristotle considered as the true substantial form of a physical entity was merely apparent: ‘the body only appears to be one single whole, whereas it is, in fact, an aggregate of discrete entities; it appears to be continuously extensive, whereas, in fact, its extension is discontinuous, being divided into ultimate atomic parts.’[62] Here we find the origin of the division of the characters of bodies into primary and secondary qualities: the former belonging to the ultimate constituents of a body (i.e., the object) — expressed in quantitative terms such as extension, shape, impenetrably and mass; the latter belonging entirely to the observing mind (i.e., the subject) — expressed in qualitative terms like colours, heat, sound, smell, and taste.
According to the new modern scheme, the unity that Aristotle considered as the true substantial form of a physical entity was merely apparent, being the ultimate components of a compound the true existents… Here we find the origin of the division of the characters of bodies into primary and secondary qualities
Leibniz rejected the division of body into primary and secondary qualities: his monadology entailed primary qualities were phenomenal as well; accordingly, body, whose characters were all phenomenal, had to be considered phenomenal. Despite that, Leibniz’s metaphysical position was in agreement with the proponents of material atomism: he also believed bodies were compound entities. Differently from material atomism, he believed the ultimate constituents of bodies were non-material, that is ‘spiritual’ atoms – i.e., monads.
Kant agreed with the same metaphysical position: ‘a body is a compound entity and not a true substance’.[63] Yet, differently from Leibniz and similarly to traditional material atomism, he believed the atomic constituents of bodies were not ideal entities but physical entities, that is, physical monads, the ultimate constituents of all compound bodies.
The fundamental metaphysical position of material atomism was adhered to by the sciences of physics and chemistry, and became a tacit presupposition which still holds; Leclerc says: ‘In this century, when these atoms were found to be not atomic after all but themselves compounds, the search has continued for the ultimate constituents as the physical existents.’[64]
In this century, when these atoms were found to be not atomic after all but themselves compounds, the search has continued for the ultimate constituents as the physical existents.
Continuing this brief historical review of the atomic conception of nature, Leclerc then focuses on Alfred N, Whitehead, who carried that procedure to the limit with ‘his conception of the finals existents or actual entities as being not only atomic extensively but also durationally so; [according to Whitehead] the simplest compound entity is one constituted by one single actual entity superseding another in a single chain… electrons, for example, might be such chains or routes of single actual entities… More complex compounds… atoms, molecules, and so on to macroscopic bodies, consist of bundles or groups of such routes of supersession. Fundamental in this doctrine — Leclerc continues — is that it is the ultimate constituents into which all compounds are analyzable that are the true physical existents, the substances. All compounds, and bodies in particular, are derivative entities, of a different ontological status from that of actual entities.’ [65] Whitehead called those compounds or derivative entities ‘societies’. The grounds for a multilevel ontology are traced by Whitehead.
But this is the decisive issue raised by Leclerc now: ‘the question has to be examined whether these constituents are to be identified as the true physical existents, the substances and that only they can be regarded as being such.’[66]
the question has to be examined whether these constituents are to be identified as the true physical existents, the substances, and that only they can be regarded as being such.
Leclerc begins by analyzing what material atomism says concerning the relationship between body and constituents.
In material atomism, atoms, the ultimate elements of a compound, are considered to be without any internal change; this means that body, which is a collection of atoms, cannot have a character per se outside that of the sum of the atoms the body is composed of. Ultimately, bodies are simply aggregates, ‘purely fortuitous’ aggregates or collections, since there is no reason, according to the nature of atomic matter (extension, solidity or impenetrability, mass, and inertia) to group or to collect in a group with a specific form.
However, since the beginning of the conception of material atomism, the necessity to divide or distinguish specific groups of atoms was felt by the very originators of the theory because the mere aggregation of elements was insufficient for scientific scopes (at least, the experience we have of inorganic and organic matter is evidently different). As Leclerc says, Sebastian Basso was one of the first men who ‘introduced the concept of groups of atoms in a particular structure’, which, later, Gassendi named ‘molecules’.[67] The molecular theory was born and we still adopt it in its essential material features.
I call the reader’s attention to this important point: ultimately, even in the molecular theory we have the conception of a group of elements which show a behaviour (a character, a structure, or a geometrical pattern) which is something over, above, and not reducible to the behaviour of the single elements that constitute that group. So, we come to ‘the question of how the atoms come to adhere in groups at all?’ [68]
how do the atoms come to adhere in groups at all?
Newton believed it was because of an attractive force, an explanationwhich came to be generally accepted; yet, following the principles of material atomism which considered matter devoid of internal force, Newton believed that force couldn’t belong to matter itself; therefore, he grounded that force ‘in the action of God.’ [69] Scientists soon forgot the philosophical problem — God was forgotten — and ‘attractive force was ascribed to matter without any consideration’.[70]
Leibniz saw the logical, philosophical inconsistency of that scientific position: if atoms are devoid of internal change, that is, if they are fully inert (this is the fundamental metaphysical position of material atomism), how can they relate between themselves in structured patterns which are not mere aggregates? Leibniz believed it was necessary to take into account the question of relation to explain structured groups of atoms and the different complexity of bodies, which is so obvious in nature. As we have just seen, by way of relations, Leibniz explained the characteristics of a body — extension, impenetrability, mass, and inertia. Yet, we are going to see, Leibniz’s answer to the question of relation and body was not definitive or satisfactory (this is at least the critical position maintained by Leclerc, a position I agree with — I want to remark that in these final chapters of PART IV of the book The Nature of Physical Existence, Leclerc is showing the limits of certain positions maintained by Leibniz or Whitehead, which anyway have the important merit of having contributed to envisioning a new conception of nature, of the physical; Leclerc is trying, at first, to show what he considered the limits intrinsic to those pioneering theories, and, then, to amend those limits or inconsistencies presenting a theory in line with contemporary scientific discoveries). According to Leclerc, the problem with Leibniz’s doctrine was that ‘all relations are phenomenal’, that is, ‘they have the status of ideas in the monads’, which means that it is the ideas in the monads which provide the unity of a body.[71] To put it otherwise: the body is not a substance, a true element, but it is merely an aggregate, a plurality whose unity is an experiential feature (of the monads). Leclerc concludes his criticism of Leibniz’s doctrine: ‘What exists in actuality is a mere aggregate, and the members of the group act in a certain harmony, which gives t it an appearance of a group character by virtue of a co-ordination pre-established by God’.[72] From Leclerc’s analysis, we understand that the ultimate phenomenal character intrinsic to the activity of the monads, and the external agency of God weaken the otherwise stable grounds of Leibniz’s doctrine.
An alternative vision to Leibniz, Leclerc says, was offered by Whitehead’s doctrine, which, for many aspects, was similar to Leibniz’s doctrine, except it differed in one crucial respect: the nature of relations between substances could be seen under a more ‘realistic’ perspective, rather than the ‘phenomenal’ or ‘ideal’ perspective of Leibniz. That connection between substances could be seen as ‘real’ since it was grounded on the theory of prehension, according to which an actual entity (i.e., a ‘substance’, in the etymological/metaphysical sense of the term) prehends another substance including its character; that inclusion or appropriation is based on a real contact, which is something more than a phenomenal relation (here the position of Leclerc seems to be more ‘realistic’ than the ‘phenomenal’ interpretation that he attributed to Whitehead in a passage before — see the passage after note 40). This means that the constitution of a connection between substances, or actual entities, forms ‘a body as a society’, which is not simply an aggregate of elements that have the phenomenal value of a body, but that aggregate is something more: it is a true or real body which has an own form or character — that is, a substantial form, a form that is common and shared by all the members of the group: ‘it is by reason of this shared or common character that a body is distinguished as having this geometrical shape and size, these features whereby we designate it wood as opposed to metal, and so on.’[73] Yet, Leclerc observes returning to an interpretation in phenomenal terms, if we admit an integral interpretation of Whitehead’s theory of societies according to which the analysis of a ‘physical prehension’ has to be considered in terms of ‘the feeling of another actuality’ — which means that, according to Leclerc, the ultimate ground of the relation between substances (either monads or, standing to Whitehead’s terminology, actual entities) is ‘perceptual’ therefore ‘ideal’ rather than physical — all things considered, there is not a fundamental difference between the vision of body between Leibniz and Whitehead: in both cases that body would constitute an aggregate and not a true substance.
Then, Leclerc switches to the analysis of Kant’s account of relation and body. His position (pre-Critique) differs from that of Leibniz and Whitehead: according to Kant, monads are fully in interaction, that is in physical and direct interaction between themselves, and are not in isolation as Leibniz’s monads or Whitehead’s actual entities (assuming Leclerc’s interpretation of Whitehead’s theory of prehension in mere phenomenal terms is correct). This is a requirement for the existence of a true body, which is not merely an aggregation of elements which is given phenomenal unity from the outside; that body must have internal unity and coherence (that is, a form) to be a real substance and not merely an aggregate of elements, and this is another fundamental requirement. Indeed, the external ‘acting on’ of a monad on another monad is not sufficient to provide the requirement of internal coherence or form. Kant, in the wake of Newton, agrees on the existence of a force — an attractive force — which, in adjunction to the existence of repulsive forces, can explain the characters of matter; yet, for a unity, internal unity and form, to exist, that force must be internally-effective, that is: ‘It is only with relations conceived as effecting an inner change in the entity acted on that a unity is possible between entities, and moreover a unity which is manifested as the particular form or character of the group of entities so related.’[74] Kant worked out a ‘theory of unity’, starting his ‘critical’ period, in De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (1780)and later in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason, 1781). Here, Kant dealt with the requisite of ‘form’ and of ‘intellectual form’, which he considered the grounds for relations to be established and for the unitary form of a body to emerge from those relations. The significance of Kant’s new critical position is that these ‘forms are grounded in the experiencing mind as the “a priori” conditions of experience… these forms are forms of relatedness.’[75] In the end, it turns out that Kant’s position was very similar to that of Leibniz since all relations (spatial, temporal, causal) are grounded in the mind. This entails that body (material body) is mind-dependent, that is, phenomenal.
As we know, this position generated a debate which is still alive, since ‘insuperable problems’ derive from the ontological dualism between mind and body. The difficulty is to find a connection between the physical and the mental, or, from a different perspective, with reference to the doctrines of Leibniz, and Kant especially, the difficulty is to see how internal change is procured by external relations. Leclerc position is clear and resolute:
I agree with Whitehead that the time is more than ripe to admit that the position is untenable and to search for another. […] These considerations seem to me fully confirm Whitehead’s contention that the ontological dualism [of physical and mental substances] introduced in the seventeenth century with its doctrine of matter as substance has been a disaster and must be rejected entirely. The clear need is for a different ontological conception of the physical existent [i.e., nature].[76]
Fundamentally, those are the reasons behind the search for ‘a new conception of nature’, that is, a new conception of the physical existent (i.e., ‘physis’, that is ‘nature’). Leclerc proposes to follow Whitehead’s attempt even if his system is problematic and involves some difficulties (above all the question of ‘perception’ and its interpretation in Whiteheadian terms). According to Leclerc — on this, I agree with him — ‘Whitehead’s has been the major effort of our time to develop an alternative conception of the physical existent’;[77] Whitehead’s limit — Leclerc continues — was that he was ‘too strongly influenced by the Neoplatonic inheritance in the British empiricist tradition and consequently conceiving prehension as perception. But not perception as such, but in the sense of ‘the having of “ideas” by the perceiver — whether they be “images”, or “representations”, or “feelings”.’ [78] Now, Leclerc begins his pars construens in the search for a new conception of the physical existent or nature, given that, by way of Leibniz, Kant and Whitehead, especially, we are searching for an alternative conception to material atomism, which takes behind a series of ‘insuperable problems’ or obstacles to the advance of scientific and philosophical doctrines (ontological dualism, reductionism and mechanical conceptions of nature, which are all questions entangled with our conceptions of matter, place, space and time, especially).
Now, Leclerc begins his pars construens in the search for a new conception of the physical existent, or nature…
Then, Leclerc is going to propose some possible amendments to the main alternative theories to those ‘insuperable problems’. Concerning the problematic understanding of perception in Whitehead (which, according to Leclerc’s interpretation, ultimately reduces bodies to phenomenal units, like in Leibniz and Kant), Leclerc proposes an alternative interpretation: ‘There is an alternative theory of perception — Leclerc says — to be found in Plato’s Theaetetus divergent from that of the Neoplatonic Plato. In this perception is not the subjective entertaining of ideas; perception in this theory is something which is the outcome of the motion (kinesis) of both the perceiver and the perceived. This kinesis is an acting on the part both of the perceiver and the perceived… If Whitehead had recognized this […] it would have brought him closer to Kant’s conception of acting as an “acting on”, and thus of acting as a relating.’ [79] The following step by Leclerc is to see what that conception of perception as ‘relating’ or ‘acting as relating’ would have come to.
In this type of relation, the entity acted on shows, at the same time, an active and a passive character: passive since it receives the action from the outside; active since that action has an internal effect on the entity acted on. Leclerc says that it is this mutual aspect of (external) action and of being internally affected by the action of others that constitute the relating. In the end, the character of this relation is expressed by or is the outcome of the mutual actings of entities. The relation is not ‘a tertium quid’, that is, another entity — Leclerc says — but is integral to the entities in relation; properly speaking, the relation constitutes the unity of the entities in relation ‘as something more than the entities conceived as not in relation’.[80] Using a systemic analogy to integrate Leclerc’s explanation, I’d say that the relation between two entities constitutes a new entity or system, understood as something more than the sum of the two constituent entities (the parts of the new system), taken individually; the character of this new unity (the system) is the character of the relation. It is obvious — Leclerc says — that this type of relation is not confined to just two (simple) entities, but can be extended to a plurality of entities; this entails ‘there must be a vast variety of kinds of relationship, and thus of unity.’[81] And if we consider that there is no requirement for the acting of an entity to produce always the same effect on the entity acted on, then ‘a vast variety, extent, and degree of change is possible in various affected entities… In some instances, the change will be so partial and of so particular a character as to leave the entities in question for the most part unaffected in their character’ — e.g., the case of motion, that is locomotion or change of place —, in some other instances, the change brought about the relation of entities, ‘could be of such a kind as to exhibit the interrelated group of entities in question as distinct in character from other groups. There will in this way be a group character, qua that group, which will be derivable from the individual characters of the constituents, but not reducible to them as their sum, since the group character will be the character of the relation between constituents, and not the collection or arithmetical sum of the individual characters. In terms of this theory, therefore, we are able to have a conception of body which is not an aggregate.’ [82]
The relation is not ‘a tertium quid’, that is, another entity — Leclerc says — but is integral to the entities in relation; properly speaking, the relation constitutes the unity of the entities in relation ‘as something more than the entities conceived as not in relation’… In some instances, the change [occurring to the entities in relation] will be so partial and of so particular a character as to leave the entities in question for the most part unaffected in their character’ — e.g. the case of motion… — in some other instances, the change brought about the relation of entities, ‘could be of such a kind as to exhibit the interrelated group of entities in question as distinct in character from other groups. There will in this way be a group character, qua that group, which will be derivable from the individual characters of the constituents, but not reducible to them as their sum… In terms of this theory, therefore, we are able to have a conception of body which is not an aggregate’.
Even if, here, Leclerc does not explicitly say it, I would point out that we are explicating a systemic or organic conception of nature (we are going to see that the concepts ‘systemic’ and ‘organic’ have much in common), which, at the same time, is able to overcome: 1) the old material atomism; 2) the related reductionist and mechanical conceptions of nature, i.e., of the physical existent; 3) the old dualism between physical and ideal substance. This new, organic conception of nature that Leclerc is especially developing, on the base of his criticism of, or amendment to the theories of Whitehead, Leibniz and Kant inevitably takes us to the possibility of considering compounds too as the true physical existent. It is this possibility which can be especially an antidote against any ultimate reduction of nature to the physical existent considered in the material, atomic sense, and to physical explanations only. This is Leclerc’s projection to the next chapter: ‘I wish to argue that it is possible validly to conceive a plurality of entities in a particular interactive unity such as to constitute the whole a substantive existent.’[83] That is: not only atomic elements (simple substances, or basic constituents) but also compounds can be ‘a substantive existent’ – i.e., the physical existent as ‘physis’.
Before continuing, I make a brief digression to point out the intimate relationship between the argumentation we have dealt with so far, and the research I am pursuing through the virtual pages at RSaP: similarly to the possibility just envisioned by Leclerc (which is very much indebted to Whitehead’s doctrine and the result of different scientific and philosophical criticism on the modern conception of nature), I am working out an interpretation of nature in placial, processual, and systemic/organic terms: nature (‘physis’ — the physical existent) considered as the place of processes, out of which entities at different ontological levels emerge (i.e., a multilevel ontology, which is grounded on the conception of place). To put it differently, I consider place as the true ultimate existent either we consider that existent a simple or compound entity; this means that, as I’m used to saying: ‘nature is place – the place of processes’. Regarding this, see the article On the Structure of Reality, which proposes four types of occurrences in nature, i.e., four fundamental substances or substantive existents, to say it with Leclerc; see also The Place of Processes: Nature and Life, which, analogously, proposes Whitehead’s ‘rough division’ of nature into ‘six types of occurrences’. Despite the apparent different number of occurrences or ‘substantive existents’, the metaphysical doctrine behind those divisions is identical. For the sake of synthesis, at RSaP I have adopted the fourfold division, which, it seems to me, is more universal in character: I see nature as the place of physicochemical (inorganic), biological (organic), social and symbolic processes, which may actualize into discrete entities, i.e., the physical existent (from physical fields to macroscopic bodies — e.g., the gravitational field, electromagnetic fields, inorganic molecules… planets, black holes, galaxies —, from biological entities to symbolic entities — e.g., cells, plants, animals… families, societies, nations, drawings, art, architecture, math equations…), or which may stay in a potential state, ready for successive actualization. All other divisions are derivative (that is, they are subdivisions): e.g., ecological processes belong to the class of physicochemical and biological processes, to begin with; cultural processes belong to the class of social and symbolic processes, and so on. Concerning the classification of nature into different autonomous-yet-interacting systems, identified on the basis of General System Theory, see also Table 1 in the article From Space to Place.
24. The Physical Existent, Simple and Compound
After having proposed what Leclerc sees as an amendment of Whitehead’s theory of perception in a more concrete sense, and after having shown the fruitful results of that ‘amendment’ (the possibility to envision body as a true substance — the physical existent —, a true unity and not a mere phenomenal unit), Leclerc focuses on Leibniz’s doctrine to show how close Leibniz was to that position. Again, following Leclerc, it is necessary to propose some variations to that doctrine to pass from a phenomenal to a more ‘realistic’ perspective of what unity means.
Leibniz’s initial position is clear: ‘There must be simple substances since there are compounds, for the compounded is but a collection or an aggregate of simples’.[84] Leibniz — Leclerc continues — termed those simple substances ‘monads’ from the Greek ‘Monas’ which means ‘unity or that which is one’. Leibniz believed only such simple substances had to be regarded as substances. However, with time passing by, Leclerc observes, Leibniz’s certainty began to waver, ‘and admitted also “compound” or “composite” substances, instances of which are “animals or other organic beings”.’ [85] The crucial notion for disentangling this complicate question concerning ‘substance’ understood as a simple or compound entity is the notion of ‘unity’. Initially, ‘unity’, for Leibniz, was ascribed only to the simple constituents of a compound, which was considered a mere aggregate of primordial units (monads). This view was common to all his contemporaries (this is the metaphysical doctrine of material atomism). But experience says that it is impossible to equate non-organic compounds and organic compounds: it was the acknowledgement of that difference that required differentiation in the notion of substance, once we connect it to the concept of unity. Conscious of that difference, to avoid the intrinsic metaphysical difficulty, Leibniz ascribed ‘unity’ a phenomenal value: ‘I should prefer to say that there are no substances over and above monads, but only appearances.’[86] Leibniz had to justify his position since he recognized in the organic body ‘a singular kind of unity’, which he explicitly defined as ‘organic corporeal substance’.[87] Leibniz believed this unity could be either a factor reducible to the plurality of entities (monads) as a whole, or a factor ascribed to the action on one ‘dominant’ monad; Leibniz was at a crossroad, Leclerc notes, and he chose the wrong direction by believing that ‘the unity of the organic whole is furnished by one dominant monad’, more precisely, that unity was ‘an idea in the dominant monad’ which takes control over the plurality of monads.[88] Leibniz was now wavering between a mechanical and an organic conception of nature (i.e., of the physical existent, ‘physis’): ‘When I say that even if it is corporeal, a substance contains an infinity of machines, I think it must be added at the same time that it forms one machine composed of these machines and that it is actuated, besides, by one entelechy, without which it would contain no principle of true unity.’[89]
At this point, Leclerc focuses on two points he wants to draw the attention of readers on. 1) the first regards Leibniz’s oscillation between organic and mechanical conceptions of the physical existent, i.e., nature; 2) the second point concerns Leibniz’s appeals to the conception of ‘entelechy’ within his monadology.
1) Concerning the conception of machine ‘Leibniz uses the term in the strict sense of a whole of parts, these moving in a specific manner… adapted for a specific function [and] designed to produce a specific effect.’[90] There is a fundamental difference or contrast with respect to the conception of an organism, ‘which is a whole in which the parts are “organs”, in the original sense of “instruments”, each functioning with reference to the whole’ (here lies the fundamental difference between ‘mechanical’ and ‘organic’ conceptions of nature, i.e., the physical existent).[91] It is evident, Leclerc says, that Leibniz cannot admit the existence of an organism since, according to his conception, the parts (the monads) do not function with reference to the whole, ‘as its instruments’, but are separate entities whose actings (that is, their perceptions) ‘are predetermined by God to be in conformity with each other. So, Leibniz is left with a mechanism;’[92] even if he still speaks in terms of ‘organic body’, in some of his works; actually, that body — the compound body in Leibniz, such as an animal can be —[93] Leclerc says, is only apparently organic.
Concerning the conception of machine ‘Leibniz uses the term in the strict sense of a whole of parts, these moving in a specific manner… adapted for a specific function [and] designed to produce a specific effect.’ There is a fundamental difference or contrast with respect to the conception of the organism, ‘which is a whole in which the parts are “organs”, in the original sense of “instruments”, each functioning with reference to the whole’.
2) Concerning the second observation, Leclerc says that from different passages, in Leibniz’s texts, we know that he was aware that any mechanism needed an ‘entelechy’ to be ‘actuated’ (that is, an internal force that gives direction to a process to pass from a potential to an actual state) and without which such an entity/mechanism (the compound body) couldn’t contain any principle of true unity. So, we deduce with Leclerc that, for Leibniz, ‘a principle of activity’ and ‘a principle of unity’ were needed for a body to be a unit and not a mere aggregate, a pile or a heap. Again, we are very close to the possibility for Leibniz to envision a true organic unity of a compound, yet, Leclerc says, Leibniz was not able to make that final step; as Leclerc notes, on the basis of his metaphysical system (monadology) ‘Leibniz is not able to have a principle of activity which can constitute a “motive force” capable of “actuating” a body, since the acting of a monad is […] not a force “acting on” but is an activity of perception confined to the subjectivity of the monad. For the same reason, Leibniz cannot have his principle of activity an “activity of unifying”; the unity is a perceptual one, phenomenal only.’ [94] Nonetheless, it is properly in virtue of Leibniz’s acknowledgement of the necessity of a principle of activity and unity behind a body that he finally admitted (the existence of) a ‘compound substance’, and this takes Leibniz to what Leclerc considered ‘a very important change in his conception of substance and indeed even of his conception of a monad.’[95] Concerning this ‘turn’, Leclerc quotes an important passage, in Leibniz’s paper ‘On Nature Itself’ (1698), where Leibniz says: ‘it can be concluded that there must be found in corporeal substance a “primary entelechy”… that is a primitive motive force which, superadded to extension, or what is merely geometrical, and mass, or what is merely material, always acts indeed and yet is modified in various ways by the concourse of bodies, through a conatus or impetus. It is this substantial principle itself which is called the “soul” in living beings and “substantial form” in other beings, and inasmuch as it truly constitutes one substance with matter, or a unit in itself, it makes up what I call a monad.’[96]
Leclerc points out a couple of important passages which are symptomatic of Leibniz’s tentative move or transition from a mechanical to an organic conception of body as compound substance (e.g., where Leibniz speaks of the dominant monad/corporeal substance which ‘always acts indeed and yet is modified in various ways by the concourse of bodies’ or where he speaks about the acting or ‘primitive motive force’ of the dominant monad as ‘substantial principle’). Fundamentally, Leclerc observes, this is a transition towards an Aristotelian position (force and substantial form as instances of the physical existent are conceptualizations already worked out by Aristotle). Just above, I’ve said ‘tentative move’ toward an organic conception of the physical existent as a compound since Leibniz ‘did not fully appreciate this and accordingly did not consistently push it through’, Leclerc says.[97]
As we have seen for Whitehead, when Leclerc proposed an amendment to Whitehead’s understanding of perception to avoid the dissolution of compounds into mere phenomena, now Leclerc suggests some missing links that would have avoided Leibniz to fall into the same (phenomenal) error, and to completely surpass the latent mechanical view of his metaphysical conception. Again, what follows, is Leclerc’s pars construens of a doctrine which aims at the elaboration of a new conception of nature, different from the view of material atomism. What is needed from Leibniz, Leclerc says, is 1) the abandonment of a conception of acting in terms of perception, with respect to the monads, that is, of acting as the subjective entertainment of ideas; conversely, 2) the adoption of the pre-critical Kantian conception of relation between substances as ‘acting on’ would have guaranteed to Leibniz the possibility to envision those relations between substances (monads) in more concrete terms: the reciprocity of their actings, even maintaining the specific role assigned to a dominant monad, would have constituted a real whole, a compound as a true unity, rather than a phenomenal body (an apparent unity). As Leclerc says, ‘there is involved here a definite departure from the metaphysical presupposition which has ruled modern thought, namely that only the constituents of compounds be substances. For what has emerged in this new position is the conception of a monad or substance which is not a constituent of a compound but itself is a compound.’[98]
there is involved here a definite departure from the metaphysical presupposition which has ruled modern thought, namely that only the constituents of compounds be substances. For what has emerged in this new position is the conception of a monad or substance which is not a constituent of a compound but itself is a compound.
In this position, Leclerc explains, resurfaces the well-known Aristotelian conceptions of potentiality and actuality: two constituents composing a body understood as a unity define that unity — the body — as a substance in actuality, even if the constituents are potentially substances as well; to put it otherwise, as Leclerc says, ‘with the repudiation of the conception of substance as fully actual and changeless, the factor of “potentiality” involved in substance must be explicitly and fully recognized… Insofar as the compound is a “substance” it is “actual”, that is, an actually achieved unity. What is unified will be the plurality of constituents. Now the actual unity of necessity transcends the constituents individually, and since it is the unity which is actual, in relation to it the constituents must necessarily be potential’.[99]
Leclerc pushes further his analysis of simple and compound substances, in the concluding part of the chapter.
Once established the existence, as a unity, of groups of simple substantial elements in varying degrees of complexity (atoms, molecules, cells, organisms, etc.) which exhibit order and structured form as the consequence of the reciprocal relationships/actings of the elements/components, — that is they show a unity which is more than the sum of the constituent aggregates — how that unity has to be acknowledged from the ontological point of view? ‘What precisely is the ontological status of this unity?’ Leclerc asks.[100]
All of the main thinkers (from Plato to Aristotle… down to Leibniz and Whitehead), Leclerc says, agree with the fact ‘that unity must be grounded in substance [which] means that in the ultimate and primary sense unity is the unity of substance per se.’[101] Somewhat different from the fundamental unity of substance (e.g. an electron, a monad, etc.) is the ‘phenomenal’ unity of substance, where the substantial unity of an aggregate (e.g. an organism) is a phenomenal projection of an observer — that is, in this case, we are speaking of a unitary substance as an ‘ens rationis’, as in the doctrines of Leibniz and Whitehead. Leclerc believes a via media is possible by considering the existence of a unitary substance as a compound body, apart from its phenomenal conception, and differently from the substantial unity of a fundamental existent: it is to consider the unity of a compound with a perspective that is not merely ‘phenomenal’. Leclerc asks: ‘if the relation [of primary substances] does unify them, bringing them into one [as a compound], why is this not to be regarded as a substantial unity? It seems to me that this is essentially a substantial unity. For the relation has a form or character which is the character of that whole, of the unity… the form is the form of “one” whole, not of a plurality. I conclude therefore that this one form must be the form of one substance, that this form must be a substantial form’.[102]
if the relation [of primary substances] does unify them, bringing them into one [as a compound], why is this [the compound] not to be regarded as a substantial unity?
Leclerc, fundamentally, rather than presenting a completely different alternative to the doctrines of Leibniz and Whitehead, is presenting an alternative and reciprocally congruent interpretation of the two doctrines, with specific respect to the nature of the compound (from ‘phenomenal’ to ‘substantial’). The main point of this alternative interpretation regards the question of relation: if the relation, that is the acting between substances, is ‘fully reciprocal’, Leclerc says, then ‘these actings combine into a single total act, with one single form’, which is the form of the unity that constitutes the compound body as a new substantial entity.[103] This new substantial unity transcends the fundamental constituents, which are in a potential status with respect to the actual form of the substantial unity-as-the compound; but if the relation between substances changes, or is somehow affected, and the substantial form as the unity of the compound ceases to exist, then the components pass from the status of potentiality (in relation to the compound which is the actual entity or substance) to that of independent actual substances.
Ultimately, I understand Leclerc’s attempt as an attempt to present an organic or systemic vision of nature — this is also the way I call that conception: in fact, in this context, ‘organic’ is not merely synonymous with ‘living’, but, more extendedly, it refers to the original Greek sense included in the word ‘organism’, which refers to a whole in which the parts are ‘organs’ (from the Greek ‘organon’) that is ‘instruments’, ‘each functioning with reference to the whole’ (see note 91, above); then, I’m saying, an organism can be understood as a system, properly: a whole which is more than the sum of the constituent parts (the emergent properties of the whole cannot be reduced to the properties of the component parts – see note 82 above: ‘There will in this way be a group character, qua that group, which will be derivable from the individual characters of the constituents, but not reducible to them as their sum…’). That’s why I also speak of a systemic view of nature — i.e., the physical existent. Of course, that which is ‘living’, such as a plant or an animal, is included in the original sense of ‘organism’. This ‘wider’ sense of the term, Leclerc concludes, is also the sense used by Whitehead, whose philosophy is called ‘organic’, precisely. Compound substances, such as ‘molecules’ or ‘cells’ functioning with reference to the whole, and obviously organisms as a whole, are all ‘organic’. Most importantly, as Whitehead says in Science and the Modern World, the principle of organization where aggregates are parts/instruments of a whole ‘is perfectly general throughout nature, and represents no property peculiar to living bodies.’[104]
That is exactly the ‘placial( )spatial’ sense of nature that I’m presenting at RSaP: nature (the physical existent) as a system of places — the place of processes, whether actualized or not: to begin with, physicochemical, biological, social, and symbolic processes, which embrace the entire horizon of existence. Actualized processes result in placial, discrete entities or states — a realm of place;conversely, potential processes can be expressed or accounted for in spatial, that is, abstract terms — a realm of space or of abstract places. I redirect you to the articles On the Structure of Reality and The Place of Processes: Nature and Life for widening these issues.
I suggest the readers interested in spatial questions follow the next Chapter with particular attention since it is especially focused on the relation between the new conception of nature — of the physical —, as presented by Leclerc, and the concepts of place and space.
25. Physical Existence, Continuity, and Discreteness
At the beginning of Chapter 25 Leclerc makes a resume of the most important passages through which we arrived at the definition of the modern conception of nature, i.e., the physical existent — physis —, and the necessity to overcome it, by envisioning a new conception, on the basis of Aristotelian, Leibnizian, Kantian and Whiteheadian considerations, especially.
The modern concept of nature, of the physical, was determined by the introduction, early in the seventeenth century, of the concept of matter as substance. This entailed an ontological dualism which has ruled thought down to the present day. In this doctrine physical existence was conceived as material, implying the exclusion from the physical existent of anything of the kind of perception, thought, feeling, emotion, etc., all of which were relegated to an ontologically separate existent or substance.[105]
That was Leclerc’s incipit for Chapter 25 — Physical Existence, Continuity and Discreteness — concerning the concept of nature, understood in the material sense (material substance). Even when rejected, Leclerc continues, that conception was determinative of the other modes of understanding nature, whether matter was understood in ‘spiritual’, ‘mental’ terms, or in terms of ‘neutral monism’ (according to which substance was conceived as ‘neither material nor spiritual/mental but neutral to both, from which they arise’).[106]
The present study, Leclerc says, has shown the untenability of the concept of ‘material substance’, as well as of its opposite — ‘spiritual or mental substance’; the effort of the author was directed to finding an alternative conception: ‘The vital need of our time is a conception of physical existence [that is, of ‘physis’—nature] untrammelled by erroneous presuppositions inherited from the scheme of thought which has dominated the modern era.’[107] In brief, according to the author, it is necessary that the concept of the physical be purged of the material connotation that has been attached to it in modern times.
it is necessary that the concept of the physical be purged of the material connotation that has been attached to it in modern times.
Recent physics has already departed from the concept of the physical as exclusively ‘material’ Leclerc notes (e.g., — I say — this is the sense of the concept of energy, or of the field-concept as alternative conceptions of matter). In rejecting this conception, Leclerc continues, we need to take into prominence again the original sense of the ‘natural’, which is included in the original sense of the ‘physical’, ‘physis’, as that which pertains or is related to ‘physics’. The reward for this would be the abandonment of the dualism physical-mental, and of what is implicated with it, that is, the mechanical conception of nature, and, as a logical consequence, the abandonment of its understanding in ultimate physical/material terms only (reductionism). By contrast, opposite to this traditional, modern view, an organic conception of nature, of the physical — or the natural existent in the original sense of the term ‘physis’ — is emerging.
We need to take into prominence again the original sense of the ‘natural’, which is included in the meaning of the ‘physical’ — ‘physis’ — as that which pertains to or is related to ‘physics’. The reward for this would be the abandonment of the dualism physical-mental, and of what is implicated with it, that is, the mechanical conception of nature, and, as a logical consequence, the abandonment of its understanding in physical/material terms only (reductionism). In contrast to this traditional, modern view, an organic conception of nature, of the physical, is emerging.
Again, I call the reader’s attention to this ‘organic’ conception of the physical existent Leclerc is speaking about (i.e., the organic conception of nature) which has to be primarily intended according to the original sense of the term ‘organism’, derived from the Greek ‘organon’ in the sense of ‘instrument’ functioning with reference to the whole: here, it is also implicit the musical analogy of a melodic composition (the whole) played by different instruments; the melody of the composition requires a general form adhered to by any single instrument otherwise there is mere cacophony. Analogously, a living ‘organism’, is not the simple addition of its parts, cells, tissues, etc., these are ‘instruments’ devoted to a higher cause, i.e., the being/existence of the organism itself. This original sense also brings with itself a systemic conception of the physical existent, understood as a whole, a new unit having emergent properties, which emerges from parts in reciprocal relations; these parts are ‘organs’. A system is something more than the simple addition of its constituents — that’s why any reductionist explanation of the physical existent, nature, to its ultimate constituents is not tenable anymore: nature — the physical existent — is more complex than envisioned so far, and is not reducible to simple elements only, but compounds elements must also be considered as ‘ultimate’ substances. This is what Leclerc is maintaining by ‘amending’ certain Leibnizian and Whiteheadian positions.
Concerning the role of relations as determinative for understanding the new conception of nature, or the physical existent, Leclerc explicitly says that the physical existent ‘must be an acting entity, and the acting must be a relating both between existents and within the existents or substances.’ [108] This means — I say extending Leclerc’s discourse — that the concept of ‘substance’ may pertain to both ultimate existents in the traditional physical sense (e.g. quarks, electrons…) — this is ‘relating… between existents’ —, and to emergent compound entities whether in physicochemical, biological, social or even symbolic sense (here, ultimate/substantial entities, would be respectively, molecules, cells, organisms, societies of organisms, a musical composition…), — this is ‘relating… within the existents’.
That active and relational conception of the physical existent directly leads us back to the original sense of the Greek ‘physis’, Leclerc says; ‘the physical existent is that which has the principle, the source, of its “kinēsis” in itself. Its “kinēsis” is its process of acting; … a substance — Leclerc continues — must be in a process of change, and not, as in the conception of substance as matter, in itself changeless and fully actual. The acting of the substance is the substance becoming actual. This clearly implies a transition from potentiality to actuality, on which Aristotle had also insisted in respect of the physical existent.’[109] That is, with the concept of acting intrinsic to the physical existent, process and change come as well, and, with them, potentiality re-acquires a status in the new conception of the physical existent (e.g., an actual molecule of water is the real physical existent as a compound substance; in that molecule, two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen are potentially present as substances in the following sense: only after the atomic bonds of the molecule are broken we can speak of the two atoms of hydrogen and the one of oxygen as actually present, that is, as physical existents or actual substances. This may be hard to understand or to accept after minds have been forged by three hundred years of reductionist thinking).
Leclerc now focuses again on the concept of potentiality, which implies two connotations: 1) potentiality as the possibility to become actual; 2) potentiality as the power or potency to effect actualization. In both cases, potentiality involves acting, movement (i.e., process) which admits a finality, that is as an ‘end-cause’ as the goal of acting. However, the entertainment of the possibility for an end, i.e., actualization, differs from its attainment — the end as achieved, that is the ‘entelecheia’, to use Aristotelian terminology. ‘This kind of entertainment of possibility — Leclerc says — is that which we know in ourselves as “conceptual” or “mental”. We must accordingly, with Aristotle and Whitehead, admit it as intrinsic to the physical as the only way in which possibility can be accorded a status in physical existence.’[110] Ultimately, Leclerc is saying that in the new conception of the physical (i.e., in the new conception of nature) potentiality has to be re-introduced, and, with it, the ‘abstract’, that is, the ‘conceptual or mental’ (i.e., perception, thought, feeling, emotion, etc. – see also note 105 above), is also reintroduced.
In the new conception of the physical (i.e., nature) potentiality has to be re-introduced; with it the ‘abstract’, that is the ‘conceptual or mental’ (i.e., perception, thought, feeling, emotion, etc.), is also reintroduced.
This vision of the physical existent in-between potentiality and actuality directly connects to the question of spatiality (i.e., ‘extendedness’), which is the next argument considered by Leclerc: it is by way of spatiality that our understanding of the physical existent in relation to concepts such as ‘continuity’ and ‘discreteness’ can be successfully approached and fully appreciated.
It is by way of spatiality that our understanding of the physical existent in relation to conceptions such as ‘continuity’ and ‘discreteness’ can be successfully approached and fully appreciated.
Leclerc takes into consideration again the pre-critical Kant’s conceptualization of ‘sphaera activitatis’ — sphere of activity — as an example of the connection between relation and extension, or spatiality. The sphere of activity of a monad defines its acting as contrasted to the sphere of activity of other monads; by acting, the substance, i.e., the monad, occupies a certain volume; it is this volume, derived by the activity of the monad in relation to its neighbours, that constitutes extension—it is not the monad which is extended per se. That is: ‘a substance is not in itself extensive… extension pertains rather to relations.’[111] Fundamentally, this understanding of extension as a modality of relation is common to Leibniz, Kant, and Whitehead. Nevertheless, Leclerc continues, to say that extension is relational does not mean that it is not grounded on substance; after all, that which acts and relates is the monad, which is substance. As we have already seen, while for Leibniz extensive relations are phenomenal (relations ‘must be ideas in the monads, and ultimately ideas in the divine creating monad’),[112] for Kant they are brought into being by the activity of the monads; but, regarding Kant, Leclerc notes, there is a difficulty: for monads to act on each other ‘implies that they must already have, antecedently to the acting, a situation in reference to each other which is presupposed in their acting… and not brought into being by the acting;’[113] therefore, Leclerc asks: ‘What, then, is the ontological status of the presupposed extendedness and relation of situation?… In what substance is this relation of situation grounded?’[114] That substance must be ultimately grounded in God: that is the answer common to Kant, Leibniz and Newton, Leclerc says.[115] Also, Whitehead arrived at a similar conclusion, with his notion of an ‘extensive continuum, which is a structure of all possible situations or standpoints relatively to each other’.[116]
Specifically, Whitehead speaks about the ‘extensive continuum’ in terms of ‘real potentialities relative to all standpoints co-ordinated as diverse determinations’,[117] that is, Leclerc explains, the extensive continuum ‘is a structure of all “possible” standpoints, which are actualized by substances in acting… The actualization is necessarily discrete […] but this scheme or structure of relatedness, as possible, is continuous. A “continuum” entails “possibility of division”; the division is actualized by acting.’[118] An important consequence of this doctrine is that, analogously to Leibniz, ‘extensiveness’ is not attributable to the material entity as such; rather, it ‘is the form which is actualized in the relating activity; it is the form of the acting whereby that acting actualizes an extensive relation’.[119] It is in virtue of this actualized form of relational acting that we can say that a relation is ‘extensive’; before actualization, ‘extensiveness’ is merely a possibility entertained by the substance in acting (i.e., an abstraction). Concerning the ground of this general structure of relatedness — the ‘extensive continuum’ — we already anticipated that Whitehead came to the same conclusion as Kant, Leibniz and Newton: ‘God is that actuality in the world, in virtue of which there is physical law’, that is: ultimately, it is God, according to Whitehead, that offers a fundamentum to the continuum.[120]
Below, I am going to repropose, a couple of conceptual schemes I made years ago, in an attempt to visualize the ‘continuum’ or ‘extensive continuum’ as the fabric of reality — the moment of union between and the passage from potentiality to actuality (see the article Place, Space, and the Fabric of Reality). I believe those images can help the reader in following Leclerc’s passages concerning the explanation of Whitehead’s concept of the ‘extensive continuum’.
Images 3-4: Possible interpretation of the ‘extensive continuum’as a structure of all possible situations or standpoints, which can be actualized (I mean the standpoints) and emerge from the continuum as discrete substance or matter. Overall, a question of continuity and discreteness, potentiality and actuality: continuous lines — Image 3 — represent the continuity of an infinite ocean of processes and all their possible standpoints; the intersections of lines represent moments of the relation between actings/processes, after which such actings/processes may (or may not) actualize into discrete entities, i.e., ‘facts’, things, entities or bodies — see Image 4. Leclerc is interpreting Leibniz, Kant and Whitehead by saying that it is because of actualization that we can speak of the extensiveness of entities and, by derivation, of extensiveness as such, and not because entities are extended per se. Ultimately, this means that the focus of this conception of the physical and of extension is on the entire process, the passage from potentiality to actuality, and not on the physical entity alone considered as the end of actualization, detached from the overall process out of which the finite, actual entity derives. I made those images years ago on the occasion of the article Place, Space, and the Fabric of Reality, to explain my vision of this Ur-place — the continuum or extensive continuum as the structure of all possible standpoints for their actualization into discrete entities — and they were useful and still valuable (at least to me), in the attempt to visualize and grasp the meaning of such articulated passages Leclerc is proposing, between physical and metaphysical questions, in connection with the doctrines of Leibniz, pre-critical Kant, and Whitehead.
Now, Leclerc puts forward his analysis of the extensive continuum in terms of place to show the fundamental closeness between the positions of Whitehead and Newton concerning spatiality. Leclerc says: ‘each physical existent “entertains” the generic form of extended relatedness in having a “situation” relatively to others from which it is able to act… it is by virtue of this that a physical existent has a “place”. The extensive continuum is the structure of every possible “where” and “when” […] so that the extensive continuum is the absolute structure of the “places” of things.’[121]
The extensive continuum is the structure of every possible “where” and “when” […] so that the extensive continuum is the absolute structure of the “places” of things
Here, Leclerc points out the closeness between Whitehead’s ‘extensive continuum’ and Newton’s absolute structure: while Whitehead preferred to use the term ‘standpoint’ or ‘situation’, rather than place, to describe that structure — the extensive continuum is a structure of all possible situations or standpoints relatively to each other — Newton profusely used the term ‘place’ in the Scholium: ‘All things are placed in time as to order of succession; and in space as to order of situation. It is from their essence or nature that they are places; and that the primary places of things should be movable, is absurd. These are therefore the absolute places; and transitions out of those places, are the only absolute motions.’[122] There is concordance for another important fact, Leclerc adds: both absolute structures are not actual entities (contrarily to later misconceived interpretations of Newton), and this is in agreement with the old, felt necessity to consider ‘place’ ontologically distinct from the physical, and, yet, to be ‘that in terms of which physical activity is determined, and the motion and measurability of the physical existents is derivable.’ [123]
I make a brief digression from Leclerc’s narration to confront it with my ‘spatial’ proposal (maybe ‘placial proposal’ is a more apt term, if only the word ‘placial’ were present on the pages of the main vocabularies). Specifically, my vision of place needs to be contextualized with respect to the ‘old, felt necessity to consider “place” ontologically distinct from the physical’, since, according to my perspective, there can be no real division between place and the physical entity in it — that’s why I ultimately say that place is the physical entity itself (place, is the place of processes after which there can be actualization into a discrete, concrete entity or form, which is the place of those processes, precisely). The distinction between place and the physical entity in it is only explicable in epistemological terms, or, to put it differently, that distinction is merely conceptual. According to me, after the process of actualization of an entity gets to an end, the emerging entity is one and undivided with its place. There is not an absolute place (or space) as an actual entity, just a multitude of places or ‘elemental things-places’ (I am appropriating a similar expression used by Edward Casey)[124] relative to each other; this is in complete agreement with what Leibniz, Whitehead or even Newton said — at least according to Leclerc’s ‘unconventional’ interpretation of Newton: in fact the traditional interpretation of Newtonian space as a physical entity overrides Newton’s real understanding of space, which was ultimately grounded on God, and, as such, a ‘spiritual’ or ‘abstract’ entity, rather than a ‘physical’ entity as we are used to seeing it. Returning to the ‘placial’ interpretation of mine, that implies a relative conception of the existents and their motions, whether we call those existents ‘places’ or ‘things/objects’. However, as Image 3 above suggests, I also admit a spatial (or, better, placial) structure as an infinite reservoir of possibilities for actualization: that is ‘the continuum’ generically defined in the picture as ‘PLACE of PROCESSES’ precisely, represented by the continuous lines upon which discrete entities emerge (the greyish fields at the crossroads of lines would represent the place of actualized processes). As far as I understand this structure, it seems to me it is not far from Whitehead’s ‘extensive continuum’, even if I prefer to imagine it as a conceptualization very much close to Plato’s ‘chōra’, the ‘receptacle’ or matrix, the reservoir of existence, in-between the actual and the potential, the concrete and the abstract, the sensible and the intelligible, or even the discrete (that which is actualized) and the continuous (that which is in a potential state, ready for actualization).[125] From all this, I hope it is clear that my conception of place has different levels of magnification which are mutually inclusive: it is a metaphysical concept, as well as physical, it is an epistemological concept as well as phenomenological; but it is also an architectural concept, as well as a literary concept, a political concept, a mathematical concept… This is fundamentally resumed by the motto ‘everything is a place: a place of processes’ (see the articles Places Everywhere and What Is Place? What Is Space?).
Coming back to Leclerc, he focuses again on the conception of substance or the physical existent as compound since it is this conception which has created a divide between the modern and contemporary understanding of nature, i.e., physis, the physical existent (there is a circularity — no to say a partial or total superposition of meanings — between the concepts of ‘substance’, ‘the physical existent’, and ‘nature’: one is implicated in the other since their meanings were fully or partially included in the original Greek term φύσις, physis; for the sake of philological and philosophical precision ‘substance’ is definitely traceable back to another Greek term, ousia, which is often interpreted as ‘underlying material entity’, or even as ‘being’ or ‘essence’, and it is especially this connotation which is connected with the ‘physical’ as understood in the origin by the Greeks). A compound entity is an entity composed of constituents; such constituents can be composed of entities themselves, and so on. However, Leclerc observes, ‘there cannot be an infinite regress of compound constituents. Ultimately, there must be simples as constituents’, that is there must be certain minima upon which the edifice of reality and knowledge is built. The question Leclerc wants to answer now is if in the theory advanced so far, on the basis of Aristotelian, Kantian, Leibnizian and Whiteheadian considerations, such minima or simple elements have to be considered in the guise of substances, that is unitary physical existents.
Are the elements of a compound substance to be regarded as being themselves substances?
In the concluding part of the previous Chapter, Leclerc has answered positively to the possibility of considering compounds as substance; here, the argument reverts to the elements of the compound substance and is attacked from the perspective of continuity/discreteness.
Before answering the question Leclerc makes a premise, functional to the answer, going back to Aristotle’s doctrine, and specifically to his conception of the physical, which we have already analyzed in a past article (see the paragraph The Nature of Physical Existence: PART II – The Concept of the Physical in Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence). Very briefly, Leclerc reminds some important points, already elaborated by Aristotle, which will be decisive to correctly approach the aforementioned question: 1) according to Aristotle, change is what characterizes the physical existent, and change implies some substratum underlying change: it is the permanence or continuity of the substratum that allows to discern the process of change of an existent; 2) the change (intrinsic to the physical existent) and the substratum of change must be different; 3) the substratum, according to Aristotle, had to be sought in the correlation of hylē (matter) and eidos (form) which determine the acting of the substratum itself — whether that acting is change, motion, generation, or perishing; ultimately, as we have synthesized in the aforementioned article, according to Aristotle, ‘form, imprinting on matter and allowing it to become actual, was the true reference of potentiality, that is, the true source of motion/change, and, as such, the very beingness of the natural beings (physis)’; 4) therefore, Leclerc says concluding the premise, ‘acting is the principle, source, of change; and this acting is the substratum of change, taking different forms.’[126] We are now in the position to answer that critical question for understanding better the nature of the physical existent, or substance: are the elements or simple constituents of a compound substance to be regarded as being themselves substances?[127]I will extendedly quote Leclerc’s passage to avoid misinterpretations: given the Aristotelian premise we have just considered ‘the elements must involve change in themselves; they do so by virtue of acting. Now since the elements are not the substratum, the substratum being the fundamental underlying activity, the actings of the elements must be the individualization of this substrate acting, and this means that they are individual units of acting. But to be units of acting implies that they must be unitary substances.’ [128] So, the answer to that question is affirmative. This, Leclerc concludes, accords with Aristotle, who said that ‘elements must be “ousiai”, substances’, and also with Whitehead, who maintained that ‘the elements of all compounds are the actual entities, that is, substances’, indeed the only substances according to Whitehead (here, the positions of Leclerc and Whitehead are slightly different, since, we have seen it before, Leclerc is proposing compounds to be substances as well).[129]
Leclerc takes his analysis forward, focusing on ‘the relation of constituent substances in a compound’, to show how he arrived at that conclusion. [130] To do that, he returns to the important question of spatiality, which is directly connected with the question of the nature of ‘substance’.
The question of spatiality is directly connected with the question of the nature of ‘substance’.
For a relation to occur, that is, for the activity or acting of a substance in reference to another, a place or situation from which the substance may exert its action in reference to others is necessarily presupposed; as we have already seen, the acting of a substance determine a volume or, better, a region (here, Leclerc says that he is adopting a spatial terminology inherited from Whitehead — ‘region’ instead of ‘volume’: the latter has a purely spacial connotation, while the term ‘region’ has within itself a temporal aspect — a ‘when’ associated with ‘where’). Leclerc reminds us what we already considered before in regard to Leibniz’s conceptualization of extension, or spatiality: extension or extensiveness is not an attribute of substance, but is a relation (as such, it is an abstract notion); this time, using Whitehead’s spatial terminology, Leclerc observes that a region is not extended because of the acting per se — extension is not an attribute of the acting — but ‘the extensiveness of the acting is derived from the extensive continuum, as an actualization of the possibility constituted by the extensive continuum.’[131] To put it differently, Leclerc is here unveiling spatiality (or placiality…) in terms of the connection between the potentiality and actuality of substances: potentiality regards the extensive continuum,i.e.,the substratum as a reservoir of possibility for acting — that is ‘a structure of all possible situations or standpoints’, to say it with Whitehead; actuality regards the actualization of a standpoint (as concrete and discrete elemental thing-place — I add). While the actual substance is an undivided unity (of acting), its substratum — the region (which is a place) in the extensive continuum (which is another place) — is indefinitely divisible (that’s why it is a continuum). The divisibility of a region, Leclerc continues, ‘implies the divisibility of the extensiveness of the acting into sub-actings’, but given that a substance is an undivided whole (see note 101 above, where it has been said that all main thinkers agree with the fact that unity is grounded in substance [which] means that unity is the unity of substance ), there must be a certain minimum, below which division is not possible and, therefore, it is not possible to admit the existence of substance as an actual entity (beyond that minimum division is not actually possible, it is only potentially possible). This also means that such a ‘minimum’ is the threshold between the actuality and potentiality of a substance; without it, without a certain minimum, ‘there could be no transition’ from potentiality to actuality Leclerc says.[132] In this way, Leclerc continues, can be consistently maintained ‘the atomicity of acting’, (and, as a result, the atomicity of substance) bypassing the problem of the indefinite divisibility of its substratum (the reservoir of infinite possibilities). Again, this is another way to remark that ‘extensiveness is not grounded in physical substance’ (the acting actualized into a substance) but is grounded on the acting of the substratum (i.e., the structure of all possible ‘standpoints’ out of which physical substance emerge). Even in this case, maybe, it could be useful to look at Image 3 above as a possible mean to visualize the process described above, granted that in that Image I made years ago, before reading Leclerc, I have traditionally used the term ‘physical matter’ instead of ‘substance’ (maybe I should have said ‘improperly used’, standing at the new perspective on the concept of the ‘physical’ we are considering here). So, Leclerc resumes, ‘if we take any substance and divide its acting, we must necessarily arrive at certain minima, minimal acts. To be minimal acts means that they must be minimal units of acting, and this implies that the minima must be substances. These minima will accordingly be the true elements.’ [133]
if we take any substance and divide its acting, we must necessarily arrive at certain minima, minimal acts. To be minimal acts means that they must be minimal units of acting, and this implies that the minima must be substances. These minima will accordingly be the true elements.
These ‘minimal units of acting’, or elements, are discrete entities, that is, actualized units which are manifest both in terms of acting and substantial form (this is what I call ‘the place of actualized processes’). What happens when these ‘true elements’ constitute a compound substance?
What happens when these ‘true elements’ constitute a compound substance?
It means that they are in relation with each other to constitute that compound, that is: their acting is analyzable in terms of ‘one unitary acting, the acting of the compound substance as an actual whole’, Leclerc says.[134] As we have said in a passage before, those component elements have a potential status as far as they concur to the unitary acting of the compound, which is the actual substance (for example, I say,the molecule of water: as soon as the compound substance, i.e., the physical existent as substance, ceases to exist, the component elements return to their actual and substantial nature of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘oxygen’, taken separately). Analogously, Leclerc continues, a compound substance may interact with other compound substances to create even more complex compound substances or physical existents. And so on. To sum up: ‘A compound substance is one single physical existent, having a single unitary acting and a single unitary form of that acting which is its “substantial form” …’.[135] This type of relationship between substances is what Whitehead termed ‘societies’, Leclerc adds. This particular type of processuality is what defines a systemic view of nature — I say—, which extends from concrete to abstract substances (from physicochemical to symbolic substances as the result of their respective processes): from a different point of view, and with a different language, Leclerc has just described what to be an emergent system made of parts means. Therefore, we are returning to the difference between a new organic and holistic conception of nature (or systemic I have also said), and the traditionally-modern mechanical and reductionist conception of nature, where the physical existent is merely considered in physical terms, as physically extended matter— or simply, physical matter, ultimately.
we are returning to the difference between a new organic and holistic conception of nature versus the modern, mechanical and reductionist conception of nature.
As Leclerc explicitly says: ‘this distinction made here between compounds as actual and their constituents as potential should be of the greatest importance in science in gaining an accurate understanding of the nature and status of the entities with which it is concerned’.[136] Then Leclerc continues what I consider a ‘gentle attack’ against the modern scientific vision of nature (i.e., the physical existent, ‘physis’) which implies a reductionist conception of it: ‘Current thinking in science continues to proceed upon the tacit presupposition of all compounds as aggregates, and supposes that there is no difference at all between an entity as constituent of a compound and not a constituent. Thus, characteristics which are found in entities separately are assumed to remain unchanged in a compound… this kind of assumption regarding the constituents can effectively hinder or block scientific understanding.’[137]
It is this new paradigm or vision of nature, of the physical existent, where spatiality is an intrinsic and fundamental character of substance (it has been explicitly unveiled by Leclerc) and where actuality and potentiality are mutually included (e.g., the example of the actual molecule of water and the elements in it, hydrogen and oxygen, as potential states as soon as they are in the compound), which I have taken as a reference to introduce the concept of ‘place as system’, an expression which can also be seen in terms of ‘substantial form’, given what we have learned in these pages: place as the place of processes – i.e., the extensive continuum as a place of processes, the place of possibility and potentiality, the place of all possible situations and standpoints, which may be actualized into discrete physical substances (‘physical’ in the extended sense of the original term ‘physis’ Leclerc is showing); in the case of a positive outcome of processes (i.e., acting), we may speak in terms of ‘actualized standpoints’ as physicochemical, biological, social or symbolic substance. This is what I mean when I say that place coincides with the thing (place=thing), that is, in actuality, place and the entity in it cannot be divided; they can only be divided or separated from each other at an ideal level (that is in ‘conceptual’, or even ‘potential’ terms — concerning the identification or superposition of meanings between the ‘ideal’ and the ‘potential or possible’ see the numerous passages above in reference to Leibniz, e.g., Chapter 20; see also note 110 above —…This kind of entertainment of possibility is that which we know in ourselves as “conceptual” or “mental”…).
In the final part of Chapter 25, Leclerc focuses on a few other distinctive features of the new conception of nature, of the physical, which is ‘in contrast with this modern doctrine of aggregates and unchanging elements’, i.e., material atomism.[138]
One important aspect of the new conception of nature, Leclerc continues, regards ‘the necessity to conceive substances and thus also elements as involving change in themselves. Fundamentally, this change is the kinēsis involved in the process of becoming’;[139] this necessity was already observed by Aristotle; in fact, concerning this important question of change and processuality intrinsic to the physical, Leclerc notes, the theory advanced so far fully accords with Aristotle and Whitehead. For instance, elements are atomic minima, that is, their acting, their kinēsis, is ‘a unitary whole of acting’; Whitehead also maintained that (‘epochal’ is the term used by Whitehead in this respect).[140] According to this theory, and analogously to Aristotle’s perspective on the nature of the physical, elements not only involve a change in themselves, kinēsis, but, in the case of natural elements, also involve the processes of coming into being (genesis) and perishing (phthora); concerning genesis, given that there can be no creation out of nothing, elements must be necessarily generated by changing into each other. Here, the similarity of approach with respect to Aristotle and Whitehead’s doctrine of processes continues if we consider that the perishing of an element constitutes the coming-into-being of another, Leclerc concludes.
Another relevant feature of Aristotle’s doctrine which, according to Leclerc, may be pertinent to the new conception of nature maintained here, is the question of ‘contrariety’ (the same is also held by Plato, in the Timaeus, where ‘such contraries, necessary to each other, play a fundamental role… in his theory of coming into being of the world’);[141] of course, the terms are not those of the Aristotelian qualitative pairs of contraries (hot/cold, wet/dry), but, Leclerc says, contraries seems a necessity in nature if we look at them in terms of electrical charges of fundamental particles, or maybe as characteristics of elementary particles that we still have to discover (e.g., in terms of particles/antiparticles, I add – I remind the reader that Leclerc’s book was published in 1972, and the conception and implementation of such an enormous intellectual effort certainly go back in time). Anyway, Leclerc concludes ‘it will be one of the tasks of future philosophy to give it adequate characterization’.[142]
Finally, Leclerc reconsiders the important question of acting and change, kinēsis, in connection with the question of (loco-) motion, continuity and discreteness. Here the theory he is advancing accords, for its main philosophical aspects, with Aristotle and diverges from Whitehead and Leibniz. Like Aristotle, Leclerc thinks locomotion (i.e., change of place) is one of the aspects of change of the physical existent, and it is not a category of its own; as such ‘it is integrally involved in the total process of becoming, of actualization, of physical existents.’[143] Therefore, locomotion, directly pertaining to the physical existent, and ‘running’ underneath the characterization of the physical existent in all its phases of existence, from potentiality to actuality, is potentially continuous, and actually ‘epochalized’, that is, discrete. The question is different for Leibniz and Whitehead, for whom locomotion is accorded a derivative status of the physical: according to their different doctrines, locomotion does not pertain to the physical existent (monads and actual entities, respectively) but pertains to ‘pluralities considered in relation to each other’.[144] And while, for Leclerc, locomotion has both aspects of continuity (in reference to potentiality) and discreteness or discontinuity (in reference to actuality), for Whitehead, locomotion is discontinuous, that is, discrete.[145] I observe that Zeno’s paradoxes on motion can be answered in terms of the difference between (mathematical) continuity and (physical) discreteness of the physical existent.
This question regarding potentiality and continuity on the one hand, and actuality and discontinuity or ‘discreteness’ (of the physical existent) on the other hand, is given a further inspection in connection with the analysis of the concepts of the infinite and the finite, which is the subject of the next Chapter 26.
26. Nature, the Infinite, and the Finite
One of the fundamental issues concerning our understanding of nature, of the physical, is the ontological status of ‘continuity’, Leclerc says, introducing the argument of the present chapter. This question, Leclerc continues, is directly connected to the relation of the physical and the mathematical, and the problem of the infinite. In different periods, different positions were elaborated on these subjects by many different authors.
Concerning Descartes, Leclerc says: ‘Descartes had brought all these [the physical and the mathematical] together in his ultimate physical existent, “res extensa”. In his doctrine “res extensa” was the physical actuality, and it was conceived as basically mathematical. As such it was both infinitely extended and essentially continuous. Thus, for Descartes continuity pertained to actuality, to physical actuality.’ [146] The result of this approach entailed ‘material atomism’ was impossible (that is, there is not a minimum in nature, given that divisibility is actually infinite). However, given that material atomism had been accepted as a philosophical basis for modern science, continuity had to be separated from the realm of actuality so that a different status had to be accorded to it (and to the mathematical — continuity ultimately regards ‘infinite divisibility’ which is a mathematically-based concept).
That division, Leclerc observed, was eventually elaborated in the XVIII century, when the conception of space was accorded an existence independent of physical matter: ‘space was accorded the features of infinite extension, continuity, and the mathematical’ (space became the ‘object of the science of mathematics’ Leclerc says),[147] while matter was accorded a separate reality. Therefore, in this doctrine, continuity did not pertain to physical actuality (matter), but to quasi-physical actualities such as space and time.
From a different perspective, Leibniz rejected both positions as ‘untenable’: his ‘Monadology’ was fundamentally an atomistic vision of nature, but, in the end, for Leibniz continuity pertained to possibility, not to actuality; as such, ‘its ontological status is that of ideality… he grounded continuity and the mathematical (infinity being included in this) in the mind of God’, Leclerc says.[148]
Immediately after this brief historical excursus, Leclerc explains what the position of the doctrine he has advanced so far says concerning the question of the ontological status of ‘continuity’. In the new conception of nature, of the physical existent, we are going to see, Leclerc’s aim is to reinstate some fundamental principles already considered by the Aristotelian conception of the natural, ‘physis’, and more recently, by Whitehead’s organic philosophy. Specifically, Leclerc wants to bring back an explicative function of the two principles (archai) intrinsic to the Aristotelian conception of the physical, that is hylē and eidos — i.e., matter and form (matter almost as ‘substance’, in the sense of raw material necessary in the construction of something, the ‘that out of which’ something derives even if still devoid of a determinateness of its own, and needing another correlative principle — this is eidos, ‘form’, precisely — to get determinateness).[149] Related to these principles, there is the question of the intrinsic understanding of the ‘physical existent’ in processual terms, where becoming and being, potentiality and actuality concurred to the elucidation of the very conception of the infinite (continuity/the mathematical) and the finite (discreteness/the physical, as full actuality). A quite complex program which requires some elucidation: this is the sense of the present Chapter.
Continuity, according to Leclerc, has to be elucidated with regard to ‘the theory of actings’ which ‘has brought us to the conception of the individual actings of the physical existent as the individualizations of an ultimate substrate acting’.[150] This ‘ultimate acting’ entails continuity, Leclerc says; also, ‘the generic form of extensiveness’ pertaining to the overall structure of such acting, i.e., the substrate — what Whitehead termed ‘extensive continuum’ — entails continuity. Leclerc focuses on the difference between these two forms of continuity, which do not exist in actuality. Leclerc wants to determine their status.
‘The ultimate substrate acting is not itself a substance, an actual existent; it is that from which all physical actual existents arise. This is to say that it is the source of actual existence.’[151] If we take Image 3, above, which I have already used as a reference to give visual support to Leclerc’s explanation, the ‘ultimate substrate acting’ is what I have defined as ‘the continuum’, by means of a continuous web of lines, i.e., the substrate that exists and out of which actual physical existents emerge (in that image, the ‘actual existents’ are represented by the greyish fields at the intersection of the continuous lines). That ‘substrate acting’ presents itself as a ‘spatial structure’ — the structure of all possible standpoints, i.e., the ‘extensive continuum’ properly, to use Whiteheadian terminology — that ‘spatial structure’ being ‘the generic form of extensiveness’ of the substrate. Without ‘the substrate acting’ (that is, without the underlying processuality or relational acting of the substrate) on the one hand, and ‘the form’ attached to such acting (that is, the ‘extensive spatiality’ with which such actings are ‘informed’ or given form) on the other hand, there is no actualization of the physical existent. Therefore, while the physical existent is actual, the ‘ultimate substrate acting’ and the correlated form of such acting do not exist in actuality. That distinction, Leclerc says, was already elaborated by Plato in the Timaeus and ‘systematically applied’ by Aristotle as ‘a distinction between actual physical existents on the one hand, and “archai”, principles, sources, on the other.’[152] While Plato had maintained principles (archai) to be ‘the forms’ and ‘the receptacle’ — i.e., the recipient of form — ‘Aristotle had maintained that the ultimate “archai”, sources, from which “ousiai” or actual existents come into being are “hylē”, matter, and “eidos”, form.’ [153] Returning to Image 3, above, to be used as a visual reference for the elucidation of these passages, the actual, physical existent (i.e., substance), or ‘ousia’, is represented by the greyish fields, which, in that image, I have called with the ‘ambiguous’ modern terminology ‘physical matter’ (as we have already seen in the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence, and as we are going to see almost immediately, the meaning of the term ‘matter’ was subjected to heavy distortions in the passage from Aristotle to modernity, so that the modern and traditional sense of the term ‘matter’, which is the sense I have used in Image 3 to denote the actual existents, is somewhat different from the sense attributed to it by the term ‘hylē,’ as a Greek equivalent term for ‘matter’), while the two archai would be: 1) on the one hand, ‘the ultimate substrate acting’ — corresponding to the Aristotelian ‘hylē’ and/or the Platonic ‘receptacle’— that is the overall and generic processuality underlying the web of lines out of which actual entities emerge; 2) on the other hand, spatiality as a generic form of extensiveness, which I have termed ‘the continuum’ to specifically denote the correlative spatial aspect to the underlying ‘processual’ structure — the character of this second archē corresponds to the Aristotelian ‘eidos’ and/or the Platonic ‘form’. To justify the apparent contradiction between the terminology I have used in Images 3 — ‘physical matter’ to denote the actuality of the physical existent, in the material sense — and the Aristotelian terminology used so far (hylē/matter as a ‘principle’ or ‘source’ instead of an actual existent) we need to point out, with Leclerc, that in the XVII century the ontological sense of ‘matter’ was almost overturned with respect to the original Aristotelian sense (that’s the reason for the apparent ontological contradiction between the sense of the word ‘matter’ I have used in actual terms, and the sense of the word ‘hylē’-as-matter as originally used by Aristotle, in potential terms); the result of that ‘overturning’ of meanings was that ‘hylē’ and ‘eidos’, matter and form, the two Aristotelian ‘archai’, principles, or sources were conceived themselves as actual existents transforming ‘hylē’ into ‘material substance’ and ‘eidos’ in ’spiritual substance’; therefore, from ‘archai’ — principles, and as such conceptual elements — they became ousiai — physical substances as actual existents, that is ‘physical’ or ‘material’ existents we would say today. However, the necessity for an ‘archē’, a founding principle or source for the existent and its changes, was still felt to maintain some logical coherence intrinsic to the original (Aristotelian) understanding of the physical existent (archai>ousiai): so, God, the transcendent God, became the archē — the principle, source of change and motion for the physical existent. However, from the XVIII century onward, Leclerc continues, that ontological and logical necessity was almost lost, analogously to what happened to the interpretation of the Newtonian conception of space (see the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence, specifically the part concerning ‘space’ in the paragraph The Modern Conception of Nature): the role of God ceased to play a part in the cosmological thought and, with it, the necessity of an archē also ceased. ‘Contemporary thought is paying a heavy price for the continued neglect of this necessity of an archē’, Leclerc concludes. [154]
As a consequence of this lack of philosophical insight and coherence, the necessity for a new conception of nature, of the physical, emerged; a conception which is able to recover and associate ‘principles’ with the ‘substantial existent’. And this is the reason why Leclerc appeals to Aristotle’s and Whitehead’s doctrines, ultimately. Whitehead, Leclerc says, was one of the few recent thinkers who managed to answer that philosophical, critical issue, which almost got unnoticed by many modern and contemporary thinkers: ‘creativity’ (Whitehead’s term for the never-ending processuality behind physical existents) and ‘eternal objects’ (that is, ‘forms’) were the archai, sources or principles, in Whitehead’s doctrine; while ‘actual entities’ were ousiai, actual substances — we would say in reference to the terminology we have used so far. By appealing to the original distinctions brought about by Aristotle, and in full accord with Whitehead’s understanding of the archai, Leclerc keeps on advancing his own theory in respect of the archai: ‘the sources of physical existence are 1) the ultimate acting and 2) form – the form or character of the acting. In this view the ultimate substrate acting is not itself actual; it is not an “ousía”, substance, physical existent, but the source, “archē”.’ [155] Not being actual, the ‘ultimate acting’, as a source or principle, is ‘eternal’, without genesis (or perishing). Conversely, Leclerc continues, ‘coming into being pertains to the “ousiai”, the physical existents’, which emerge from the ‘ultimate acting’ associated with ‘form’ – the spatial structure of acting as the scheme of all possible standpoints, to say it with Whitehead.[156] In Leclerc’s explanation, while ‘form’ represents the realm of possibility before an existent becomes actual, the ‘ultimate acting’ represents the very potentiality for an existent to exist. So, there is a distinction, here, between potentiality, as ‘the ultimate acting’, and possibility, as the possible standpoint — therefore, the ‘spatial form’ — of such acting: according to Leclerc, these are the two principles, sources (archai) of the physical existent which need another principle (another archē) for the existent to become fully actual. Or, to put it differently: what is potential and possible needs another correlative factor to pass from the realm of potentiality and possibility to that of actuality. That correlative factor is termed by Leclerc a ‘third archē’. Before introducing this third archē, Leclerc focuses on the difference between pure ‘potency’ or ‘potentiality’ on the one hand, and ‘possibility’ on the other hand: ‘to say that this ultimate substrate acting is “potential” implies, in the first place, that it is the “potency” whereby, and in virtue of which, there is actuality… as such, this ultimate substrate acting is pure potency.’[157] That ‘ultimate substrate acting’, that ‘potentiality’ which is one of the archai, is correlated with the other principle, the other archē — the source of the generic form of extensiveness (i.e., form, the form of spatial and temporal extension) as the ‘scheme of all possible standpoints’; that is, it means that ‘there can be no definite, individual acting unless it be in a particular “where” and at a particular “when”.’[158] Pure potency (the ultimate acting) and pure extensiveness (the ultimate acting informed by the continuum as the structure of all possible standpoints, in terms of which it is possible to speak of the where and when of acting) are the two archai which we must consider ‘infinite’ (and continuous); as such, they are namely pure potentiality and possibility awaiting for actualization.
Coming back to Image 3, above, which I am using to have visual support for Leclerc’s physical/metaphysical explanation, what I have termed ‘the continuum’ renders 1) the basic processuality of the realm of existence, or ‘the ultimate acting’, which is a processual progression that includes a temporal factor and a spatial factor; these two factors constitute 2) the extensive form of acting, that is, the spatiotemporal structure of all possible standpoints of the existent, which Whitehead termed ‘extensive continuum’; those standpoints may eventually be 3) fully actualized into material/physical existents (what I have termed as ‘physical matter’ and which I have characterized by: ex/in-tension, duration and localization. Here, in/ex-tension is the acquired character coming from the force or dynamis, i.e., the substrate acting — that is, the first source or archē; while duration and localization are the acquired characters from the form of extensiveness, the where and when of acting — that is, the other source or archē).
As briefly mentioned before, in order for those two (potential and possible) sources, or archai (the potentiality of the ultimate substrate acting, and its possibility of being ‘informed’ as different extensive forms of acting) to become actual, a third principle, that is, a third archē is necessary, according to Leclerc: that third archē must be a ‘telic’ factor, that is, ‘telos’, end. All this reminds us of Aristotle’s conception of the physical, between potentiality (change and becoming) and actuality (being), or to use even more specific Aristotelian terminology, between dynamis (potentiality), entelecheia (to reach for an end) and energeia (the successful end as actuality). That ‘end’, that ‘telos’ is not contained in potentiality, but must be an opposite principle with respect to potentiality and possibility expressed by the ultimate substrate acting and its informed status; that is, it must be a principle in full actuality, or a principle which is able to translate a potentially specific unit of acting into a full actuality, a substantial existent, i.e., substance, ousía. Specificity also means finiteness and discreteness: that is what actualization consists of, ultimately. Here, in part, we have already answered Leclerc’s question on how to conceive that third archē, source or principle of the physical: ‘the third principle must be contrary of potentiality. This, as Aristotle pointed out, can only be pure actuality. To say that it is “pure” actuality is to say that it is actuality devoid of potentiality. This principle must exclude potentiality, for potentiality entails that it might not be… This third principle provides the necessity of actualization […] by being the source of ends […] the third principle… must be itself an individual actualization, that is, en-action, of all ends… It is pure actuality because, without any potentiality and thus process of becoming, it is pure enacting of ends. This, too, is Aristotle’s doctrine in conceiving this “archē” or principle as “energeia”, without “dynamis” or “kinesis”… For him too it was an individual enaction, and hence he referred to it as an “ousía”.’ [159]
Focusing on the details of the conjoint operation of the three archai to understand the new conception of the physical, i.e., nature, I call the readers’ attention to Leclerc’s argumentation regarding the intrinsic value of spatiality attached to such archai (especially in the placial sense that I call for at RSaP). The relational, placially-based, structure of existence that I am hypothesizing — nature as a systemic place of processes —, and which has many points in common with the narration made so far by Leclerc on the base of Aristotelian and Whiteheadian analysis, pertains to both actuality, potentiality and possibility. When I say that any entity, since the very first coming into being (presence as becoming, i.e., ‘coming into being’), should be thought of in terms of processuality — i.e., the place of processes — I am not speaking of anything different from the ‘ultimate substrate acting’ Leclerc is speaking about, a realm of potentiality and becoming. This is one aspect of the existent-as-acting — which I usually call ‘place of processes’ — is one of the archai. The entire range of possibilities for a physical existent (i.e., the place of processes, again, see Images 3 and 4 for a visual reference) to come into being is further delimited (before I have spoken of ‘processual progression’) by the specific place, within the structure of all possible standpoints (i.e., the ‘continuum’ or the ‘extensive continuum’ to say it with Whitehead), associated with such ‘existent-as-acting’. Such spatial or, better, placial structure which ‘informs’ acting is the other archē, in the scheme I’ve used above, Image 3, i.e., ‘the continuum’;[160] this archē, which is fundamentally a correlative, spatial/formal principle to acting, is necessary as the ultimate step before actualization occurs. Behind that ‘formal/spatial’ principle, there is a ‘placial structure’ precisely: that structure, the continuum or ‘extensive continuum’, is fundamentally a place… After all, Whitehead himself has called the ‘extensive continuum’ ‘a structure of all possible situations or standpoints’ – these two terms being ‘placial’ terms: specifically, we have already seen in the past historical articles that the static root ‘sta’ is originally connected with the sense of the word ‘place’ – Back to the Origins of Space and Place. That’s why I specifically call that structure a ‘place’ (of processes). Leclerc’s approach concerning the fundamental spatial value of the processuality pertaining to the physical existent is close to the interpretation that I’m arguing for here, in more specific and straightforward ‘placial’ terms. To say it with Leclerc, this fundamental passage from potentiality and possibility to actuality, ‘the process of becoming of each physical existent, in all its specificity, is determined by its place (that is, “where” and “when”) in reference to others, in an ever-widening order of generality of relatedness. Every aspect of its specific definiteness, that is its individual form or character, is necessarily involved in a continuous progression to ever greater generality of relatedness. Each specific aim, therefore, is entailed in the general relatedness as a “limit”. It is such a “limit” in the general structured relatedness that the individual aim derives to the physical existent from the ultimate source of aim.’[161] Concerning the progressive and more specific passage from potentiality to possibility (therefore, the ultimate substrate acting becomes an informed substrate acting, that is, spatiality ‘informs’ the acting substrate in a spatiotemporal sense), and, from here, to actuality (therefore that specific acting emerges into substance, ousía, passing from a potential and possible state to an actual state) I also would like to point out Leclerc’s use of the term ‘limit’, which is a notion on which the concept of place has been originally built upon, by Aristotle. So, I am saying, a limit defines the specific place in reference to a specific, discreet or finite physical existent, in full actuality. To this specific ‘placial entity’, substance or ousía, corresponds what I call the place of actualized processes (according to the particular types of processes actualized we may speak of physicochemical, biological, social or symbolic physical existents, or entities).
Let’s see how Leclerc characterizes the presence of the physical existent into the realm of actuality, and how he focuses on the relational legacy that the physical existent retains with the underlying structure, out of which it derives: ‘each physical existent must be seen as in its relational acting manifesting a perspective of the structured order determining the relations of all physical existents. Now the aim determining the relational acting of each physical existent is in a primary aspect constituted by its “entertainment” of that ordered structure in its perspective. Thereby is derived its place, its “where” and “when”, and thus its “situs” with reference to others, which is presupposed in its acting. Thus the full character or form of a physical existent in its relational acting will necessarily be implicated in the generic form of relatedness; its character will be separable from this only in abstraction.’[162] Concerning this final part of the quotation, as I have always maintained since the very first articles of this website, it is evident and inalienable the intimate relationship between the physical existent (what we generally call ‘thing’, ‘object’ or even, somehow improperly, ‘physical matter’) and place: any division between thing and place can only be imagined but never really actuated. This is the sense of the expression I often use ‘place and things are the same’ or, analogously, this is the ultimate truth behind the expression ‘Places Everywhere’, which is also one of the first articles at RSaP.
To sum up, Leclerc’s specific position on the processuality behind the physical existent, or physical existence, he has shown that potentiality concerning the ‘ultimate substrate acting’ (a source, principle, or archē) is correlated with the ‘general structured order’ or ‘form’, which is the source of possibility (a second principle, or archē); then, ‘in conjunction with a third “archē”, that is, as “entertained” in pure actuality, form constitutes the aim of physical existence.’[163]
On the basis of the distinctions elaborated so far, Leclerc says, ‘we are able to have an understanding of the ontological status of continuity, and of the relation of the mathematical to the physical, which avoids the difficulties besetting the philosophies of the modern period.’[164] Ultimately, we are dealing with principles or sources (archai), on the one hand, and physical actuality or substances (ousiai), on the other hand; potentiality and possibility, on the one hand, and actuality, on the other hand; continuity and discreteness; infinity and finiteness; the mathematical and the physical. Following Leclerc, we could say that continuity and infinity pertain primarily to potentiality, and not to actuality. Conversely, discreteness and finiteness belong primarily to actuality since, as we have just seen, an existent must be necessarily discrete and finite, while the processuality behind it is certainly potential and offers a sea of possibilities (‘formal’ and as such, spatiotemporal possibilities) to its future actualization. The entire doctrine developed so far, if, on the one hand, wants to offer the instruments to correctly discern the differences we have seen and that haunted previous philosophical and scientific doctrines, on the other hand, aims at transcending those differences putting them together organically into a single, unique, coherent picture of nature — i.e., the physical existent, or ‘physis’ — which goes beyond old unresolved dualisms. As a matter of fact, since the beginning, the doctrine envisioned by Leclerc on the basis of minor but meaningful amendments to Aristotelian, Leibnizian, Kantian, and Whiteheadian doctrines has been precisely elaborated to think at those differences in correlative terms, that is as elements working reciprocally to have a coherent, unitary vision of nature (here, I call back to your mind the doctrine of ‘antagonism and unity’ elaborated by Heidegger in the Introduction to Metaphysics – see especially Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part Two, The Limitation of Being). This fundamental ‘oneness’, this negation of the separation of counterparts, is specifically evoked by Leclerc in one of the concluding passages of the book: ‘in this theory the discrete and the continuous are not separated as they are in the ruling modern philosophy — that which still dominates though in science — into two kinds of existents. Such a conception involves completely insuperable difficulties, as we have seen. The distinction needs to be, not between two or more kinds of physical actuality (or quasi-physical actuality), but between physical actuality on the one hand, and “archai”, sources, of that actuality, on the other, thereby potentiality is not separated from actuality, but potentiality is involved in actuality as that which is actualized. Thus, what is continuous becomes discrete in actualization.’[165] Concerning the structure of all possible standpoints — i.e., the ‘continuum’ or, as Whitehead calls it the ‘extensive continuum’ — this is essentially a ‘mathematical’ structure, it is not ‘physical’ (in the usual sense of ‘material’), and this is fundamentally in accord with Leibniz. Therefore, space or, I add, spacetime are not ‘physical’, and they are not even ‘attributes of substance’, as Leibniz, Kant or Whitehead have taught us; they are relational structures, and as such, abstract structures. This means that they are fundamentally symbolic devices, that is abstract notions or concepts, to speak about the concrete facts of reality. No ‘space’ or ‘spacetime’ really exists there. This also means that ‘the physical universe [is not] infinitely extended, for it entails conceiving of extension as an attribute… extension is a relation, not an attribute. A relation cannot be infinite since it entails terms.’ [166] Leclerc’s criticism directed toward the cultural movement represented by A. Koyré’s From the closed World to the Infinite Universe is direct and evident; however, Leclerc immediately circumscribes his criticism within an appropriate historical perspective, by referring to conceptions that were functional or ‘consonant with a stage in the development of science.’[167] Things are now different, Leclerc continues: ‘Scientific thought in the twentieth century has entered a new stage, in which the old conception of nature has become most seriously restrictive’ — [168] that is the reason for the present study (that is the reason for a new concept of place, space and matter I say – that is the reason for a website like this one, RSaP).
I want to pay a final tribute to the present work by Leclerc, which I consider a highly underrated work, closing this long report of The Nature of Physical Existence by pointing out the words used by Leclerc himself to briefly sum up the plan of this work:[169]
The present inquiry has brought out that every theory of nature, of physical existence, is necessarily faced with the fundamental issues of continuity and discreteness, of the infinite and the finite, of the relation of the mathematical to the physical and also, of “archai”, sources, issues which are closely interconnected.
In the light of these issues, the modern conception of the physical as matter has been shown to entail a separation of continuity from the discrete, of the finite from the infinite, of the mathematical from the physical, separations which are bridgeable only by appeal to a transcendent “archē” [i.e., God]. To the extent to which this conception of the physical existence is retained, explicitly or tacitly, these implications will continue to have their effect on thought. The consequences in contemporary science are considerable.
What is needed is a conception of nature as essentially in becoming (and not as changeless actuality), that is, involving a process of “kinēsis” (and not merely moving from place to place) and as having the “archē”, source of its “kinēsis” in itself (and not transcendent) – an “archē” which must be understood in a three-fold aspect.
27. The Philosophy of Nature
This brief, conclusive chapter of PART IV of Leclerc’s The Nature of Physical Existence is simply a consideration regarding the necessity to bring back into the forefront and restore the intrinsic scientific and philosophical relevance of the philosophy of nature since science and philosophy ‘are not two independent enterprises […] but two complementary and mutually dependent aspects’ of one unique inquiry:[170] the inquiry into nature. Part of the forthcoming article will be specifically dedicated to this question.
Even on this final point, I’m in complete agreement with Leclerc: to speak about the phenomena of nature without having a grasp of the fundamentals of scientific and philosophical thinking is a desperate enterprise which can only get us far from knowledge and truth (the horizon of nature is as extended as we can imagine, in the range from physicochemical processes and entities to symbolic processes and entities — which are an exclusively human realm —, passing through biological and social processes and entities, to begin with).
I hope this article may have aroused the interest of the curious and careful reading public, and move them to read the original version of the book, which is available at this link. Those who are interested in a detailed synoptic table of PART IV can ask for it contacting me via the CONTACT form, from the menu above.
Image 5: Leclerc, Ivor. The Nature of Physical Existence. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972.
Notes
[1] Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972), 240.
[2] Ibid., 251.
[3] Ibid., 242
[4] Ibid., 242-43.
[5] Ibid., 243.
[6] Ibid., 244.
[7] Ibid., 244.
[8] Ibid., 247-248.
[9] Ibid., 248.
[10] Ibid., 249.
[11] Ibid., 249-50.
[12] Ibid., 250-51.
[13] Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. 179.
[14] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 251.
[15] Ibid., 251-252.
[16] Ibid.,252.
[17] Milič Čapek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 1969).
[18] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 253.
[19] Ibid., 254-255.
[20] Ibid.,256.
[21] Ibid.,257.
[22] Ibid.,258.
[23] Ibid.,259.
[24] Ibid.,259.
[25] Ibid.,260.
[26] Ibid.,260.
[27] Ibid.,260.
[28] Ibid.,261.
[29] Ibid.,265.
[30] Ibid.,266.
[31] Ibid.,266.
[32] Ibid.,266.
[33] Ibid.,266.
[34] Ibid.,267.
[35] Ibid.,268.
[36] Ibid.,268.
[37] Ibid.,269.
[38] Ibid.,269-70.
[39] Ibid.,270.
[40] Ibid.,267.
[41] Ibid.,271-272.
[42] Ibid.,272.
[43] Ibid.,273.
[44] Ibid.,273.
[45] Ibid.,273.
[46] Ibid.,274.
[47] Ibid.,275.
[48] Ibid.,275.
[49] Ibid.,277.
[50] Ibid.,277.
[51] Ibid.,278.
[52] Ibid.,278.
[53] Ibid.,279.
[54] Ibid.,280.
[55] James Van Cleve, Robert Frederick eds., The Philosophy of Right and Left: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 1991), vii.
[56] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 280.
[57] Ibid.,281.
[58] Ibid.,281.
[59] Ibid.,282.
[60] Ibid.,283.
[61] Ibid.,285.
[62] Ibid.,285.
[63] Ibid.,286.
[64] Ibid.,286.
[65] Ibid.,286.
[66] Ibid.,287.
[67] Ibid.,287.
[68] Ibid.,288.
[69] Ibid.,288.
[70] Ibid.,288.
[71] Ibid.,289.
[72] Ibid.,289.
[73] Ibid.,289.
[74] Ibid.,292.
[75] Ibid.,293.
[76] Ibid.,293.
[77] Ibid.,294.
[78] Ibid.,294.
[79] Ibid.,294.
[80] Ibid.,295.
[81] Ibid.,295-296.
[82] Ibid.,296.
[83] Ibid.,296.
[84] Ibid.,297.
[85] Ibid.,297.
[86] Ibid.,298.
[87] Ibid.,299.
[88] Ibid.,299.
[89] Ibid.,299.
[90] Ibid.,299.
[91] Ibid.,299. In this sense, the organism is a system, that is, an emergent unity made of parts which are ‘organs’ (from the Greek ‘organon’, instrument); this means that a unity is more than the simple addition of its constituent parts. The new unity is a ‘system’ according to the traditional definition. This is to be contrasted with the conception of a machine, which is the simple addition of mechanical parts working without reference to the machine (that is without any ‘idea’ of the substantial form they are subjected to).
[92] Ibid.,299.
[93] This is Leibniz’s definition of an organic body, such as an animal: ‘And each outstanding simple substance or monad which forms the centre of a compound substance (such as an animal, for example), and is the principle of its uniqueness, is surrounded by a mass composed of an infinity of other monads which constitute the body belonging to this central monad, corresponding to the affections by which it represents, as a kind of centre, the things which are outside of it. This body is “organic” when it forms a kind of automaton or natural machine, which is a machine not only as a whole but also in its smallest observable parts.’ Ibid., 300.
[94] Ibid., 300.
[95] Ibid., 301.
[96] Ibid., 301.
[97] Ibid., 302.
[98] Ibid., 303.
[99] Ibid., 305.
[100] Ibid., 310.
[101] Ibid., 310.
[102] Ibid., 310-311.
[103] Ibid., 311.
[104] Ibid., 313.
[105] Ibid., 314.
[106] Ibid., 314.
[107] Ibid., 314.
[108] Ibid., 315.
[109] Ibid., 315.
[110] Ibid., 310.
[111] Ibid., 318.
[112] Ibid., 319.
[113] Ibid., 319.
[114] Ibid., 319.
[115] Ibid., 319.
[116] Ibid., 320.
[117] Ibid., 321.
[118] Ibid., 321.
[119] Ibid., 321.
[120] Ibid., 321.
[121] Ibid., 321-322.
[122] Ibid., 323.
[123] Ibid., 323.
[124] Edward S. Casey, Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 216: ‘Take a mountain: is it a thing or a place? It is an elemental thing-place’. I extend this possibility to any entity, from small, or micro to big, or macro (see the article Places Everywhere).
[125] Regarding this possibility, I redirect you to Casey’s description of Platos’ Timaeus, in Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997) 40-49.
[126] Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence, 325.
[127] Ibid., 324.
[128] Ibid., 325-326.
[129] Ibid., 326.
[130] Ibid., 326.
[131] Ibid., 326.
[132] Ibid., 327.
[133] Ibid., 327.
[134] Ibid., 328.
[135] Ibid., 328.
[136] Ibid., 328-329.
[137] Ibid., 329.
[138] Ibid., 329.
[139] Ibid., 329.
[140] Ibid., 329.
[141] Ibid., 330.
[142] Ibid., 330.
[143] Ibid., 332.
[144] Ibid., 332.
[145] Ibid., 332.
[146] Ibid., 334.
[147] Ibid., 334.
[148] Ibid., 335.
[149] Regarding the Aristotelian conception of ‘physis’, the physical existent, see the initial part of the paragraph The Nature of Physical Existence: PART II – The Concept of the Physical (Summary) of the article Concepts of Place, Space, and the Nature of Physical Existence.
[150] Ibid., 335.
[151] Ibid., 336.
[152] Ibid., 336.
[153] Ibid., 336.
[154] Ibid., 336.
[155] Ibid., 337.
[156] Ibid., 337.
[157] Ibid., 337.
[158] Ibid., 337.
[159] Ibid., 341-342.
[160] I prefer to speak in terms of placial structure since that is fundamentally a place… After all, Whitehead himself calls the extensive continuum ‘a structure of all possible standpoints’: we have already seen, in the past historical and linguistic articles, that the static root ‘sta-’ is originally connected with the sense of the word ‘place’ – in Back to the Origins of Space and Place.
[161] Ibid., 343.
[162] Ibid., 344.
[163] Ibid., 344.
[164] Ibid., 344.
[165] Ibid., 345.
[166] Ibid., 347.
[167] Ibid., 347.
[168] Ibid., 347.
[169] Ibid., 347-348.
[170] Ibid., 351.
Works Cited
Čapek, Milič. The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics. Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Company Inc., 1969.
Casey, Edward S. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.
—. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Heidegger, Martin. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Gregory Fried, and Richard Polt. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Leclerc, Ivor. The Nature of Physical Existence. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972.
—. The Philosophy of Nature. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986.
Van Cleve, James, and Frederick, Robert. The Philosophy of Right and Left: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space. Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 1991.
Image Credits
Featured Image: German archaeologist Maria Reiche studying the Nazca Lines from the top of a ladder. Photography by Bruce Chatwin (Credits: Bruce Chatwin / Trevillion Images).
Image 2 by Luis Quintero, on Unsplash.com
Image 5 (source) on Amazon.com
All other Images by Alessandro Calvi Rollino, CC BY-NC-SA
