Take a mountain: is it a thing or a place? It is an elemental thing-place. The mountain looms before us as a massive place for things and as itself a thing. It looms as a Thing of things, just as stones and lichen on stones are in turn things of this Thing. Furthermore, just as such determinate things as rocks have and make their own determinate places, so a monumental mountain-Thing is a place of its own, albeit a nondeterminate place: where exactly does a mountain begin or end?
EDWARD S. CASEY, Getting Back into Place.
I will dedicate this final article on Ivor Leclerc’s work to the central arguments presented in his 1986 book The Philosophy of Nature. In the concluding section, I will also introduce a short paper, written by Leclerc in the same year, which explores the relationship between metaphysics and contemporary physics. The Philosophy of Nature is, in part, a compilation of previously published essays that revisit the foundational arguments Leclerc first addressed in his 1972 book The Nature of Physical Existence. In addition to these earlier works, the book includes new sections that examine ‘issues and problems in the philosophy of nature which have come increasingly to the fore in our time.’[1] In these newer contributions, Leclerc advances his metaphysical and scientific interpretation of nature, building upon and refining the framework already outlined in The Nature of Physical Existence (see Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence and Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature).
The decision to conclude this series of articles with an examination of Ivor Leclerc’s The Philosophy of Nature is not incidental. His work offers a rigorous metaphysical framework that aligns closely with the systemic, process-oriented approach underpinning my reflections on place, space, and architecture. By addressing the deep structure of nature through the elucidation of the concepts of matter, space, and place, Leclerc indirectly provides an opportune philosophical grounding for context-sensitive disciplines and knowledge, including architecture.
Image 1: Leclerc, Ivor. The Philosophy of Nature. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986.
What Leclerc proposes—drawing on fundamental philosophical issues and on the major scientific revolutions of the past century, from special and general relativity to quantum physics—is a systemic, organic, and anti-reductionist conception of nature. This is precisely the conception I pursue at RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place, one that requires rethinking traditional concepts such as matter, place, space, and time. Explaining these concepts in their renewed sense, uncovering the reasons for their transformation, and—above all—showing how they connect to the emergence of a new conception of nature were key motivations for creating this website. On these grounds, the clarification of spatial concepts is not only critical to architecture, but also to a wide range of other disciplines.
Given the specific focus of my research, I will examine in greater detail several essays from The Philosophy of Nature, particularly those addressing the concepts of space, place, and matter. My aim is to show how these concepts are directly tied to the new conception of nature that has been emerging since the early 20th century, shaped by major scientific discoveries. As I have discussed in earlier articles—Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence and Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature—the notions of space and place are inseparable from those of matter, motion, and time. Each of these concepts is rooted in the prevailing human understanding of nature within a given historical epoch.
The interconnection of place, space, matter, and time has been a central concern of my research from the very beginning. Even before engaging with specific metaphysical or scientific frameworks, I approached these questions through my own reasoning, developing early arguments for rethinking space and place in articles such as Places Everywhere—Everything Is Place, and The Place of a Thing (and, more speculatively, in Place, Space and the Fabric of Reality). There, I came to realize the impossibility of separating matter from place and time (in the sense of duration) without resorting to an extreme mental abstraction—an abstraction that ultimately turns back upon, and distorts, our understanding of the environment, which is itself grounded in (our understanding of) place and space. This distortion, as current ecological and climatic crises make evident, carries consequences of the highest relevance.
In nature, wherever there is matter, there is place; and wherever there is place, there are ongoing processes involving change or motion — and therefore the passage of time. This underlies my recurring mottos, ‘things are places’ or ‘everything is place,’ which in turn support my broader proposition, ‘places everywhere.’ While abstract reasoning allows us to distinguish between a thing, its place, and the processes it contains (or that constitute it), in reality these cannot be separated. Their division is a conceptual operation — a product of abstract knowledge — rather than a reflection of the way natural existents actually are.[2] From this apparent contrast between the abstract and the concrete arises a dual perspective: place can be conceived as an abstract dimension, and thus divisible from matter, or as a natural fact — a concrete occurrence — and thus inseparable from matter.
Concerning the book, Leclerc’s The Philosophy of Nature is organized into three main parts. PART I — INTRODUCTORY outlines the meaning and historical importance of the philosophy of nature, providing a framework for the arguments developed in the rest of the book. PART II — HISTORICAL examines the conception of nature beginning with the original Greek notion of physis. Here, Leclerc explores its connection to the concept of matter, the ancient division between physical and spiritual matter (the root of the body–mind or body–soul dualism), material atomism, and the idea of the body as a compound, as well as the relationship between matter, motion, and the concepts of place and space. This section serves as a condensed synthesis of the historical discussions Leclerc had previously developed in the book The Nature of Physical Existence. PART III — ISSUES builds on contemporary scientific evidence — aligned with insights from Aristotle, Leibniz, the pre-critical Kant, and Whitehead — to advance Leclerc’s metaphysical argument for a new conception of nature, or physis. This includes rethinking the very notions of matter (whether as simple constituents or compound bodies), place, space, and motion. Looking ahead, Leclerc advocates for a renewed convergence between science and philosophy, through the revival of the philosophy of nature. He envisions this collaboration as essential for articulating a unified conception of nature—physis, one capable of overcoming the entrenched dualisms that have fragmented our understanding of nature since the modern era.[3]
PART I – INTRODUCTORY
1. The Philosophy of Nature
The book opens with a chapter sharing the same title as the concluding chapter of The Nature of Physical Existence: The Philosophy of Nature. Leclerc’s aim is explicit — to restore to prominence a field of inquiry essential for steering human knowledge out of the shallows into which it drifted during the modern epoch, particularly after dualism became an unspoken foundation of thought and understanding. In this opening, Leclerc retraces the development of the study of nature from Aristotle through Descartes and Newton. Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy (1644), he notes, was ‘largely devoted’ to the philosophy of nature, while Newton explicitly invoked it in the title of his groundbreaking Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687). Up to the 17th century — and well into the 18th — the investigation of nature was a joint scientific and philosophical endeavor; then, it ‘abruptly ceased being pursued’, and Leclerc shows ‘how and why this happened’,[4] detailing the conceptual shifts in our understanding of nature that began in the early 17th century, shaped by figures such as Sebastian Basso, Pierre Gassendi, René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
Since Leclerc addresses this topic extensively in The Nature of Physical Existence, my purpose here is only to sketch the key points of his essay, as a way of recapping and refreshing ideas that are vital to establishing the philosophical foundations for my own research at RSaP — a research program centered on the reformulation of spatial concepts.
The question of how we conceive nature is inseparable from how we conceive matter — a concept whose full meaning, Leclerc argues, requires returning to the ancient Greek notion of the physical, physis (‘natura’, in Latin, that is, nature in English). Sebastian Basso had already recognized the centrality of matter in his Philosophia Naturalis (1621), noting that in the emerging modern view, ‘matter had come to be conceived as itself substance, in contrast to the previous conception in which matter was only the correlative of form in a substance.’[5] This shift in thinking — eventually formalized as material atomism — was embraced by almost every major thinker of the period. The outcome was a metaphysical dualism that split the universe into two domains: one consisting of matter, the other of mind or spirit. Correspondingly, the fields of inquiry were divided: natural science governed the realm of nature, while philosophy concerned itself with the realm of mind. In this new division, Leclerc observes, there was ‘no place for the philosophy of nature.’[6]
… the universe was divided into two, one part consisting of matter, and the other consisting of mind or spirit. The fields of inquiry were divided accordingly: natural science ruled in the realm of nature, and philosophy in the realm of mind… In this division, there was no place for the philosophy of nature.
Leclerc’s central thesis — the same advanced in PART IV of The Nature of Physical Existence — is that, in light of modern scientific developments, ‘the conception of nature which originated in the seventeenth century and thenceforward constituted the foundation for science down into this century has now been entirely destroyed [and] no other conception of nature has replaced it.’[7] As he explicitly states, this leaves us ‘in need of a new conception of nature’, and, by extension, in need of a reformulation of the key concepts through which we apprehend it: matter, place, space, time, and motion.[8] For Leclerc, our moment mirrors the early seventeenth century, when a radically new model of nature — the modern scientific worldview — supplanted the Aristotelian framework. Today, we face another such turning point, one that will require a new systematization of knowledge to ground a post-modern conception of nature and its foundational terms. This insight aligns with what we have already noted in discussing the historical analyses of Julian Barbour and Edward Casey (see Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One, and Place and Space: A Philosophical History): Barbour speaks of a ‘caravan already on the move’, while Casey of ‘a third peripeteia’ — both pointing to a transformation as consequential as the shifts from Aristotle to Newton, and from Newton to Einstein and quantum theory. The question now is: where will the next stop be? That is precisely where we stand today, in this epoch of transition.
Central to the emergence of the new conception of nature in the seventeenth century was the redefinition of matter. Matter came to be understood as fully actual, devoid of any ‘internal change’ — in other words, as pure ‘being’, without ‘becoming’. This ‘external’ conception rested on the primacy of motion, specifically locomotion: all changes in nature were regarded as the mere change of place of matter’s basic constituents. This was in sharp contrast to the earlier Aristotelian conception of the physical existent (physis, i.e., nature), in which change could be of three fundamental kinds: qualitative (change in kind or type), quantitative (change in size, shape, or measure), and local (change in place, or locomotion). In Aristotle’s framework, ‘internal change’ was as essential as ‘external change’ or locomotion, and ‘becoming’ and ‘potentiality’ were integral aspects of the physical (i.e., the physical existent, or nature).
A further metaphysical shift distinguished the modern model from the Aristotelian: matter, place (or space), and motion — together with time — became sharply separated and treated as equally independent fundamentals. Regarding the often-overlooked distinction between space and place in Newton’s philosophy (and in certain earlier thinkers), it bears repeating what I have argued in previous articles: ‘place’ was the primary concept, while ‘space’ referred merely to the sum of all places (a secondary notion, a resultant). Later interpreters, however, blurred or ignored this metaphysical distinction, allowing ‘space’ to assume primacy and relegating ‘place’ to a secondary role — a complete inversion of their original conceptual hierarchy.
The modern conception of nature — of the physical — was cast as ‘a mechanism’. This followed from the idea that matter was ‘atomical’: composed of fully actual, inert, extended, and simple constituents. The behavior of these atomic elements was governed solely by the laws of motion (understood strictly as ‘locomotion’, or change of place). Compound bodies — those formed from simple constituents — were likewise seen as reducible to these same laws, since their composition amounted to nothing more than the aggregation of atomic parts. In this framework, complex bodies were simply ‘mechanisms’ entirely explicable through the principles of motion. Physics — the study of the physical, i.e., nature itself — thus became essentially a mechanics, or, in the terminology of Gassendi and Descartes, a kinetics or phoronomy (literally, the law governing change of place). Within this conception, the concepts of matter, substance, and body were nearly indistinguishable — a conflation that underlies our present tendency to equate ‘matter’ with the physical and ‘substance’ with the material.
However, it soon became evident that a purely external and mechanical understanding of the physical was inadequate. This, in turn, made it necessary to revise the framework concerning matter, space (or place), time, and motion. Both Leibniz and Newton recognized that reducing nature to mere movement or mechanism was untenable. As Leclerc notes, in the eighteenth century they each introduced the concept of force to account for all forms of change in nature — not only ‘external’ locomotion but also ‘internal’ transformations of matter. With this shift, physics expanded from being purely a mechanics to becoming a dynamics (from the Greek dynamis, meaning force or power). The introduction of the concept of force compelled a reconsideration of the relationship between simple elements and their combination into compound bodies — in effect, a reconsideration of the very notion of matter. From this conceptual reworking, the nineteenth century introduced the field concept, which aimed to transcend the dualism of body and force. If, as Leclerc suggests (drawing on C. F. von Weizsäcker’s Die Einheit der Natur), we regard General Relativity as a development out of field theory, then Einstein’s work can also be understood as an effort to overcome yet another entrenched dualism: that between matter and space (or place).
Because of scientific developments over the past century, very little is left of the former modern scheme of nature — and equally little of the old notions of matter, space (or place), time, and motion. Yet we continue to use these terms as if nothing had changed, unaware that they still carry outdated modern presuppositions. The result is a persistent, and often unrecognized, source of confusion.
Leclerc illustrates this problem of conceptual confusion by examining the notion of space. In general relativity, space is treated as a physical entity ‘in the full sense of exercising action and suffering effects’ (at least in the traditional interpretation of GR) — a conception radically different from Newton’s absolute space, which still underlies the way most people intuitively understand the term. Given the centuries-long debate separating these two conceptions, Leclerc asks: ‘How appropriate is it to continue using the word “space” in contemporary theory, and can this be done without risking confusion?’[9]Indeed, even though ‘space’ has been formally replaced by the notion of spacetime, before, and the field concept, later, significant conceptual ambiguities remain. On this point I am in full agreement with Leclerc, as the articles at RSaP demonstrate from multiple perspectives — linguistic, scientific, philosophical, psychological, social, anthropological, architectural, and artistic…
How appropriate is to continue to use the term “space” in the contemporary theory, and can it be done without danger of confusion?
A parallel argument can be made regarding the concept of matter. In the modern, traditional view, matter was conceived as ‘a full being, in itself unchangeable’, — fully actual, inert, and self-contained.[10] By contrast, the conception emerging from special and general relativity, and from contemporary physics more broadly, ‘is something which, by contrast, is “in becoming”, an existent which is active producing effects and itself suffering effects, these effects being internal changes in the entities affected’, Leclerc says.[11] This brings us to the same conclusion we reached with space: in contemporary physics, nothing remains of the old concept of matter. Continuing to speak of matter, particularly in relation to particles, as if it retained its earlier meaning can, Leclerc warns, have ‘serious consequences’. For instance, in the old conception, no distinction was made between matter and body; the smallest atomic particles and the compound bodies formed from them were treated equivalently, and the laws of motion were held to apply equally to both microscopic and macroscopic scales. On this view, the motion of a planet could, in principle, be calculated in the same manner as the motion of an atom. Yet since the early twentieth century, it has been established that atoms are neither indivisible nor structurally simple, but themselves compound bodies — and, most crucially, that the laws of motion governing microscopic elements are fundamentally different from those for macroscopic bodies. At the microscopic level, motion is described in terms of statistical probabilities, as particles exhibit variations in their trajectories that can only be expressed probabilistically.
This final example from contemporary physics reveals an important philosophical question about the conception of matter, specifically regarding the relationship between particles and bodies. As Leclerc puts it: ‘the question has to be raised whether the constituents of a composite body necessarily have to be conceived as being bodies. Stated generally, is it necessary that the constituents be “parts”, i.e., of the same kind, having the same character or property, as that of the composite?’[12]Aristotle in antiquity — and, more recently, Leibniz and Whitehead — showed that the answer is no; such a requirement is not a necessity. Nevertheless, the presupposition persists, along with another: that ‘the motion of subatomic particles is essentially locomotion, “change of place” — a view still evident in the fact that subatomic physics is dominantly a quantum mechanics’, Leclerc notes.[13]
What follows? The conclusion Leclerc reached for space and matter applies equally to motion: ‘it is necessary that the whole concept of motion be entirely rethought’ in light of the new evidence from physics.[14] Yet above all, this leads us back to the question of matter. As Leclerc astutely observes, ‘it becomes of the highest significance to know what kinds of entities we are concerned with, for the inquiry into the kind of change is not possible in dissociation from the question of the kinds of entities.’[15] Such an inquiry cannot be carried out by science alone; it requires the combined efforts of both science and philosophy, for these fundamental questions lie beyond the scope of science as such. If we truly wish to ask what nature is — what the physical, physis, is — we must return to the philosophy of nature.
The recovery of a philosophy of nature, Leclerc explains, is at present a difficult task, hindered by at least two adverse conditions. First, there has been a loss of focus on the core questions and problems concerning nature itself, a result of the fact that for the past two hundred years nature has not been a direct object of philosophical inquiry. Second, over the same period, philosophy has been largely interpreted as a philosophy of mind or spirit, shaped by Kant’s dictum that the thing in itself (Ding an sich) is inaccessible, lying ‘on the other side of the great metaphysical divide.’[16] But if the object of the philosophy of nature is precisely ‘the physical Ding an sich’, how can we escape this apparent impasse?
Leclerc offers a few possible directions. One is to approach philosophical questions as they naturally arise from scientific inquiry. As an example, he points to authors such as A. N. Whitehead, in a series of works, M. Čapek in The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics, and C. F. von Weizsäcker in Die Einheit der Natur (The Unity of Nature). Whitehead, in particular — perhaps more than any other thinker of the last two centuries — was committed to investigating the nature of the physical existent, and did so while making extensive reference to earlier doctrines, including Greek thought and seventeenth-century models of nature. This ‘historical approach’, Leclerc notes, constitutes a second possible path toward the renewal of a philosophy of nature. His own preference, following this path, turns to Aristotle’s philosophy and the philosophies of nature developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Leclerc closes this introductory part of The Philosophy of Nature by addressing a crucial issue: the relation between the physical and the mathematical — a theme we have examined in detail in the previous two articles. Briefly stated, this question was central to the philosophies of Cusanus, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, Leibniz, and Newton. For Cusanus, Galileo, and Descartes, the physical and the mathematical were essentially identical: the universe possessed a mathematical structure. Descartes conceived the physical existent as res extensa and its mental counterpart — the mode of existence proper to thought — as res cogitans. As Leclerc notes, for Descartes, cogitatio ‘in its purest form was mathematical. That is, it was the conceiving, the metal grasping, of what in the other “res” was the extended mathematical’.[17] The perfect correlation of res extensa and res cogitans thus seemed to offer a way to overcome their apparent metaphysical division or dualism. In Leclerc’s view, the real difficulty in Descartes’ philosophy was not metaphysical but physical: the ‘identification of the physical and the mathematical made material atomism impossible’, since continuity — intrinsic to the mathematical — contradicts atomicity.[18]
Gassendi and Newton recognized that the only way to preserve material atomism was to separate the mathematical entirely from the physical. Yet this separation posed an acute problem: how could there be mathematical knowledge of the physical if the physical was entirely devoid of mathematical features?[19] While Gassendi did not fully perceive the depth of this problem, Newton and Leibniz did. Both devised elaborate solutions — ultimately grounded in the activity of God — to bridge the gulf between the physical and the ideal, or mathematical, and thus to reconcile body and mind.
Kant proposed an alternative solution to the problem of the relation between the physical and the mathematical by grounding the mathematical entirely in the mind: for him, it was a purely mental construct, its basis lying in the structures of human cognition. Yet, as Leclerc observes, this move ultimately reinforced rather than resolved the gulf: ‘the physical existent remains on the other side of the metaphysical gulf, unknowable’, Leclerc concluded.[20]
In the early twentieth century, Whitehead offered a markedly different approach to the connection between the ideal and the physical — between mind and body. As discussed in detail in the preceding article, Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature, Whitehead’s fully developed solution appears in Process and Reality. This work stands as the most recent and comprehensive attempt to confront head-on the necessity of returning to a philosophy of nature as the only viable path to dissolving entrenched dualisms. For Leclerc, Process and Reality is a pioneering reference point — one that any serious effort to envision a contemporary philosophy of nature must take into account.
PART II – HISTORICAL
PART II of The Philosophy of Nature gathers a selection of previously published essays that provided the basic historical framework for Leclerc’s earlier work, The Nature of Physical Existence. In what follows, I will focus in greater detail on two themes of particular relevance to my research: the spatial question and the ever-present problem of the relation between mind and body. The remaining chapters serve largely as a brief recapitulation of arguments already examined in my two earlier articles on Leclerc — Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence and Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature.
2. The Modern Concept of Nature
Leclerc’s thesis is that the rise of modern science in the early seventeenth century was grounded in a radically new conception of nature. Everything hinges on the meaning of ‘nature’, and his project is to clarify that meaning—beginning with the Greek concept of physis (later translated into Latin as ‘natura’, whence the English ‘nature’) and, in particular, Aristotle’s understanding of it. From the outset, the question of nature is inseparable from the question of matter, and with it the issue of what constitutes a ‘physical body’: should only elemental particles be considered physical bodies, or do composite entities—made up of such elements—also qualify, rather than being mere ‘appearances’, or ‘phenomenal’ existents?
Modern material atomism sided decisively with the first view, recognizing only simple elements (atoms) as truly physical. In this conception, matter is fully inert, actual, and unchanging in itself. On this basis, nature and its phenomena came to be understood primarily in terms of locomotion: all natural processes were reducible to the change of place of atoms, particles, or simple elements. Matter and motion were thus regarded as ultimate fundamentals—on the same footing as time and space (or place).
Yet, the exact status of these fundamentals remained far from settled. Thinkers like Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz sought to clarify them, engaging in inquiries that were simultaneously scientific and philosophical. In their work, the investigation still belonged to the tradition of the philosophy of nature.
3. The Physical as Matter
In this essay, the argument of the previous chapter is revisited and certain aspects are developed further. In the Greek epoch—and for some time thereafter—the physical (physis: the physical existent, the natural, or nature) was conceived as a correlative unity of matter (hylē) and form (eidos) on the one hand, and principles of change or motion on the other. This was essentially the Aristotelian model of the physical existent—physis. With the advent of the modern epoch, however, this conception changed radically: matter alone came to be regarded as the true physical existent. Matter was understood as corporeal, and atoms, in turn, were considered corporeal.
The doctrine of corporeal atomism raised a crucial issue: the extensivity of matter and its relation to discreteness—an inquiry that inevitably touched on the relationship between the physical and the mathematical. From this perspective, the contrasting views of Descartes (matter as extension) and Leibniz (matter as relation) are examined, along with Whitehead’s theory of ‘extensive connection.’ This leads to the deeper question of what ‘relation’ means and how relations themselves are bound up with the conception of matter—opening the way back to the idea of ‘internal change’ and the shift from a purely mechanical to an organic conception of nature.
In this respect, the theories of Leibniz and Whitehead are especially fruitful, particularly in their recovery of the notion of ‘possibility’ or ‘potentiality’ as intrinsic to matter. Thus, the ancient Greek–Aristotelian understanding of physis is, in a sense, restored—bringing back into contemporary thought the concepts of internal change, becoming, and potentiality as key elements in a renewed conception of matter and nature.
4. Matter and Mind
Here, Leclerc traces the origins of the modern mind–body problem to the broader and older question of how matter, mind, and nature are to be conceived. He locates the roots of the issue in the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, which challenged the Aristotelianism dominant in the Scholastic period. The first step, he argues, is to determine the status of the entities in question: both ‘mind’ and ‘body’ are entities, but what is their ‘status’? ‘Are we dealing here with two self-subsistent entities?’[21] Aristotle, earlier than anyone else, grasped the subtleties of this inquiry, which, as Leclerc stresses, cannot be separated from deeper philosophical concerns: ‘the mind-body question is not satisfactorily to be dealt with in separation from the wider problem of how the physical or nature in general is to be conceived’.[22]
Leclerc illustrates the Aristotelian approach with a simple example. When we say, ‘the bird is red’ we are at once asserting ‘the bird is’, and also that ‘red is’. In other words, we are implying the existence of both the bird and the colour red. Yet, Aristotle emphasized, there is a difference in the kind of existence each has: the bird is a self-subsistent individual, whereas red is not. The colour red exists only as a property or quality of some self-subsistent individual; it is an attribute, not a self-subsistent existent in its own right.
Image 2: ‘The bird is red’. That means that both the bird and the red ‘are’ or ‘exist’, that is, both ‘bird’ and ‘red’ are entities; but, Leclerc, asks: are we dealing here with two self-subsistent entities? While the bird is a self-subsistent individual, the red is not: the red ‘is’ or ‘exists’ as a property or quality of a self-subsistent individual (Photography by Timothy Dykes).
Leclerc argues that these Aristotelian distinctions profoundly shaped the later development of the mind–body problem. To trace this evolution, he follows a series of key historical passages.
In the Christian theological tradition, the mind—or soul—was regarded as a self-subsistent existent, primarily because ‘this was necessitated by the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul’.[23] Philosophically, however, the idea of the soul as a self-subsistent being goes back beyond Christian thought to Neoplatonism, and ultimately to Plato. The decisive root lies in the Greek concept psyche, which in the archaic period, particularly in Homeric usage, meant ‘breath of life’, that is ‘the vital principle, the source of life’ — that which the Latin called ‘anima’, i.e., soul, precisely.[24]
Over time, psyche expanded in meaning. As the life-principle, it came to encompass other human functions: emotion (from thymos), sensation and thought (from nous), and even appetitive drives. Plato, especially in the Republic, brought these diverse functions together under the single heading of psyche, setting it in contrast to soma, the body. What began as a functional notion—the breath of life—was thus transformed into an independent entity. This reification of psyche not only unified multiple aspects of human experience under one name but also assigned it an ontological status of its own, distinct from—and opposed to—the equally self-subsistent soma.
Eventually, psyche acquired an ontological status of its own in separation from the body, soma, which also acquired the status of a self-subsistent existent, in contraposition to psyche.
This was Plato’s answer to the problem of body and soul—and here, Leclerc notes, lies the origin of the later tendency to merge or even identify soul and mind, since Plato incorporated thought into the domain of psyche. Yet Plato, Leclerc argues, did not fully grasp the difficulties inherent in this ontological split; these became apparent only in later philosophical developments, and we remain entangled in them today. One lasting consequence was that faculties such as sensation, feeling, and emotion came to be regarded as ‘psychic’ rather than ‘somatic’.[25] Thus, the philosophical devaluation of the body in comparison to the mind has deep and ancient roots.
This Platonic outlook decisively shaped later Neoplatonic thought. As Leclerc recalls, its basic structure originated with the Alexandrian Jewish theologian and philosopher Philo, who upheld the ‘doctrine of a One single, transcendent principle or source and origin [archē] of all plurality of existence.’[26] Plotinus further developed this framework, identifying the transcendent One with the Divine, and nous—mind, intelligence, thought—as the first being to emanate from the One. This already signals the philosophical and theological privileging of mind over body. For Plotinus, ‘thinking is the enaction (energeia) of being, and therefore “noema”, “thought”, that which is known, the object of thinking (namely the plurality of Platonic Forms) is identified with being. Thus, “nous” is the primary being manifesting a plurality of beings, the Forms. From “nous” proceeds “psyche”, “soul” — a universal soul which is pluralized into individual souls. The function of soul is not thinking, knowing; the function of soul is governing and ordering’.[27] Characteristically, Neoplatonism pairs being with form, and soul/psyche with action, as correlative principles. In this scheme, matter ‘stands at the opposite pole to being, a not-being’,[28]—and is associated with the body, which is, in itself, inert and lacking any intrinsic principle of activity. Activity is imparted to the body only through form. In sum, Neoplatonism deepened the Platonic tendency to elevate mind or soul while diminishing the ontological standing of the body.
In the Scholastic period, a shift occurred. With the rediscovery of Aristotle, the mind–body problem regained prominence, and the presumed independence of mind and body—their very relationship—was brought under renewed scrutiny. Thomas Aquinas, in particular, confronted this issue in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima (1268?), showing the inadequacy of the Platonic and Neoplatonic conception of soul and body as ‘two ontologically distinct entities, two self-subsistent individuals’.[29]
The Aristotelian doctrine, adopted by Aquinas and other thinkers of the period, regarded body and soul as profoundly interdependent—each necessary to the other. Neither the soul functions without the body, nor the body without the soul. The true ontologically distinct and self-subsistent existent is the integral organism—a unified being that is alive and active, sentient in higher forms, and, in the case of humans, endowed with intelligence. Body refers to one aspect of this total being; soul refers to another.[30] Put differently: the physical existent is one, though composed of two correlative principles—body and soul (or, in modern terms, matter and mind). Against Plato’s dualism, Aristotle shifted the focus from separate substances to the total being—the natural organism (physis) encompassing both. This conceptual move underpinned his doctrine of the physical existent as an integral organic unit. As discussed in the earlier article Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature, this understanding of physis as a unified whole was central to Aristotle’s philosophy of nature.
The Scholastic period embraced this Aristotelian model, and it remained influential throughout the Renaissance and the sixteenth century, despite ongoing tensions regarding the difficult reconciliation with the conception of the immortality of the soul (hence, its privileged metaphysical position) maintained by the Christian doctrine.
With Renaissance Neoplatonism came a renewed emphasis on the primacy of the soul, particularly under the influence of Nicolaus of Cusa’s doctrine of the universe as explicatio Dei. According to this view, the universe is a contraction of the infinite God, and within this contraction is contained the spiritus mundi, or world soul. Through further contractions, this world soul becomes individuated into specific ensouled beings (for a detailed account of this doctrine and period, see the article Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence). From this framework emerged the belief that every physical existent possessed a soul—was ensouled—and that the soul was the ultimate cause or principle of a thing’s activity, including change and motion. Because the soul was ultimately derived from God, it regained ontological prominence in relation to the body, securing for itself a distinct and elevated status. Thus, the dualism of soul and body (or matter) was reinforced, despite the Neoplatonic assertion that ‘in the realm of nature bodies existed only as ensoluled’.[31]
With the growing ascendancy of Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism came under sustained attack from many directions. Most crucial for the questions concerning matter, body, and mind was the decisive rejection of Aristotle’s theory of the physical existent as an integral organism. As examined in detail in earlier articles, it was particularly the work of medical thinkers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that led to the complete abandonment of the Aristotelian view.
For these thinkers, a true body—or true existent—was not the whole organism itself, but rather the plurality of minute constituents from which the whole was composed. More importantly, they held that the differing forms of aggregation and disposition of these basic elements could explain all changes in nature, contrary to Aristotle’s insistence on the necessity of internal change for coming into being, perishing, or qualitative transformation. In this new view, fully inert, changeless basic elements—lacking any internal change—were the true physical existents. This marks the origin of modern corporeal or material atomism.
According to Leclerc, the French physician Sebastian Basso was among the first to grasp the full implications of this line of thought, later developed by figures such as Daniel Sennert, Francis Bacon, and David Gorlaeus. Fundamentally, this new conception entailed ‘an entirely new conception of physical existence. In this conception, the physical was body, and body alone. This meant that body was conceived as shed of soul, and thus of form, and was constituted only of matter. Matter, that is to say, was now for the first time in history given fully the status of a self-subsistent existent, it alone, separated from soul, being the physical. Thus, Renaissance Neoplatonism, with its ontological dualism of body and soul, was carried to its furthest consequence of the complete separation of body and soul, which is to say, into the complete bifurcation of the universe.’[32] Whereas previously the physical existent had been conceived as composed of both body and soul—two ontologically distinct but united aspects of one being—now ‘the physical [i.e., nature] was constituted of body, i.e., matter, alone; soul belonged to an entirely distinct and different realm.’[33]
… an entirely new conception of physical existence. In this conception, the physical was body, and body alone. This meant that body was conceived as shed of soul, and thus of form, and was constituted only of matter. Matter was now for the first time in history given fully status of a self-subsistent existent… Thus, Renaissance Neoplatonism, with its ontological dualism of body and soul was carried to its furthest consequence of the complete separation of body and soul, which is to say, into the complete bifurcation of the universe… in the new position the physical was constituted of body, i.e., matter, alone; soul belonged to an entirely distinct and different realm.
It was within the Parisian intellectual circles where these debates first emerged and developed that Descartes’s philosophy of nature rapidly took shape, Leclerc notes. The well-known outcome of Descartes’s physical and metaphysical system was the bifurcation of reality into res extensa and res cogitans—the physical, on one side, and the mental (mind, soul, or spirit) on the other. This, Leclerc argues, became a philosophical position determinative of all modern thought down to the present. If Descartes’s dualism set the trajectory for philosophy, the new conception of the physical profoundly shaped the sciences as well. Newton’s work carried to their ultimate expression the insights of the seventeenth-century thinkers, culminating in a fully developed theory of material atomism: physical matter conceived as a self-subsistent existent, extended, in itself changeless yet capable of motion. Locomotion—physics as mechanics—thus became the defining hallmark of modern science, with matter regarded as fully actual.
In conclusion, Leclerc argues, the modern scientific worldview remains, at its core, Neoplatonic: its ontological dualism has endured, crystallizing into a strict dichotomy of the universe into two distinct reals or existents—mind and body, or matter.[34] In parallel, the conception of mind that has shaped—and continues to haunt—modern philosophy is likewise Neoplatonic: mind or soul is inherently active, whereas matter is fundamentally passive, though capable of motion (movable…). Thus, for example, the colour of things, pain, emotions, and perceptions are commonly understood to arise from the mind’s activity rather than from the body or external entities themselves. For Leclerc, this is the crux: the Neoplatonic inheritance, with its deep-seated dualism of mind and body, ‘in our day most urgently requires critical scrutiny’, for such important philosophical questions inevitably shape—and sometimes distort—our approach to the most basic scientific questions.[35]
5. Atomism, Substance, Concept of Body
In his previous essay, Leclerc approached the physical — that is, physis/nature — in terms of body and its relation with soul. In this essay, however, he turns his attention to the concept of body itself, explored through a range of terms such as atom, substance, compound body, and eventually matter. Each of these carries its own particular scientific or philosophical connotation, shaped by the author and historical context, though at times their meanings overlap or even coincide. Here, I will only sketch Leclerc’s argument, as it is already presented in The Nature of Physical Existence and discussed in my two related articles, Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence and Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature.
The linguistic shift from body to matter — in the modern sense of the word — originated in the sixteenth century. The emerging scientific theory of elements, now understood as changeless (in contrast to Aristotle’s view), together with a new conception of matter as self-subsistent stuff no longer correlated with form (against the doctrines of both Aristotle and Plato), laid the groundwork for material atomism. In this view, the elements — atoms — were considered ‘one ultimate kind’.[36] According to Leclerc, this shift also led to ‘the identification, implicit or explicit of matter with body’, a development with far-reaching philosophical and scientific consequences for the conception of nature — that is, the physical.[37] From here, all natural properties, whether qualitative or quantitative, were reduced to the motion and relative disposition of these simple, ‘material’ elements. Compound bodies, including living organisms, were thus explained as mere aggregations of ultimate elements — leading to the theory of corporeal atomism, which treated the simple elements as the only true physical existents, relegating compound bodies to a merely phenomenal status.
On these issues, Leclerc examines the positions of Galileo, Bruno, Gassendi, Descartes, and, finally, Leibniz. For detailed discussions of these thinkers, I refer readers to the two aforementioned articles, but I close here with Leclerc’s own concise summary: ‘We have seen that according to the physical theory of elements… body is conceived as a compound and not as a single ultimate entity […]. That means that what really exists are the elementary constituents or atoms; a body is not really one single entity but only appears to be so. Now, Leibniz points out, body appears to be one single entity by virtue of its features such as extension, impenetrability, etc. […]. This means that these features must be admitted to be appearances and not features of what really exists […]. In other words, body must be seen to be phenomenal, and matter must be seen to be phenomenal. Thus, Leibniz was the one seventeenth-century thinker who consistently developed and accepted the philosophical implications of the physical theory of the elements according to which body is a compound.’ [38]
6. Leibniz: the Analysis of Matter, Motion, and the Ontological Status of Place and Force
As Leclerc anticipated in his introduction, the advances of physical science in the early twentieth century demanded significant revisions to the classical concepts of space, time, and matter. In this essay, he turns to the concept of motion — a notion that cannot remain unaffected, since ‘the concept of motion is intimately bound up with the modern concept of matter [and] the change in the latter inevitably involves the former also.’[39]
Given this close link between matter and motion, Leclerc begins by tracing the development of the concept of matter ‘in salient points’: from its ancient understanding as a correlative of form (as in Aristotle’s hylē, the counterpart to eidos), to its seventeenth-century redefinition — shaped particularly by the work of medical men — as a self-subsistent entity. Matter eventually came to be regarded as fully actual, atomic, unchangeable or inert, and movable.
This shift in conception raised complex physical and metaphysical questions, such as the relation of matter to actuality and potentiality, and the interplay between the physical and the mathematical. In the dominant material-atomist view, ‘nature’ — the physical existent — was reduced to an ultimate, truly existing corporeal or material substance, whose locomotion was sufficient to account for any quantitative or qualitative change in nature. Yet this framework left a crucial issue largely unresolved: the origin of motion.
Major thinkers such as Newton and Leibniz agreed that physics could not be satisfied with the notion of purely passive matter, and both insisted on the necessity of acknowledging some form of ‘active force’ to explain motion.[40] However, while Leibniz’s concept of dynamics (from the Greek dynamis, meaning force or power) was accepted by eighteenth-century physics, it was stripped of the philosophical depth he intended: force was treated merely as an external agent acting upon matter, not as an intrinsic activity within matter itself. The familiar schema of matter plus locomotion therefore remained intact — and, at a fundamental philosophical and explanatory level, unsatisfactory for contemporary physics.
In the closing section of the essay, Leclerc argues that Leibniz’s analysis of matter and motion remains strikingly relevant to the present, expanding upon the discussion in The Nature of Physical Existence (chapter 21; see Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature). Concerning that analysis, Leclerc especially focuses on two main points considered by Leibniz: 1) Matter or body is derivative of the true physical existent — substance, or monads — and is therefore relational and phenomenal; so too must locomotion be understood as relational and phenomenal. 2) Locomotion, as ‘change of place’, inevitably raises ‘the very important problem of the meaning and ontological status of “place”.’ [41]
Connected to these two points is a further consideration of central importance: the transition from one place to another — locomotion — is not, for Leibniz, merely an external or phenomenal process, something that pertains only to matter or bodies. Rather, locomotion is ultimately derivative from an active force operating at the level of the monads. This active force is responsible for kinesis — fundamental change — at the most basic level of existence. In Leibniz’s view, this kinesis concerns the intrinsic activity of the monads themselves — a force acting within matter, given that matter is nothing other than an emergence from the primordial activity of monads. From this internal kinesis there also arises locomotion, understood as ‘the resultant change of locus of monads relatively to each other.’[42]
Put simply, the active force that brings about changes in nature operates on an inner or fundamental plane of existence, and is only later expressed, or actualized, as traditional matter and motion on an outer, i.e., phenomenal, plane. The ‘outer’ level is thus the emergent result of the deeper, more primary level of activity. This is the same sense captured in a passage from an earlier article, where I noted that ‘locomotion — change of place — cannot be merely understood as an external change of the body… detached from other aspects of change, e.g., generation, perishing, etc., but it is also connected with a more profound internal change…’ — see chapter 21. Matter, Motion, and Substance in the article Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature.
This, then, is Leclerc’s compelling conclusion from his reading of Leibniz: the relation between matter and motion is grounded in a deeper ontological stratum of active forces, a view that may be of the greatest significance for contemporary physics:[43]
… physical science in this century has entered a new stage with the discovery of “micro-entities” [i.e., the elementary particles of the Standard Model]. But they continue to be called and treated as “particles”. That is, thought about them proceeds on the presupposition that they are not different in kind but only smaller than the particles of matter, the atoms, which were the subject matter of the physics of the previous centuries. But these entities are different in basic respects: the laws of motion of the so-called classical physics do not hold for them; they exhibit “quantum” characteristics, and a new mechanics has had to be developed. However, they continue to be thought of as “material bodies” in motion. But might it not be that these categories are inappropriate in this realm? Might it not be that in this realm we are concerned with a different order of entities, a primary order, and their “acts”, and not with a derivative order of entities and their locomotion? A significantly different interpretation of data becomes possible if the presupposition be abandoned that the only “activity” of elementary particles is “locomotion.”
The next two chapters, which conclude PART II of The Philosophy of Nature, take up one of the key points in Leibniz’s analysis of matter and motion highlighted earlier by Leclerc: the fundamental role of spatial concepts — specifically, space and place — in determining the nature of both matter and motion. The task here is thus to clarify the meaning of these spatial concepts, an inquiry that underlies and shapes the broader philosophical framework. Many of the issues addressed in these chapters have also been explored, at least in part, in PART III of The Nature of Physical Existence; readers interested in a fuller development of these ideas are encouraged to consult that section, included in the article Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence.
7. Concepts of Space
The starting point, Leclerc notes, is the recognition that the very meaning of space underwent a profound transformation between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries — the outcome of a long and complex intellectual development.
I should immediately emphasize, as I have shown in several articles at RSaP, that this long development is by no means confined to the two centuries Leclerc highlights. The debate over the meaning of spatial concepts is in fact much older, reaching back to Aristotle’s original definition of topos (place). What we find in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, however, are some of the decisive doctrines that paved the way toward a new formulation of space and place — a process culminating, not simply in Newton’s spatial concepts themselves, but, as Leclerc will argue, in their subsequent (and mistaken) interpretation.
Leclerc begins with a linguistic analysis of the word space. Up until the sixteenth century, the ordinary sense of spatium in Latin carried three principal meanings:
- an extent in the temporal sense — a lapse or interval of time;
- a linear distance — the stretch or interval between two or more points;
- a superficial extent or area.[44]
These uses, Leclerc explains, can be traced back to the Indo-European root that produced the Greek spaein, ‘to draw, stretch out.’ From this root arose the sense of ‘a certain stretch, extent, area of ground, an expanse,’ often applied to a racecourse — hence spadion in Doric Greek and stadion in Attic Greek. From this broad sense of spatium as ‘extent, stretch, interval,’ a variety of derivative meanings developed in Latin and other languages. Importantly, Leclerc stresses that the older, general meaning of space as extent, stretch, expanse, or interval did not disappear: it continued to coexist, distinct from — and not simply derivative of — the newer conception of space as a three-dimensional, empty, homogeneous expanse.[45]
Before proceeding, I would like to acknowledge Leclerc for providing, in such a concise way, one of the clearest and most synthetic linguistic accounts of the meaning of space that I have ever encountered. It is rare to find scholars working on spatial questions who trace the genealogy of the term all the way back to Indo-European roots in order to establish its earliest semantic horizon. More often, even in the most careful reconstructions, the inquiry stops with the Greek stadion (the Attic form being the one most frequently cited), whereas Leclerc also highlights the older Doric form spadion, which is in fact more directly connected to space through the original PIE roots beginning with sp- (see the article Back to the Origins of Space and Place). I was particularly pleased to discover that Leclerc’s study independently confirmed the direction of my own reconstruction, which also returns to Indo-European sources. When I began developing that argument, I was unaware of Leclerc’s work, and so the convergence was a welcome surprise. At the same time, my own investigation has sought to extend the inquiry even further back, proposing a connection between the Indo-European etymon, certain archaic agricultural practices, and ancient systems of measurement.[46] For readers interested in these historical and linguistic dimensions of the concept of space, I would redirect them to the articles Back to the Origins of Space and Place, Concepts of Space in Vitruvius, and Anachronistic Interpretations of Space.
It was only with the emergence of a new conception of nature in the early seventeenth century, Leclerc observes, together with a parallel rethinking of the concept of matter, that the traditional meanings of spatial concepts — beginning with place — came under urgent scrutiny. The inherited Aristotelian notion of topos could no longer bear the explanatory weight demanded by the new physical theories. Out of this inquiry into the meaning of place there gradually arose a new and distinct conception of space: not merely an interval or extent, but a three-dimensional, vacuous expanse. This shift gave rise to what has since become the modern, common-sense concept of space — the one we habitually use without a second thought.
Following Leclerc, we will now trace the main stages of this development, in order to see more clearly how the changing conceptions of place and space were intimately bound up with evolving conceptions of matter and motion — and, in turn, with the broader philosophical understanding of nature itself.
As we have seen in the past articles, a new conception of nature — i.e., ‘physis’, the physical existent, or that which exists — emerged in the early XVII century: such physical existent was identified with corporeal matter (which means that ‘matter’ is that which exists, the ultimate existent, hence, the notion of ‘physical matter’) having certain characteristics: it was considered fully actual, self-sustaining (that is, no more correlate with another principle, e.g., form, as in older models), impenetrable/solid, inert, atomic (that is, no more divisible into parts), having a certain size, form, etc. Matter was devoid of any qualitative character (colours, sounds, etc. were attributed to the perceiving subject): just quantitative features could be attributed to matter. And, most of all, matter was movable. Being changeless in itself (that is, inert, internally changeless), it was precisely the motion of matter — the motion of its ultimate components, or atoms — that could account for any change in nature, it was thought. This means that change of place was the only change attributable to matter; change of place is locomotion, precisely; motion from one place (locus, in Latin) to another place. As Leclerc summarizes: ‘Nature was investigated and understood in terms of a mathematical analysis of the locomotion of matter. The fundamental laws of nature were laws of motion.’[47] With Newton’s Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), this conception reached its most powerful and influential formulation: knowledge of nature — physical science itself — was effectively equated with mechanics.
Thus, the inextricable relationship between nature, matter, place, and motion has been unveiled. Where is ‘space’ in this picture?
The inextricable relationship between nature, matter, place and motion has been unveiled. Where is ‘space’ in this picture?
In this picture, it soon became clear that the scientific measurement of the translation of a body from one place to another required the elucidation of the traditional (Aristotelian) concept of place, which did not fit with the new conceptions of matter and motion. Aristotle’s definition of place — ‘the innermost limit of the enclosing body’, Leclerc says (omitting a part of the Aristotelian definition) —[48] was put under scrutiny again. The definition of place given by Aristotle was dimensional and intimately related to the body: ‘neither larger nor smaller than the dimension of the body in it’.[49] The dimension of the place had to coincide with the dimension of the body but, in the intention of Aristotle, it could not be identified with the (dimension of the) body itself because if the body moved that would mean that the place moved too, and that would be absurd. Without even saying that measurement is impossible if places move… But, even before specific scientific questions of measurement were raised, Aristotle’s definition was under attack because it was bidimensional (a wrapping surface…), while it was thought that, in order to explain motion, place had to be identified with the entire inner volume of the body. That was especially a matter of debate since the XVI century, with pre-modern thinkers such as Scaliger, Telesio, Bruno, etc. (for details I redirect you to the chapters ‘Matter, Motion, and the Concept of Place’ and ‘Place, the Void, and Space’ of ‘The Nature of Physical Existence: PART III – The Modern Concept of Nature’, which is the extended subject of the article Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence). It was properly to define that ‘entire volume of the body’ that the word spatium was brought into use, Leclerc shows.
So, what at first was meant as a reformed notion of place — an expansion of Aristotle’s definition from two to three dimensions, and, above all, an effort to loosen the strict bond between body and the volume it occupied — was named spatium vel locus internus (‘space or internal place’). Here spatium was still only another word for place, indicating the inner volume of a body. Place is the subject (of inquiry).
But in the course of debate, the balance tipped. Spatium gradually detached itself from locus—place, until it stood alone as an independent, self-subsistent physical entity. Place, once primary, was reduced to a mere derivative of space. In other words, the traditional order was overturned: what had been the container defined by attiguous bodies (topos/place) came instead to be individuated as a vast, vacuous expanse in which bodies were thought to be situated (spatium/space) — a complete reversal of meaning — a world turned upside down, I would say.
what had been the container defined by attiguous bodies (topos/place) came instead to be individuated as a vast, vacuous expanse in which bodies were thought to be situated (spatium/space) — a complete reversal of meaning
So now, Leclerc continues, the problem was to understand the ontological status of this spatium vel locus internus. Here lies a subtle but ancient difficulty — the very reason Aristotle’s definition of place eventually prevailed in antiquity. This ‘extent’ — this spatium vel locus internus — had to be distinct from the body, and above all, it had to remain when the body moved. Otherwise, the displaced body would carry its ‘place’ along with it, and no genuine motion would be possible. But to hold, as Gassendi and others did, that such an extent remained after the body departed, was to admit a vacant extent — in other words, a void.
Yet a void, an ‘extension of nothing’, is a blatant contradiction: the so-called ‘nothing’ cannot be extended. (This inconsistency is seldom grasped by modern readers, raised in the conviction that ‘extension’ — i.e., space — is itself a physical reality.) To avoid such absurdity, the vacant extent (the spatium vel locus internus) ‘had to be filled with something, for extent had to be the extent of something.’[50] Thus, what was originally a mere abstraction — spatium, from the Greek spadion/stadion, a measure of distance — was reified into a physical something. And in that subtle shift of meaning, a linguistic sleight of hand that still haunts us, space came to signify not just a measure, but a real (physical) entity—the three-dimensional entity we all know. Centuries later, most non-physicists — including philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, social scientists, architects, artists… — still take this reification for granted, often shielding it behind the polished label of ‘metaphor’, or more specifically, ‘spatial metaphor.’ Yet contemporary physics has, more wisely, begun to dismantle the very notion of space (spacetime included), abandoning it in favor of the more realist field-concept — which is, ultimately (and etymologically), a place endowed with certain properties.
Descartes was acutely aware of the problem and offered a solution: the universe, he maintained, must be conceived as a plenum (as Aristotle and nearly all ancient thinkers believed) — a plenum both dimensional and physical: res extensa. He grasped that there cannot be such a thing as a ‘void place’, and that the distinction between space, internal place, and corporeal substance was merely conceptual: ‘space or internal place and corporeal substance contained in it, are not different otherwise than in the mode in which they are conceived by us’, Descartes insisted.[51] — A fundamental truth never adequately understood, I would add. Yet this Cartesian solution carried an important consequence: it entailed ‘a complete relativity of motion and place’.[52] For many, this was a fatal imprecision. If motion is purely relative, and no fixed reference can be assumed, how can one determine the motion of bodies with absolute certainty? Leclerc speaks, in this regard, of an ‘ontological imprecision in the concept of motion’, and observes that Newton took precisely this as his point of departure, proposing instead a concept of place ‘exempt from relativity’.[53]
For the scientific measurement of motion, Newton judged it indispensable that the primary places of things be immovable. These absolute, immovable places are what he named ‘immovable space’ in the first Scholium of the Principia. In truth, what Newton was investigating was not space in abstraction but place—and space, for him, was nothing other than (the name for) the totality of such places. Leclerc reminds us: Newton introduced the usage of ‘space’ as ‘the totality of places’, a convention soon taken over by Leibniz and Kant.[54]
Newton was acutely aware, however, that this concept of space—as if it were a self-subsistent physical entity—was untenable. To suppose space as a ‘physical something’ was, he insisted, to misconstrue its ontological status. Hence, as Leclerc stresses, Newton ‘entirely rejected’ this supposition and proposed instead a radically different account.[55] His solution was ‘ingenious’: by accepting the theological view of God as the active creator of the universe, Newton grounded place not in matter, nor in void extension, but in divine action itself. God, as always acting, is everywhere and everywhen; the where in which God acts to bring a body into being is the place of that body. Place, then, is not derivative from body; on the contrary, body is derivative from place as determined by God’s act.[56]
Thus, for Newton, ‘space’ as the totality of places (space, a name, place a spiritual substance) was not a substantial container, not an existent alongside bodies and God. It had, rather, a spiritual character, derivative from God’s ubiquity. To ascribe to Newton the doctrine of absolute space and time as self-subsistent beings—as was done from the eighteenth century onward, and as even Leibniz did in his correspondence with Clarke—is therefore to misconstrue him profoundly.[57] These are breathtaking passages that clear up a lot questions of space and place: they are remarkable, both in their historical precision and in their power to cut through centuries of confusion, and revealing how much of our modern imagination of ‘space’ rests on a misunderstanding.
These are breathtaking passages that clear up a lot questions of space and place: they are remarkable, both in their historical precision and in their power to cut through centuries of confusion, and revealing how much of our modern imagination of ‘space’ rests on a misunderstanding.
That’s exactly the pivot where the history of space and place takes a dramatic (and misleading) turn. What Leclerc highlights, and I am underscoring, is that Newton himself did not conceive space as a physical container or substantial existent. For him, ‘space’ was simply the name for the totality of immovable places, and those places were grounded in God’s creative and sustaining activity — not in any independent, physical substratum.
But because later interpreters (Leibniz included, ironically) failed to grasp this subtle theological–metaphysical foundation, Newton was retroactively portrayed as the father of a doctrine of absolute space — a kind of vast, inert, self-subsisting receptacle that contained all things. In other words:
- For Newton: place → derives from God’s activity (hence space, as the totality of places, has a ‘spiritual’ or derivative character, i.e., Sensorium Dei).
- For Newton’s interpreters: space → an absolute, self-subsisting, quasi-material existent (a misattribution).[57]
This misreading didn’t remain a scholarly quibble; it became the dominant Enlightenment view. By the 18th century, ‘Newtonian space’ was almost universally taken to mean ‘absolute (actual) space’. So what’s breathtaking here is that Newton’s actual position — a delicate metaphysical solution holding together theology, motion, and the problem of place — was lost almost immediately. The myth of Newtonian absolute space became more influential than Newton’s own thought.
Therefore, the rejection of the so-called Newtonian doctrine as fallacious — that is, the rejection of the notion of physical space — by philosophers such as Berkeley and Hume in Britain, or Leibniz and the pre-critical Kant in Germany, was in fact directed against a doctrine erroneously attributed to Newton. What they opposed was not Newton’s actual conception, but rather a misinterpretation of it. In particular, Leclerc’s concluding section of this essay turns to examine Kant’s position.
Kant passed through several phases in his understanding of the concept of space. In his early writings, he followed Leibniz’s position, conceiving of space as essentially a relation: space, he thought, was nothing more than the result of the ‘acts of relating’ between monads.[58] Yet, as Leclerc observes, by 1768 Kant recognized a decisive problem in this account. Such acts of relating already presupposed that the entities involved — the monads — were in some sense there to begin with. But if their ‘thereness’ was already given, then it could not itself be the product of their relations. In other words, the condition of ‘being there’ — of having a place — had to be prior.
This realization led Kant to affirm that the ‘thereness,’ i.e., the places of things, had to be absolute rather than relative.[59] However — and here lies the subtlety — absolute not in the physical sense falsely ascribed to Newton by later interpreters, but absolute in an ideal or mental sense: as the a priori condition for the possibility of experience and knowledge. It was on this basis that Kant finally elaborated the spatial doctrine in the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), where space is no longer conceived as an external substance nor as a mere network of relations, but as a necessary form of intuition through which phenomena are given to us.
Leclerc will provide a more detailed exposition of Kant’s conception of space in the following essay, which I will examine in due course.
Before turning to Leclerc’s next essay, I would like to return to the conceptual fallacy of physical space, i.e., space conceived as the container or arena of all possible existents. Kant ultimately rejected this notion of space as an Unding — a ‘non-entity.’ To my mind, speaking of a ‘non-entity’ like space in physical terms, as we often do in colloquial expressions or everyday situations when we invoke the word space, is a conceptual absurdity that may occasion infinite mistakes, to say it with Berkeley; that is what philosophers also call fallacy of misplaced concreteness (on this specific question, see also my article The Treachery of Space). Kant even relegated that ‘non-entity’ to ‘the world of fable’, perhaps under the influence of Hobbes’s characterization of space as ‘a phantasm of the existent’ (see Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature, Image 1 and note [12]).[60] More recently, the American psychologist James J. Gibson, renowned for his pioneering experiments in the field of perception, indirectly echoed Hobbes and Kant when he described space as ‘a myth, a ghost, a fiction for geometers’ (see James J. Gibson on the Concept of Space).[61]
Those who defend the reality of space, either conceive it as an absolute and boundless receptacle of possible things… or hold that it is itself a relation of existent things, vanishing therefore if things be annihilated… The former is an empty figment of reason… pertains to the world of fable.
IMMANUEL KANT, De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis.
8. Concepts of Space in Kant
This essay, it should be noted, has already been anticipated in important respects. Many of the points raised here were discussed, or at least touched upon, by Leclerc in The Nature of Physical Existence (which provides the extended framework for the articles Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence, and Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature), as well as in Chapter 7 above. For this reason, and in order to follow the logical thread of Leclerc’s present essay, I will confine myself here to a brief recapitulation of what has already been said, while concentrating more closely on the new arguments that he advances.
Leclerc’s aim here is ‘to get at the meaning of the word [space] as Kant understood it.’[62] This requires extreme caution, for it means resisting the temptation to project onto Kant a generic or modern conception of space—one that we have uncritically inherited through linguistic habit, shaped largely by ‘the virtually complete dominance of the Newtonian inheritance from the early nineteenth century onward’.[63] The danger, in other words, is that of anachronism: attributing to Kant a conception of space that is historically posterior to him. This danger continues to haunt contemporary discussions of spatial concepts, and it is a point I have repeatedly emphasized in my own writings as a constant warning (see, for example, Anachronistic Interpretations of Space and The Treachery of Space). To avoid such distortions, the only sound approach to Kant’s doctrine of space is to situate it within the historical trajectory of the concept itself, tracing the path it followed across different epochs. It is for this reason that Leclerc, once again, begins with a historical excursus—similar in outline to those already encountered in the previous chapters and essays.
According to Leclerc, there is a decisive temporal divide in our understanding of the concept of space. In our own time, the noun space almost inevitably carries ‘the connotation of some sort of entity’. Yet this was not the case in its original usage. The Latin spatium—a meaning that persisted well into the seventeenth century—signified only an interval, stretch, or extent between things. It was an abstract noun, with no suggestion of a concrete existent attached to it. Over time, however, this abstract sense underwent a profound shift: space changed its ‘nature’ and came to be treated as a concrete noun, designating a physical entity. Philosophically, this process is called reification or hypostatization: the transformation of something abstract into something taken as real, concrete.
It is precisely with respect to this change of meaning—and to the modern presupposition that silently accompanies the word space—that Leclerc makes the following observation:[64]
This change in the meaning of the word was beginning to take place in the eighteenth century and became general in the nineteenth. The original abstract sense nevertheless persisted, though much subordinately, and has done so to the present time. Today the prevailing presupposition is that the term has one fundamental basic meaning which is constant […]; there is extraordinarily little appreciation of the shifts in sense of the various occurrences of its usage, even in the same writer, and often in the same sentence or paragraph. This variation in sense is further confounded by the use of “space” […] as synonymous with “place”.
To grasp the historical vicissitudes that led us to conceive of space according to modern presuppositions—namely, as an actual, self-subsistent, three-dimensional container of all possible events—we must return to the period when the debate on spatial concepts became particularly acute: the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with the emergence of a new conception of matter. Above all, as Leclerc reminds us, we must never lose sight of a crucial point: what was under debate at that time was not space—which did not yet exist as a three-dimensional entity—but rather place.
As usual, Leclerc begins with a historical survey, which I briefly recall here. Following the change in the conception of matter — which, from being a correlative notion (with form, and bearing inherent characters such as change, becoming, and potentiality), became understood as fully actual, changeless, self-subsistent, atomic, impenetrable, and solid, with motion as the only change attributable to it — it became necessary to elucidate the concept of place. The reason was straightforward: since ‘change of place’ was the only form of change assignable to matter, and since it was by the change of place, or by the different disposition of matter (whether conceived as simple elements, existents, or atoms), that all natural changes and phenomena were to be explained, it was imperative to determine the status of place with certainty.
This was a pressing necessity because the old Aristotelian conception of place was no longer compatible with the modern view of matter and motion. In Aristotle, place was too closely bound up with body or matter. Most of all, while a moving body is three-dimensional, the Aristotelian conception of place was ultimately two-dimensional, defined by the notion of the limit or boundary of a body. A revision was thus required: place came to be conceived as the (three-dimensional) extent left vacant by a body when it moved — the so-called locus internus.
Yet this revision immediately revived an old logical problem: the notion of an ‘empty place.’ For an empty place, or a vacant extent, was nothing other than the void — an illogical notion, since there cannot be an extension of ‘nothing.’ To bypass this old problem, some thinkers, such as Giordano Bruno, began to describe the locus internus left behind by moving bodies in physical terms, as aether, aer, or spiritus (the anima mundi), while they referred to this extent purely in the abstract sense — not in respect of its content (which would make it aether, etc.), but simply as extent or interval — using the Latin word spatium — i.e., vacuum spatium.[65]
Before continuing, allow me a brief but important consideration. On this point raised by Leclerc regarding Bruno’s treatment of the term space, I have never encountered a modern or contemporary thinker — nor an interlocutor on spatial questions — who showed such a profound awareness of the problem. The issue is inextricably bound up with language and with the careful choice of spatial terminology necessary to avoid the reification of an abstract term when speaking of physical circumstances. Bruno had, without doubt, firmly grasped the distinction between a physical entity (aether, aer, etc.) and an ideal or abstract entity (spatium, vacuum, etc.).
Fundamentally, Leclerc observes, in the seventeenth century the term spatium still meant locus — that is, place. This is particularly evident in Descartes, for whom space, internal place, and matter differed only ‘in the mode in which they are conceived by us’ (that is, there is nothing objective or real in that distinction). More precisely, Descartes explained: ‘Place (locus) indicates situation (situs) more explicitly than magnitude or figure; whereas, on the contrary, we more often think of the latter when we speak of space (spatium).’[66] Thus, spatium carried the connotation of magnitude while preserving the essential sense of locus internus, or internal place. According to Leclerc, this meaning was accepted not only by Leibniz and the pre-critical Kant, but also by Raphson, and even by Newton.
By the end of the seventeenth century, as this conception of space gained currency, the need to specify locus internus alongside space (in the familiar expression ‘spatium vel locus internus’) became progressively less pressing. Moreover, the widespread influence of Newton’s interpretation of space as the totality of places, following the publication of the Principia in 1687, further contributed to the use of space as a self-sufficient term, increasingly detached from its original association with place.
At this stage, Leclerc returns to his central thesis concerning the widespread misinterpretation of Newton’s spatial concepts. This misreading marked the decisive step in the transformation of space — which, in the origin of Newton’s discourse, was merely a noun metaphysically subordinated to place, that is, space as the totality of places — into a fully self-subsistent physical entity: three-dimensional space conceived as a real/actual substance. In this shift, space came to assume the primary metaphysical role once held by place, while place itself was relegated to the status of a subsidiary existent, merely a part of space. The overturning of the meanings of space and place was thus complete by the eighteenth century. Crucially, this reversal occurred because Newton’s own metaphysical resolution of the spatial question — namely, the grounding of place in God’s creative activity and the subordination of space to place as the totality of places (and thus as a spiritual derivation of divine action, not a physical entity) — was obscured by his interpreters. In its place, they advanced a purely physical interpretation of Newton’s spatial concepts, an interpretation that detached space from its theological foundation, displaced the primacy of place, and attributed to space the material substance it never possessed in Newton’s original conception.
As Leclerc observes, Leibniz too shared in the misapprehension of the metaphysical meaning of Newton’s spatial concepts. Yet, both Newton and Leibniz were in agreement on a crucial point: the true subject of the spatial question was place, not space. Space, in their usage, was only the name designating the totality of places. For Leibniz, however, place had to be defined and determined by reference to a plurality of monads — that is, according to the reciprocal situation (situs) of each monad. In this sense, place was conceived as a relational entity: it is the “where” of one entity with respect to the “where” of others. From this framework, Leibniz explained, the total abstract order of places is what is properly meant by the term space.[67]
This long historical premise was necessary for Leclerc to set out the broader framework with which Kant had to confront himself — namely, the inherited conception and meaning of space. Only in this way can one avoid the risk of attributing to Kant, or to earlier thinkers, conceptions of space that are anachronistic. It is, I believe, a particular merit of Leclerc to exercise such uncommon caution in addressing the spatial question, consistently resisting the temptation to project modern presuppositions about space back onto the thinkers of the past.
Finally, we return to the specific subject of this essay: the concepts of space in Kant.
Kant’s initial position is presented in his first published work, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1747). Although there were important differences between Kant’s and Leibniz’s theories of the monads — for unlike Leibniz, who posited only one kind of fundamental entity, Kant maintained a dualism, distinguishing between spiritual and physical monads; moreover, Kant’s monads were not ‘windowless’: they did not exist in isolation but acted on each other, therefore they exerted a kind of ‘internal action’ that Leibniz’s system of purely external relations did not allow[68] — the underlying metaphysical stance concerning spatial notions was similar. As Kant put it: ‘there can be no place without external connections, situations and relations… Place is where an entity is in relation to other entities… the totality of order of situation in reference to each other, which is called “space” is dependent upon the acting of the monads. Indeed, there is no extension either without the activity’s effecting relations and connections...’.[69] In short: place is the where of relations; extension (that is, space) is an attribute of relation, not of substance; and space itself is nothing but the totality of the order of places. These are the fundamental metaphysical conceptions that Kant inherited from Leibniz.
Kant’s metaphysical conviction concerning place, space, and extension still followed the same line as Leibniz’s thought when he published his Monadologia Physica (1756), Leclerc observes. Once again, it is the activity of the monads — their connections and relations — that serves as the foundation for the derivation of spatial conceptions: extension, ‘which is constituted by their [i.e., the monads] sphere of activity’; place, understood as the where or situation of the monads’ acting; and space, defined as ‘the totality of order of situation.’[70]
However, a decade later, Kant encountered difficulties with this position, Leclerc explains; he then almost entirely changed his mind, moving from a relational to an absolutist conception of space. Here, ‘absolute’ does not mean physical or Newtonian in the traditional sense, but rather independent of the physical — something that precedes it. Kant came to realize that the actings of monads already presupposed that the monads were ‘there’. Their ‘thereness,’ i.e., their located existence, could not be dependent upon or caused by their actings, but had to be an absolute factor, independent of the physical existent.
Kant maintained this new metaphysical position in his short treatise On the First Ground of the Distinction of Regions in Space (1768). Using the example of ‘incongruent counterparts’ (see Image 2 in the article Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature), he argued that their explanation was unintelligible if ‘if the order of relations of situations be determinable solely by reference to the physical substances [and that] the order of places relatively to each other cannot be dependent upon, and thus follow from, physical existents and their activity of relating each other. That order must be somehow ontologically distinct and separate, and presupposed by the activities of the existents- presupposed because unless this be so the activities will be without a sense of direction, i.e., they would have no basis upon which to act, or move, in one direction rather than another.’[71] Leclerc stresses that Kant’s break with Leibniz did not consist in rejecting the idea of space as a relational order of places. What changed was that Kant now held this order to be independent of physical existents, and thus not derivable from them.[72] In other words, the spatial order had to be presupposed as an ideal, mental structure — an a priori form of knowledge.
This position was eventually developed and systematized in the Critique of Pure Reason (1770). There Kant argued that the relational structure of existents — i.e., their place, space, and time — is not the result of the activities or relations of physical entities themselves. Rather, it arises from an a priori condition of knowledge: it is determined in reference to the perceiving activity of the observing mind.
PART III – ISSUES
9. The Problem of the Physical Existent
The present and the following previously published essays form the core of PART IV of The Nature of Physical Existence. In this section, Leclerc develops his metaphysical vision of the meaning of the physical existent — that is, nature, ultimately — by amending certain well-known philosophical doctrines (notably those of Leibniz and Whitehead) and incorporating insights from modern scientific discoveries.
As is typical of Leclerc’s method, the essay opens with historical considerations that we have already examined elsewhere. Specifically, he retraces the intellectual path that led to the affirmation of the modern conception of nature, which supplanted the Aristotelian framework. In the Aristotelian vision, matter and form were understood correlatively, with internal change, becoming, and potentiality constituting integral aspects of the existent. The modern view, by contrast, redefined matter as a self-subsistent, fully actual, and changeless entity: atomic in structure and definable solely in quantitative terms (size, shape, weight, etc.). This reconceptualization of matter also reshaped the understanding of natural phenomena, shifting from an organic (Aristotelian) to a mechanical conception. Nature was now thought to be explicable entirely in terms of locomotion: all changes could be reduced to the rearrangement of ultimate material constituents, their motions, and, ultimately, their changes of place.
Leclerc’s central concern is to establish the nature and status of ultimate physical existents or substances, by confronting Aristotle’s view with those of Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and Whitehead. The questions are decisive: Is body (a composite of elementary constituents) an entity ontologically distinct from its elementary substances, that is, does it occupy a different ontological level? Or, conversely, are the ultimate constituents — the atomic elements — the only entities entitled to be called “true physical existents,” as material atomism, the modern conception of nature, asserts?
The answers define two opposed conceptions of nature:
- On the one hand, the mechanical, reductionist, and deterministic view — the modern vision of matter and nature — which recognizes only ultimate particles as true existents and reduces all phenomena to locomotion and rearrangement.
- On the other hand, the organic (or systemic), anti-reductionist, and probabilistic view — an alternative and contemporary conception — which regards compound entities as true existents in their own right, irreducible to their constituents or to mere locomotion, and reintroduces becoming, possibility, and probability as intrinsic to physical existence.
From a metaphysical perspective, this second vision draws upon Aristotle, Leibniz, and especially Whitehead. From a scientific perspective, it is supported by the theories that reshaped physics in the twentieth century, particularly relativity and quantum mechanics.
On the closeness between Aristotle’s metaphysical position and modern physics, Leclerc cites Heisenberg’s famous observation: ‘… in modern physics the concept of potentiality, which had played such a decisive role in the philosophy of Aristotle has again been forced into a central position. One can interpret the mathematical laws of quantum theory as a quantitative formulation of this Aristotelian concept of “dynamis” or “potentia”.’[73] Concerning the inadequacy of the mechanical vision of nature intrinsic to material atomism in opposition to an organic, systemic conception of nature and its relevance for a new mode of understanding physical entities, an astonishing declaration by Whitehead, taken from Science and the Modern World, is reported here by Leclerc: ‘The concrete enduring entities are organisms, so that the plane of the “whole” influences the very characters of the various subordinate organisms which enter into it. In the case of an animal, the mental states enter into plans of the successive subordinate organisms until the ultimate smallest organisms, such as electrons, are reached. Thus, an electron within a living body is different from an electron outside it, by reason of the plan of the body… and this plan includes the mental state.’[74] Fundamentally, Whitehead is saying that there is a difference between an electron when it is the constituent of a compound and when it is not. This implies a radically different conception of matter and nature from the modern mechanical view (On Whitehead’s extended meaning of ‘organism’ — derived from the original Greek organon, ‘an instrument functioning with reference to the whole,’ and closely aligned with the systemic idea that the whole is more than the mere aggregation of its parts — see the article: Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature – 24. The Physical Existent, Simple and Compound).
However, even if Leclerc regards the contributions of Aristotle, Leibniz, and Whitehead as decisive for the development of a new conception of nature in the organic sense (or, as I would add, systemic — given the original closeness between these two concepts), he nevertheless insists that their doctrines require significant amendment, particularly those of Leibniz and Whitehead. As he puts it: ‘my conclusion is that Whitehead theory is not able to adequately account for the organic and to provide a basis for the conception of compounds which have a unity… The only way to have a unity and a character of their own… is for compounds to be admitted the status of actual entities or real beings. And this entails the abandonment of the fundamental metaphysical theory which was adopted in the seventeenth century… that the real or actual entities, the ultimate physical existents, must be conceived as restricted to the final constituents of compounds. We are thus faced with the necessity of finding an alternative metaphysical theory of the nature of the ultimate existent’.[75]
Science and philosophy, Leclerc observes, converge upon the necessity of a new vision of matter. Among the most decisive scientific reasons for rejecting the modern conception of matter (and therefore of nature), he identifies the recognition of the untenability of the notion that ultimate existents are changeless. Twentieth-century physical concepts such as energy and the field have displaced the older idea of inertial matter. This means that matter is no longer conceived as a set of fixed, immutable particles merely changing place, but rather in terms of active entities in constant interrelationship. Moreover, contemporary physics has shown on firm empirical grounds that the so-called elementary particles themselves are not immutable. They can be transformed into one another: ‘a complete controversion,’ Leclerc writes, ‘of the seventeenth-century concept of changeless entities.’[76] A few pages later he reinforces this claim with Heisenberg’s testimony: ‘All the elementary particles can, at sufficient high energies, be transmuted into other particles, or they can simply be created from kinetic energy and can be annihilated into energy, for instance into radiation’, which means, Leclerc concludes, that if such transformations are empirically observed, then they must first exist as potentialities, which are subsequently actualized.[77]
Leclerc’s central point regarding the new conception of matter is that compounds — atoms, molecules, cells, and more complex bodies — must be understood as true physical existents in their own right, not merely as aggregations of ultimate constituents. To grasp this, the distinction between potentiality and actuality becomes fundamental, along with a clear account of the relation between constituents and the compound. According to Leclerc, the actualization of the new unity — the compound qua compound — ‘must necessarily transcend [the constituents] so that from the standpoint of the actual unity the constituents are potential.’[78]
Seen in this light, Whitehead’s remarkable claim (mentioned earlier) that an entity, such as an electron, changes its mode of existence when it becomes part of a compound becomes more intelligible. For Leclerc, the recognition of unity (and thus of the compound as a true existent) requires more than aggregation: it presupposes a unifying act or a unifying agent — ‘an agent affecting this unity’ — responsible for constituting the new whole.[79] This unifying agent, however, cannot belong to the same ontological level as the constituents; it must transcend them. Its actuality emerges in the very act of unification. Such emergence entails a transition from potentiality to actuality, thereby recovering Aristotle’s fundamental insight.
Leclerc then clarifies how this integrating agency arises: ‘it arises from the agency of the constituents, by each of the constituents contributing its agency to constitute an integral combined agency. That is, the agency of each is taken up into, as constitutive of, an integrated agency. Each is thereby part of a new whole which, as an integrated agency, is more than the mere sum of the parts.’ [80]
Leclerc’s final proposition, I observe, amounts to nothing less than the very definition of a “system.” This definition is inseparably linked to an organic conception of matter — as already noted above, and as Leclerc himself developed in Chapter 24 of The Nature of Physical Existence (to which I again redirect the reader via the article Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature. Eventually, Leclerc explicitly adopted a systemic vocabulary and thus a fully-fledged systemic or organic vision of nature, i.e., of the physical existent. Central to this new vision is the recognition of compounds as true existents or real beings — in contrast to their status as merely ‘phenomenal’ entities in Leibniz and, according to Leclerc, in Whitehead. This shift entails a reconceptualization of the relation between constituents and the compound they compose: namely, the constituents exist only in a state of potentiality relative to the actuality of the compound.
Leclerc concludes the essay with this decisive claim:[81]
Only on such a theory of compound actual or real beings is the concept of organism properly intelligible. And this theory, I suggest, is also able to give a more adequate and coherent conception of the human person than is possible in terms of the current presupposition of actual beings as restricted to ultimate simples [i.e., material atomism].
Ultimately, this is the systemic, organic, processual, and place-based conception of nature that I am advancing at RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place (On the Structure of Reality; What Is Place? What Is Space?; From Space to Place). With Leclerc, I fully agree: it is precisely by means of this new conception of nature — which carries with it a new conception of matter, place, space, and time — that human phenomena can be more adequately understood. Among these phenomena, I wish to emphasize one in particular: architecture. For architecture occupies a unique position, since — whether willingly embraced or not — the life of human beings, from the very origins of human cultures and the first dwellings, has been continuously exposed to, shaped by, and mediated through built form.
10. The Physical Existent as a Compound Actuality
This essay is, in effect, a résumé of the main argument already developed in The Nature of Physical Existence, as well as in Chapter 9 (above) of The Philosophy of Nature. The central question, as Leclerc insists, is that — in light of the empirical evidence of contemporary science — ‘we stand in urgent need of a new theory of the physical existent [i.e., a new conception of nature].’[82] Against the modern presupposition of material atomism, which reduces physis (nature) to ultimate existents alone, science has now shown that we must think in terms of both compounds and constituents as true physical existents.
Metaphysically, this requires us to (re)establish the meaning of what is — ousía, substance, ens reale, monad, primary existent, actual existent (or, as Leclerc puts it, ‘call it what you will’ —… and I call it place) — in terms of unity.[83] Evidence for such structured unitary wholes as genuine existents, which in turn determine the role and function of their constituents, arises not only from biology and biochemistry but also from micro-physics — and, as argued in the previous chapter, the same applies in the human realm.
The crucial question, then, concerns the relation of the constituents to the whole, a relation suspended between potentiality and actuality. This issue is the specific focus of the following chapter, which I will examine in greater detail, given its decisive importance for any adequate modern conception of nature.
11. The Problem of Relations
In this essay, the focus of the new conception of nature (i.e., the physical existent) shifts to the concept of relation. In the modern conception, matter, space (or place), time, and motion were regarded as four distinct fundamentals, standing independently of one another. With the rise of contemporary physical theory, however, that framework has been radically transformed: special relativity united space with time; general relativity ‘brought matter and motion into intrinsic relation with space-time, all conceived relatively to each other.’[84] Quantum physics, I add, has established an even stricter interrelation between all these concepts through the notion of physical fields, which present-day physicists often regard as the ultimate existent (see Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part Two).
The current scientific vision of matter is thus so remote from the modern tradition that the very use of the term matter has become highly questionable, Leclerc observes. More troubling still, he continues, is that the continued use of the word matter obscures the profound transformation that has occurred in our conception of the physical existent — and, with it, in the meaning of relation itself. Yet it is precisely this new meaning of relation that must be grasped if the necessary metaphysical revisions are to be made in order to sustain a new conception of the physical existent in line with contemporary science. I would add that the same considerations apply, mutatis mutandis, to the concepts of place and space.
Again, the central question here concerns our understanding of what should be regarded as the true physical existent — what the ancient Greeks called physis. Should this status be reserved exclusively for ultimate elements (as in the modern doctrine of material atomism), or should it also include compound bodies (as in the organic or systemic conception of nature suggested by Aristotle, Leibniz in part, and Whitehead — and as contemporary science increasingly indicates)?
The first vision supports the claim that sciences such as chemistry and biology are, ‘in the end, subdivisions of the fundamental science of physics.’[85] Yet, Leclerc observes, developments in chemistry and biology themselves reveal the inadequacy of this reductionist, materialist view. Regarding chemical substances and the class of molecules — that is, concerning the very study of ‘matter’ — it has become necessary to recognize levels of organization, which entails the rejection of the conception of chemical entities as mere aggregates of atoms. Instead, ‘chemical substances and molecules are… to be conceived as the constituents “related in a certain way”.’[86]
As an illustration of this new conception of matter, Leclerc cites the chemist D. W. Theobald (Manchester University), who argues: ‘the formula “H2O” refers to that class of molecules every member of which is composed of H and O atoms related in a certain way, whereas the term “water” refers to that class of substances each member of which has “H2O” molecules as members related in a certain way.’[87] This means that water is not reducible to a mere aggregation of H and O atoms. It constitutes a new, actual unity — in other words, a true substance.
In the realm of biology, the concept of relation is equally fundamental, ‘for this science investigates living entities which have the characteristic of being organism.’[88] This provides Leclerc with an occasion to revisit the meaning of organism. Even though we have already encountered this argument, it is worth returning to it here with Leclerc, as it constitutes a decisive notion for the new organic and systemic conception of nature. This conception stands in stark contrast to the modern materialistic view, which entailed a mechanical and reductionist understanding of matter and nature.
An organism in the biological sense is a kind of whole in which the parts are “organs”, each functioning in relation to the whole. The relation of the parts of an organism to each other and to the organic whole is quite different from the relation of the parts of a mechanism to each other and to the whole mechanism.
Fundamentally, the difference between the two conceptions of nature lies in how relations are understood. In the first case, relations are considered fully external, which entails a mechanical conception inherited from material atomism: changes in nature are reduced to locomotion, that is, to the motion or change of place of elemental particles. In the second case, relations are internal: the parts of an organism are intrinsically related to each other, such that a new, emerging unity — the organism itself — is formed, transcending the actual status and function of its parts or constituents. This is the essence of the organic, or systemic, conception of nature.
From a historical perspective, the first analytical study of the concept of relation is due to Aristotle, Leclerc observes. This study is found in the Categories, ‘a systematic inquiry into how we think about existing things… Aristotle distinguished several kinds of attributes or predicates’ which determine the nature of a thing, that is, things are signified by their ‘substance’, ‘quantity’, ‘quality’, ‘relation’, ‘place’, ‘time’, ‘position or attitude’, ‘state or condition’, ‘acting’, or ‘being acted’.[89]
Concerning the category of relation, Leclerc specifies it using the original Greek expression ‘in reference to.’ The corresponding Latin translation is relatio, a word that literally means ‘a carrying or bringing back’ (from relatum, the past participle of the verb rĕfĕro, referre). The term re-fero — literally ‘to bring back’ — presupposes a prior action of ‘ bringing to’ the two actions being reciprocally connected. This connection signifies the link or bond between at least two entities — that is, the very essence of a relation.[90]
If Aristotle ascribed no preference or priority to any of the categories, and considered the categories of quality, quantity, and relation (which he used more frequently than the others, Leclerc notes) as ‘not reducible or derivable from each other’, later periods saw a significant shift. With Christian Neoplatonism, in which all being was seen as reducible to the One, perfect thing (i.e., God), the category of quality — that is, the category specifying ‘of what kind or sort’ a thing is — was accorded ‘a status superior to that of the other categories, for it specified the very essence of the thing, what it “is”.’[91]
Eventually, quality came to incorporate other categories, such as quantity and relation, and the term ‘quality’ began to be used as synonymous with ‘attribute.’ It became common to speak of a thing or substance and its qualities.[92] This evolution opened the way to the distinction between primary and secondary qualities of matter. For instance, in the seventeenth century, Locke developed a theory in which primary qualities, defined by figure, bulk, number, or extension, corresponded to the old Aristotelian category of quantity.
Among these quantities, extension acquired particular relevance for the philosophy and physics of the modern conception of matter, with an immediate reference to Descartes’ res extensa. In reaction, Leibniz’s analysis of matter and motion (as we have already considered above and in Leclerc’s other articles) made the important contribution of bringing the category of ‘relation’ back to the forefront. This category is fundamental and decisive for the affirmation of a new conception of the physical existent — that is, of nature in the organic and systemic sense under discussion.
As we have seen, the problem of relations is essential for the possibility of considering bodies, and not just elementary constituents, as true physical existents. This entails that the relations between ultimate constituents must be regarded as ‘real’ rather than ‘phenomenal’, unlike in the doctrines of Leibniz or, more recently, Whitehead. Here, ‘real’ signifies ‘acting on’ other primary entities, and ‘acting on’ entails exercising a certain power or force capable of changing the internal relationships of the fundamental entities acted upon. Through these interactions, a new, superior unity emerges as the result of physical entities in relation to each other.
This organic or systemic vision of matter — and, consequently, of nature — as a function of internal relations applies equally to biological, chemical, and physical entities. According to Leclerc: ‘This is the philosophical conception of relations necessitated by twentieth-century scientific development’.[93]
Leclerc concludes the present essay by elucidating this organic or systemic view of life:
‘The vast complexity of nature is not constituted, as conceived in the theory of material atomism, by ever larger aggregations of atoms, but by the structural interrelationship of comparatively simple wholes constituting larger and more complex wholes, which as such wholes enter into structural relationship with holes of a like kind to constitute still more complex wholes, and so on to a great deal of complexity and variety. Philosophically, I would want to argue that […] the various wholes (atoms, molecules, cells, and so forth) in ascending complexity of kinds, have each to be accorded the status of actual existents, each with its determinate character as that entity, its character being constituted by the definiteness of the conjoint acting of its constituents’.[94]
I call these wholes ‘place’. What Leclerc described is the same place-based, organic, or systemic vision of nature that I argue for at RSaP: a system (or a ‘whole,’ as Leclerc puts it) is nothing other than the place of processes, which may either actualize into an elemental-thing place (a concrete fact, event, or happening) or remain in a potential state awaiting successive actualization. As Leclerc describes, there is a hierarchically organized chain of processes — that is, a place of processes — of increasing size and complexity underlying this new conception of nature. For visual clarification, see the slideshow below, and the following references: On the Structure of Reality, Places Everywhere—Everything Is Place, Image 16 in Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part Two (The Limitation of Being), From Space to Place (particularly Table 1), and the paragraph Place as System.
Slideshow (Images 3, 4, 5, 6): Nature as a system of processes (i.e., a place of processes) of increasing complexity: Physicochemical Systems (MATTER), Biological Systems (LIFE), Social Systems (SOCIETY), Symbolic/Intellectual Systems (THOUGHT). These systems or organic wholes are true physical existents: as systems, they are irreducible to their components. This is a new conception of nature which contrasts the old mechanical, reductionist and determinist conception inherited from material atomism; it is a systemic or organic, antireductionist, and probabilistic conception of nature, which is the one I’m also arguing for at RSaP, and which requires a reformulation of the traditional concepts of place and space, among other fundamental concepts such as matter, time and change (Image 3 by Alessio Soggetti; Image 4 by Fabrice Villard; Image 5, source, by Thomas Bonometti; Image 6 by Tomas Saraceno).
12. Physical Existence, Matter, Activity
The present chapter revisits the contrast between the modern conception of nature and matter, developed since the early seventeenth century, and a new conception still in formation.
In opposition to the Aristotelian understanding of the physical existent (physis) — the result of the correlative action of matter and form (hylē and eidos) — modern doctrine reduced the physical existent to matter alone, understood as material substance: fully actual, self-subsistent, solid, inert or changeless, yet movable. Against this view, a new conception of physical existence began to emerge in the twentieth century, prompted by major scientific discoveries. In contrast to the modern image of inert matter, the physical existent is now conceived as active, in virtue of the forces operative within it, and the category of potentiality has been reinstated. Not only the ultimate constituents of compounds (fundamental particles) but also the compounds themselves must be recognized as true existents — not merely as phenomenal entities. This recognition follows from the fact that the forces at the most fundamental level are intrinsically determinative of the relations between parts and the emergent wholes they constitute. Alongside the concept of acting as relating, the notion of emergence is therefore decisive in the new conception of nature — i.e., of the physical existent or physical existence. These active forces, immanent within the physical existent, explain both its quantitative and qualitative character.
13. Compounds, Body, Change
In this chapter, the new conception of the physical existent — i.e., nature — is examined from the standpoint of ‘relations’, a theme Leclerc had already explored in an earlier essay (11. The Problem of Relations).
Once again, the presupposition that only the ultimate constituents of compounds deserve to be regarded as the true physical existents comes under scrutiny. Whitehead himself — believing atoms, molecules and so on, have on ontologically derived status — held to this assumption, according to Leclerc; yet, as he argues, a modification of Whitehead’s theory allows for its reversal and thereby opens the way for a new philosophical theory of compounds — that is, of ‘matter’ itself. The amendment consists in considering ‘actual entities’, or ‘actual occasions’ as Whitehead also termed the physical existents, as compounds on the basis of a different view of ‘physical acting’.[95] Here, the decisive point is the reconceptualization of physical acting as relating. If ‘relation’ is understood as fully reciprocal (in the same sense described in Plato’s Theaetetus), then relation means both acting on and reacting to. In this way, a genuine bond between entities can be acknowledged: their reciprocal acting and reacting establishes a physical connection that constitutes a new composite whole formed by the entities in relation. That bond or connection — Leclerc adds — is what is ordinarily called ‘force’.
This conception of relation as reciprocal is embedded in the very term itself: the Latin relatio (from relatum, past participle of refero, referre — re + fero) literally means ‘a carrying or bringing back’, which presupposes a prior ‘a carrying or bringing to’, as we have seen before. The two actions are reciprocally connected — precisely the logic of relation. As I suggested earlier (cf. essay 11), this reciprocal character of relatio could be symbolized as: ⇆.
Leclerc explains:[96]
By reason of the mutual actings and reacting [of two entities/constituents, at least], compound wholes are constituted which have a unity and thereby also a determinate character, which is definitely more than those of a mere aggregate. This means that the actings of the constituents combine to constitute the whole a new physical existent. Since the combined acting of the constituents affects a unity which transcends the constituents per se, the combined acting must have the “whole” entity as its subject- for the combined acting is not reducible to the constituents severally as its subject. Thus, from the combined acting and reacting of the constituents there emerges a new integral entity, a physical existent in the full sense of itself per se capable of acting. By such a compound entity’s entering into interaction with other such entities, still more complex existents emerge.
Fundamentally, that is a new conception of the physical existent or nature, considered in organic and/or systemic terms.
… that is a new conception of the physical existent, or nature, considered in organic and/or systemic terms.
In other words, an organism is an entity in which the whole determines the functioning — i.e., the acting — of the parts or constituents. Crucially, this combined acting is not reducible to the mere aggregation of the parts: the whole is not simply the sum of its elements, but the condition that orients, organizes, and actualizes their role within the unity. [97]
I observe that the term ‘system’ derives from the Latin systema, itself a translation of the Greek sýstēma (σύστημα), meaning “a whole compounded of several parts or members, a system.” The Greek word is formed from the prefix syn- (σύν, “with,” “together,” “in company with”) and the verb hístēmi (ἵστημι, “to stand, make to stand, set, place”). This verb, in turn, is rooted in the Indo-European stem ste- or sta-, the basic root from which notions of place, localization, or position are constructed (see the article Back to the Origins of Space and Place). Hence the literal meaning of sýstēma is ‘to set together, combine, associate, unite, bring together as friends’, and so forth.[98] It thus becomes evident why the concepts of system and organism are contiguous: both designate a whole whose identity transcends its parts. Just as an organism is not reducible to the sum of its organs, so too a system is constituted by the internal relations of its elements, through which the whole acquires properties and powers that none of its parts possess in isolation.
Returning to the new definition of matter and nature in the organic (or systemic) sense, which recognizes compound entities as true physical existents, Leclerc takes as a key example the studies on dissipative structures by the Nobel Prize–winning physical chemist Ilya Prigogine. Such structures, Leclerc argues, are ‘compound individuals to be accorded a status which is not ontologically different from that of the ‘integral compound entities’ which I have conceived as physical existents in the full sense, as themselves per se acting.’[99] This interpretation builds on insights by the chemist Joseph Earley. Prigogine’s work lends powerful support to the thesis of a new conception of matter (and therefore of nature), one that incorporates change, process, becoming, and potentiality as intrinsic dimensions of physical existence. His seminal texts — From Being to Becoming and Order out of Chaos — are exemplary articulations of this paradigm shift. They stand as scientific counterparts to the philosophical framework Leclerc develops, and directly resonate with the place-based conception of nature I am advancing at RSaP, especially regarding the rethinking of space and place as fundamental categories.
The emerging conception of nature is no longer compatible with the traditional understanding of the physical (physis, the physical existent) in a strictly material sense: as something fully actual, atomic, and changeless, devoid of internal transformation, becoming, or potentiality. The old framework remains silent on the reality of the body (in the sense of a compound unity) and of mind, which, under that conception, was ‘extruded from the physical and had to be accorded a quite independent ontological status’.[100] In this view, to identify the physical with the merely material (matter) is to impose a narrow restriction that inevitably generates a bifurcation of nature: the physical and the mental are split into two irreconcilable realms of existence, without any possibility of genuine integration.
Alfred N. Whitehead was among the few twentieth-century thinkers to fully recognize the destructive impact of a bifurcated nature on humanity’s relation to the world. In response, he sought to overcome this fundamental dualism by attributing to actual entities a twofold character — a physical pole and a mental pole — articulated through their activity of prehension. Whitehead’s doctrine carries the further, explicit merit of reintroducing into the very fabric of nature the notion of process: change, becoming, and potentiality. This is precisely what the modern conception of nature had excluded, reducing change to nothing more than locomotion, i.e., the mere displacement of inert matter in space.
Leclerc thus observes that a philosophical theory capable of grounding the discoveries of contemporary physics—namely, the conception of the physical existent as active—is urgently needed. Such a theory would allow us to recover a broadened Aristotelian conception of change, in which external change (locomotion) is no longer privileged but is integrated with the full spectrum of qualitative and quantitative transformations proper to the physical existent.
This widened notion of change, Leclerc continues, inevitably raises the problem of life itself. For to think change in its fullness means also to confront the relation between physics, chemistry, and biology.[101] At this juncture, the persistence of the old metaphysical dualism between matter (body) and mind proves untenable. Following Whitehead’s lead, Leclerc insists that this dualism must be overcome: ‘Mental functioning can be, and needs to be, readmitted as integral to physical existence as essentially involved in physical acting’.[102]
According to Leclerc, this reintroduction of the mental into the physical entails a teleological factor—a condition necessary for any organism to be regarded as truly living and, consequently, free from mere mechanical determination. Whitehead himself suggested that the emergence of teleology within the mental or conceptual pole of the physical existent may be understood as a mode of survival: a way of responding to environmental change, or even of adjusting and transforming the organism itself in relation to such change. It is precisely this capacity for adaptive, purposive response that marks the physical existent as ‘living’.[103]
Building on Whitehead’s intuitions, these final considerations allow Leclerc to extend the conception of the physical existent to include its intrinsic relation to the environment. I would add that these considerations broaden the systemic understanding of the physical existent in an ecological sense—that is, they recognize the environment not as an external backdrop but as an integral part of the physical existent itself. In earlier essays, we examined how the conception of relation reshaped our understanding of the internal constitution of the physical existent, allowing compound bodies to be acknowledged as genuine unities. At this stage, however, a further step becomes evident: compound bodies, “organisms,” and “living organisms” in relation to their environment must now be seen as forming still more complex unities. To capture this broader perspective—what I have termed the systemic understanding of the physical existent in an ecological sense—we may turn directly to Leclerc’s own formulation:[104]
The complexity of an organism is not only in itself, however; its internal complexity is matched by the complexity of its relations with the environment – these two complexities are interdependent. The complexity of interrelations with the environment is not merely a complexity of “responses to” other existents, but consists also in a complexity of “interweaving with” its environmental constituents… organisms are not adequately understandable and analyzable when conceived only in terms of the interrelatedness of their parts or constituents to the organic whole; it is necessary to take equally into account the interrelatedness of the organic wholes to each other, this holds evidently for “living” organisms, but not exclusively for them. In other words, this interrelatedness is of great importance also to nonbiological sciences.
Once again, I remark that this vision corresponds to the same organic or systemic view of nature that I am developing at RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place, grounded in a new conception of place understood as a system of processes. Within such systems, when localized processes actualize, they give rise to elemental things-place (what we ordinarily call things, or matter, life, societies, or symbols). In continuity with Leclerc’s insights, these elemental things-place are not isolated existents but emerge through intrinsic relations—both internal, among their constituents, and external, with their environment. Just as Leclerc extends the concept of the physical existent to include compound bodies, organisms, and even their ecological interactions, the framework I’m discussing at RSaP interprets place itself as an active, relational medium in which both matter, living, ecological, sociocultural, and intellectal processes are integrated. This highlights a holistic and systemic ontology, where the boundaries of entities (things, life, societies, thoughts/symbols) are defined less by rigid materiality and more by the network of processes and relations in which they participate.
14. Motion, Action, and Physical Being
The main focus of this essay is the conception of matter—understood as the physical existent—within contemporary physics. How did we arrive at a new conception of matter? And in what sense can we still meaningfully speak of ‘matter’ when its underlying conceptualization has been transformed so radically from the modern to the contemporary epoch?
Developments in twentieth-century physics profoundly altered our understanding of space and time. By contrast, the concept of motion, which is implicitly entailed in both, received comparatively little sustained scrutiny, as Leclerc observes. Yet motion is a critical notion, for it lies at the nexus of the physical existent (i.e., matter), space (or place), and time. This connection, decisive for Aristotle, was obscured by seventeenth-century changes in the conception of matter.
For Aristotle, matter (hylē) was always correlative to form (eidos), and this correlation inherently involved change: generation and decay, qualitative and quantitative transformation, and change of place. The Greek term kinesis—used extensively by Aristotle and Plato—referred to these last three types of change. In the Scholastic tradition, it was translated as motus, from which the English ‘motion’ derives. But our modern notion of motion is already far removed from the rich Aristotelian concept of kinesis.[105] Aristotle’s conception of the physical existent (physis) was therefore integrative, comprising hylē, eidos, and various types of change (genesis, phthora, kinesis, including phora or locomotion). As such, physis was inseparable from becoming: the process by which potentiality (dynamis) is actualized (energeia) through purpose (entelecheia and telos) — see The Nature of Physical Existence: PART II – The Concept of the Physical, in the article Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence.
The seventeenth century broke decisively with this view. In the new doctrine, matter was conceived as fully actual, homogeneous, inert, and devoid of internal principles of change. Change was reduced to locomotion, understood as something external to matter itself. Motion was no longer entailed in matter but imposed upon it. This inaugurated the modern division of matter, motion, space (or place), and time, which were ‘neither mutually entailed in, required by, nor derivable from each other.’[106]
Thus the new science of nature was not an inquiry into matter per se, but into the motion—more precisely, the locomotion—of matter. It was, as Leclerc notes, a mechanics: an applied mathematics of motion.[107] But if motion was external to matter, what was its origin? To answer this founding question, and to explain the source of all change in nature (since all change was reduced to locomotion), the concept of force was introduced as the cause of motion or of change in motion. Newton, in the Principia, placed the concept of force at the very foundation of his laws of motion turning the science of mechanics into dynamics — from the Greek dynamis, ‘force’ — see also Space and Place: A Scientific History – Part One.
This immediately raised the metaphysical question of the status of force. It could not be identified with motion (since it was posited as its cause), nor with matter (since matter was understood as inert, devoid of any principle of change). Force implied power or potency, which contradicted the conception of matter as changeless. Thus an indispensable scientific concept entered physics without a secure metaphysical grounding.
In the nineteenth century, another fundamental concept was introduced: energy. Rather than replace force, energy extended its meaning as the capacity or power to do work (from the Aristotelian ‘energeia’, ‘ἐνέργεια, compounded from the prefix ἐν, ‘in’, and ἔργον, ‘work, action’).[108] But again the metaphysical question arose: energy could not simply be ascribed to matter, and so it implicitly acquired the status of an independent physical ultimate. Physics thus seemed to be committed to two ultimate substances—matter and energy—whose relation remained unclear, resulting in a kind of physical dualism.[109]
This dualism was overcome only with twentieth-century physics. Relativity theory established the relativistic equivalence of matter (mass) and energy, while microphysics came to regard energy as more fundamental, capable of transforming into matter.[110] As Werner Heisenberg noted:[111]
The elementary particles in modern physics carry a mass… Since mass and energy are, according to the theory of relativity, essentially the same concepts, we may say that all elementary particles consist of energy. This could be interpreted as defining energy as the primary substance of the world.
If in the seventeenth century substance was identified with physical matter, and in the twentieth century it came to be identified with energy, the two conceptions diverge fundamentally in their understanding of change, actuality, and potentiality. The physical existent, now conceived as ‘not material at all in any previous sense of that word’, can scarcely be called ‘matter’ any longer.
Here we reach the core of Leclerc’s essay. The implications of this new conception extend beyond physics into chemistry and the biological sciences. In contemporary physics, the most important shift is that ‘energy’—understood as ‘the power to effect’—is no longer regarded as an external cause of change (for example, as the force moving otherwise inert entities), but as intrinsic to the physical existent itself. The entity is therefore self-moving. In contrast to the old doctrine, which conceived matter as changeless, the new conception treats change as internal and constitutive of the physical existent.
From a metaphysical standpoint, this means that energy (or ‘force’ or ‘power’) is not an independent ultimate but belongs to the ultimate existent as one of its constitutive aspects. Energy presupposes a subject. Force or power, distinguishable but not separable from this subject, must issue in action to produce an effect. As Leclerc emphasizes, force or power per se is only potential; it becomes actual only through action, and action always entails change.[112] In the case of motion, the change is with respect to place; more generally, acting is the transition from potentiality to actuality, where actuality means the realization of the end implicit in the force or power.[113]
The central point of this inquiry is that change is intrinsic to the physical existent. The old materialist doctrine—according to which matter was atomic, fully actual, and changeless—collapses, since actuality and changelessness are mutually contradictory. What is “in act” is active, and activity implies change. The new conception of the physical existent therefore entails a process of action that is more than mere locomotion. It involves change in quality and quantity as well. Leclerc insists that these aspects are not three distinct acts, but three inseparable aspects of a single process of acting: ‘the physical being is not conceived as having three distinct and different kinds of “action”, i.e., three separate and simultaneous “acts” not involved in each other. Rather, the physical being as subject is to be conceived as involving one process of acting having three aspects. This means — Leclerc continues — that the “agency”, the “process of acting” is analyzable as involving three distinct — but not separate or separable — outcomes or results.’[114] Locomotion, as one aspect, can be analyzed in abstraction, and mechanics was built on that abstraction; but philosophically, Leclerc observes, ‘it is to be recognized as an “abstraction”, and not to be mistaken for a separate, concrete process.’ [115] I have elsewhere addressed this question in relation to place and matter (Place, Space, Matter, and a New Conception of Nature, section 21. Matter, Motion, and Substance).
Leclerc continues: action is not only immanent or internal but also relational. A physical being acts not only within itself but also upon other physical beings, and crucially, this interaction is reciprocal.[116] Two entities act simultaneously on one another, in contrast to the old atomic conception of passive matter.[117]
In conclusion, this view stands in sharp contrast to the modern conception of matter as passive and inert. The implication for the sciences of nature is profound: locomotion must be recognized as only one aspect of change within the process of acting, and not the most fundamental one. Primacy belongs to the relational and internal dimensions of action—‘Primacy must be accorded to the process of acting as relational and to the internal change involved in the “process” of acting’.[118] This has far-reaching consequences, especially for chemistry and biology, but also for microphysics. Ultimately, metaphysics will be decisive in accounting for these aspects of the inquiry into nature.
15. Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Modern Science
In this final essay, Leclerc examines how different philosophical traditions have shaped the modern conception of nature.
He begins by noting that in the modern epoch science was determinative of philosophy, just as religion and theology had been determinative in the medieval period. Leclerc regards the period from the early seventeenth to the late eighteenth century as one in which ‘philosophy was close to science’.[119] The following centuries, however, witnessed their disconnection. This was the legacy of a new conception of matter that culminated in Descartes’ formalization of the dualism between the physical (matter) and the ideal (mind). That division eventually gave rise to two main philosophical movements: positivism and idealism.
‘Positivism — Leclerc observes —, withdrawing philosophy from any positive contribution to the knowledge of the nature of things, eschewed metaphysics, while idealism asserted metaphysics as the only route to a true understanding.’[120] Both soon lost momentum. Positivism gradually reintroduced certain metaphysical elements, while idealism gave way to phenomenology without ever freeing itself ‘from the inheritance grounded in the seventeenth-century dualism and its consequent separation from science.’[121] For this reason, Leclerc argues, we are now at a turning point: it is necessary to reconsider our philosophical inheritance in order to escape these shallows.
To do so, Leclerc adopts a historical perspective. He traces the influence of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and especially Neoplatonism on the development of modern thought, beginning with figures such as Cusanus, Bruno, Paracelsus, and Basso, and later Descartes, Leibniz, and above all Kant. Kant’s critical philosophy, consistent with the metaphysical dualism, was decisive in dividing philosophy from science (for a detailed analysis of all these historical passages, I redirect you to the article Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence). For Kant, knowledge was grounded in the structures of mind rather than in things themselves, thereby denying the knowability of physical entities as they are.[122]
In the early twentieth century, realist doctrines arose in reaction to such subjectivism. Yet, Leclerc notes, ‘these realist reactions have been primarily epistemological’ due to the long-standing aversion to metaphysics. The notable exception was Alfred North Whitehead, who recognized the necessity of a metaphysical theory that treated physical things in themselves as the true subjects of propositions.
At stake here is the connection between mind and matter, the ideal or mathematical and the physical. Since modern science had long assumed that change was intelligible only as material locomotion, the fundamental question became: how is scientific knowledge of physical entities in motion possible? This inquiry directly involves the status of place (‘the problem concerning place is intrinsically bound with the issue of the physical existent’)[123] and geometry (‘the problem concerning geometry is intrinsically bound up with the issue of the relation of the mind to the physical’).[124] At root, these are metaphysical questions.
Whitehead’s major works addressed precisely these issues. His Aristotelian-inspired metaphysics rejected ontological dualism by affirming that ‘the object is a thing received [the reference is to Whiteheads’ theory of the physical prehension of the datum] and not […] either a mode of reception or a thing generated in the perception.’[125] On this view, ‘it is the physical in itself which is essentially knowable and know’, as Leclerc emphasizes.[126]
Whitehead thus offered one way out of the shallows. Yet Leclerc’s larger point is that contemporary science now faces problems that are not merely scientific but profoundly philosophical, requiring ‘the abandonment of modern Neoplatonism subjectivism, and the turn to an essential Aristotelianism.’[127] What is needed is a new metaphysics and a reintegration of physics and metaphysics within a new philosophy of nature. This is Leclerc’s fundamental thesis.
Before leaving the conclusion to Leclerc, allow me a personal remark. No one, in my view, has expressed with greater clarity than Leclerc the significance of the concepts of place and space for our changing understanding of nature. This transformation—still ongoing—demands the reformulation of fundamental concepts such as matter, place, space, and time. These are also the core concepts of my own discipline, architecture, which, like every human domain, cannot remain untouched by such changes. Indeed, over the last decades, their impact has become increasingly evident in architecture. What is still missing is a theoretical reformulation of those concepts in light of the new conception of nature. This is the focus of my research at RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place. Such reformulation is necessary because concepts drive action. Without renewed clarity in concepts of matter, place, space, and time, architecture cannot achieve coherence or progress. Suspended as it is between the abstract and the concrete, the mental and the physical, architecture is bound to metaphysical foundations. Like every other discipline, it must ultimately rest upon a clarified philosophy of nature.
Philosophy is being faced in our time with the necessity for a more thoroughgoing rethinking of the fundamental philosophical problems, concepts, and categories throughout its entire range, than philosophy has undertaken since the time of Plato and Aristotle. This rethinking will affect science no less deeply than it will philosophy itself. And the consequences for human life will be no less great than those of the new science and philosophy of the seventeenth century.[128]
IVOR LECLERC, The Philosophy of Nature
The Relation Between Natural Science and Metaphysics
I close this series of articles on Leclerc’s work by introducing a brief paper titled ‘The Relation Between Natural Science and Metaphysics’, which the author presented at a 1986 conference at Colorado State University on The World View of Contemporary Physics: Does it Need a New Metaphysics?.[129] This paper may be seen as a continuation of the arguments developed in the last chapters of The Philosophy of Nature: namely, that the new conception of nature shaped by contemporary physics entails unresolved metaphysical inconsistencies. For Leclerc, this demonstrates the necessity of a renewed metaphysics, without which physics cannot properly clarify the nature of its fundamental concepts. This renewal also implies the recovery of a philosophy of nature as the common ground between physics and metaphysics.
Leclerc begins from the conception of Philosophia Naturalis, which in the seventeenth century rested on the complementary contributions of physics and philosophy: the application of mathematics to motion, together with metaphysical analyses of nature’s basic concepts (motion, place, and the prime mover). When a new conception of nature as matter was introduced in the early seventeenth century, this integrated approach was redefined. Descartes (in his Principles of Philosophy) and Newton (in his Principia) formalized the new framework. Newton’s system, grounded in a metaphysics of corporeal atomism, combined mechanics (the mathematical study of motion) with philosophy (his Definitions, Axioms, and Scholia on the one hand, and the role of God as prime mover on the other). As Leclerc emphasizes, Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was precisely an ‘an integration of mechanics and metaphysics.’[130]
Although Newton’s system prevailed over the Cartesian alternative, the immense success of his laws of motion in describing the universe as a mechanical structure soon overshadowed the metaphysical dimension of the Principia. In particular, God’s role was quietly excluded. As Leclerc observes, ‘the science of mechanics was beginning to be regarded as an autonomous science’. This program was further developed in France during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by Maupertuis, d’Alembert, Lagrange, and Laplace. Laplace, in particular, advanced the view that mechanics offered a complete account of nature as a mechanistic system, rendering the hypothesis of God ‘entirely otiose.’[131] For Laplace, the legitimacy of fundamental concepts such as ‘force’, ‘mass’, ‘motion’, cause’, or ‘laws’ depended solely on their quantitative role, formalizable in equations. Their intrinsic meaning was to be eliminated from consideration.[132] As mechanics successfully extended its reach to heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, any trace of metaphysical presuppositions was systematically removed. This program, ‘carried out by Mach, Kirchhoff, Herts, and Poincaré’,[133] culminated in the nineteenth century with the replacement of the old philosophia naturalis by an autonomous science of mechanics. When, in the early twentieth century, quantum phenomena were discovered, the mechanical mindset persisted: the new field of quantum mechanics was still conceived as a mathematical analysis of entities in motion.[134]
Reflecting on this shift, Leclerc notes that ‘the science of mechanics had become identified with the science of nature. Since science means “knowledge” – Leclerc continues – what is entailed is that mechanics is the true knowledge of nature; in other words, mechanics, the mathematical investigation of motion, “is” science. This new doctrine respecting “science” is what, in the nineteenth century, came to be known as “positivism”, the doctrine that “science” is the “positive” (the term derived from Auguste Comte), that is, the true, genuine, and certain knowledge of nature.’’[135]
The consequence of this positivist outlook was the removal of the metaphysical foundations inherited from the seventeenth century, and: (1) nature conceived as inert matter, intrinsically changeless, capable only of locomotion; (2) matter conceived as inherently mathematical, essentially quantitative rather than qualitative; (3) nature regarded as exhaustively understandable in terms of mechanics.[136] Yet the inadequacy of this conception was exposed by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and by Kant’s critique of mathematics. Kant reversed the relation between subject and object: knowledge was not grounded in things but in the faculties of the mind, to which objects must conform.[137] Mathematics, accordingly, was to be seen as a pure creation of the human intellect — a view Einstein also endorsed when he described ‘the fictitious character of the fundamental principles’ of both relativity and Newtonian theory, calling such principles ‘hypotheses arrived at by the “free creation of the human mind”.’[138] This raises a crucial epistemological problem, which Einstein himself, Leclerc notes, could not resolve: how can freely created mathematical hypotheses provide genuine knowledge of physical reality, if ideas and physical objects belong to entirely separate and ontologically distinct realms?[139] Once the Cartesian and Newtonian answers — grounded in divine activity — are set aside, what remains? For Leclerc, ‘there is no way out of this epistemological difficulty except in terms of a new metaphysics.’[140]
Leclerc then clarifies the meaning and method of metaphysics. In Aristotelian terms, it is ‘the science that studies the first principles and highest causes of things.’ More generally, metaphysics seeks the most universal categories presupposed — often tacitly — by scientific theories and human practices. Its method is twofold: a critical side (the examination of antecedent or unacknowledged metaphysical assumptions) and a constructive side (the formulation of generalizations transcending particular spheres of experience to secure universality). For Leclerc, what is needed is a new metaphysics freed from outdated presuppositions — one that can move beyond the dominance of locomotion as the fundamental model of change in the universe.[141]
… metaphysics seeks the greatest or highest generalities or universalities… [metaphysical] generalizations necessarily will have to transcend these [particular] fields to ensure their fully general application; it is in this respect that their validity as truly metaphysical generalities is apt to be found wanting.
Before considering the final part of Leclerc’s intervention, focused on the main metaphysical issues of our time, I would like to return to the meaning of metaphysics in connection with its basic intent of transcending particular fields of application. This is a crucial issue for me, especially regarding the meaning of spatial concepts, which are metaphysical concepts before they become the subject of specific disciplines (my thoughts go to architecture, of course).
Since the presentation of this website, I have stressed the necessity of finding a convergence between different conceptions of space and place across disciplines. I do not believe it serves human knowledge or progress to admit a separate space and place for physicists, another for philosophers, another for architects, another for psychologists, social scientists, artists, and so on. There must be one space and one place (as well as one matter, one time, etc.) that transcend all particular meanings and usage. This can only be achieved through metaphysical convergence, of the kind Leclerc proposes and that I myself have also advocated in earlier articles. Such convergence requires a shared ground on which concepts can be properly anchored — and only metaphysics can provide this ground. Without metaphysical investigation, there can be no unity between the diverse disciplinary understandings of space, place, matter, and time. This is what I meant when, on several occasions at RSaP—Rethinking Space and Place, I argued for the need to ‘find a convergence between different interpretations’ of these fundamental concepts, moving beyond disciplinary boundaries. It was on this basis — the hypothesis of a fundamental convergence between physical and philosophical concepts beyond specific disciplines — that I am discussing a definition of place as system of processes, extending the traditional meaning of place to embrace all domains of human knowledge, from philosophy to physics, from architecture to art, or in a single phrase, from the scientific to the humanistic. (For a fuller account of this reformed understanding of place, see Places Everywhere—Everything Is Place, and What Is Place? What Is Space?).
Leclerc concludes his paper by briefly examining some metaphysical issues that, in his view, are ‘especially pertinent to physics at the present time.’[142]
The first issue concerns the presuppositions underlying material atomism, which persist in contemporary physics. We now know that atoms are not truly indivisible, yet we continue to call them ‘atoms.’ More significantly, we continue to think of ‘particles’ as material entities, even though the traditional attributes of matter (solidity, mass, hardness, impenetrability, mobility) no longer apply. As Leclerc points out, ‘particle’ literally means ‘little part’ — but little part of what? The implied answer is: of matter.[143] Yet the behavior of these entities defies the classical model of matter. Particles exhibit wave-like properties and can, under certain conditions, ‘cease altogether to have a particulate character, abruptly changing into electromagnetic radiation.’[144]
This leads directly to two further metaphysical issues. The first is the problem of continuity and discontinuity. If we consider Descartes’s res extensa, Newton’s atomism (where atoms remain continuous), Maxwell’s electromagnetic field, or Einstein’s spacetime, these entities are fundamentally continuous. In contrast, quantum physics introduces discontinuity: the very term ‘quantum’ denotes the discreteness of matter. How can such radically opposed visions of physical reality be reconciled? Leclerc notes that this opposition recalls two ancient ontological models: Parmenides’s conception of being as continuous, immutable, and unchanging (later adopted by Plato, Neoplatonists, and much of subsequent thought), and Aristotle’s conception of being as inseparable from becoming — a model that historically received far less adherence.
The second issue concerns the activity of microparticles, which interact with one another. This is a contradiction in terms if we persist in calling them ‘matter,’ which by definition is inert and changeless. To be ‘active’ entails discontinuity, for action is not continuous: it occurs in discrete acts, each beginning and ending. As Leclerc, quoting Whitehead, observes, ‘acting involves quantization.’ Thus, while ‘matter’ implies continuity, ‘particles’ imply discontinuity.[145] The only way to clarify such contradictions, Leclerc insists, is by turning once again to metaphysics. A renewed partnership between theoretical physics, experimental physics, and metaphysics is urgently required.
I conclude this long article by joining Leclerc’s call with a final remark: from my perspective as an architect, the time is also ripe for a partnership between architecture and metaphysics. Only such a partnership can allow architects to grasp the profound implications that the new conception of nature bears for the concepts of space, place, matter, and time — and, consequently, for the very foundations of architecture.
Notes
[1] Ivor Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986), x.
[2] I think it is properly in virtue of mental abstraction — a typical mode of human experience and knowledge — that Aristotle denied the identification of place and matter.
[3] All dualisms — being and becoming, actuality and potentiality, body and mind, the physical and the mathematical, the concrete and the abstract, etc. — directly stem from a certain conception of nature, i.e., physis, the physical existent, of a particular epoch.
[4] Ibid., 3.
[5] Ibid., 4.
[6] Ibid., 4.
[7] Ibid., 4.
[8] Ibid., 5.
[9] Ibid., 8.
[10] Ibid., 9.
[11] Ibid., 9.
[12] Ibid., 10.
[13] Ibid., 10.
[14] Ibid., 11.
[15] Ibid., 11.
[16] Ibid., 12.
[17] Ibid., 14.
[18] Ibid., 15.
[19] Ibid., 15.
[20] Ibid., 15.
[21] Ibid., 45.
[22] Ibid., 44.
[23] Ibid., 46.
[24] Ibid., 46.
[25] Ibid., 47.
[26] Ibid., 47.
[27] Ibid., 47-48.
[28] Ibid., 48.
[29] Ibid., 49.
[30] Ibid., 49.
[31] Ibid., 52.
[32] Ibid., 53-54.
[33] Ibid., 54.
[34] Ibid., 55.
[35] Ibid., 56.
[36] Ibid., 57.
[37] Ibid., 59.
[38] Ibid., 74.
[39] Ibid., 75.
[40] Ibid., 84.
[41] Ibid., 87.
[42] Ibid., 90.
[43] Ibid., 90.
[44] Ibid., 91.
[45] Ibid., 91.
[46] My hypothesis is based on a couple of definitions I found in The Oxford Classical Dictionary and in a rare book A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities – see notes [36] and [37] in Back to the Origins of Space and Place
[47] Ibid., 92.
[48] The omission regards the attribute ‘akinēton’ (which has been variously translated as ‘unchangeable’, ‘motionless’, ‘unmoved’, etc.) referred to the limit of the surrounding body — see Aristotle on the Concept of Place (Topos); without that attribute, the definition has almost no physical sense, certainly not the sense Aristotle was looking for. In The Nature of Physical Existence: PART III – The Modern Concept of Nature, the definition reported by Leclerc is complete and correct: ‘the innermost motionless limit of the container, that is place’ – see note [49] in Concepts of Place, Space, Matter, and the Nature of Physical Existence.
In these years, during my research on spatial concepts, I frequently noted that omission regarding Aristotle’s definition of place. Even in the excellent book by Julian Barbour, The Discovery of Dynamics, we find the same omission, see Space and Place: A Scientific History, Part One, notes [30] and [34].
However, concerning the Aristotelian definition, it is even more critical and widely diffused the mistake of translating ‘topos’ for ‘space’. The theory of Aristotle is a theory of place, not space. Place and space are very different conceptualizations, with different histories that entail different relationships with matter and time (and, to put it bluntly, the conception of place is older and more fundamental than space, as I have discussed in Back to the Origins of Space and Place): we cannot use the two terms indifferently, as synonyms, and without considering temporal contingencies, which means that we can incur into anachronistic interpretations, adding error to error.
[49] Ibid., 92.
[50] Ibid., 93.
[51] Ibid., 93.
[52] Ivor Leclerc, The Nature of Physical Existence (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1972), 193.
[53] Ibid., 193.
[54] Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, 94.
[55] Ibid., 94.
[56] Ibid., 94.
[57] Ibid., 94.
[58] Ibid., 95.
[59] Ibid., 95.
[60] For Kant’s attribution of space as a ‘non-entity’, ‘Unding’, see pages 8 and 96. For Kant’s attribution of space as a pertinence to the world of fable, see page 95.
[61] James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (New York: Psychology Press Classic Editions, 2015), xv-xvi.
[62] Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, 97.
[63] Ibid., 97.
[64] Ibid., 97.
[65] Ibid., 99.
[66] Ibid., 100.
[67] Ibid., 101.
[68] Ibid., 102.
[69] Ibid., 102.
[70] Ibid., 103.
[71] Ibid., 103.
[72] Ibid., 103.
[73] Ibid., 126-127.
[74] Ibid., 124.
[75] Ibid., 124.
[76] Ibid., 125-126.
[77] Ibid., 135.
[78] Ibid., 127.
[79] Ibid., 127.
[80] Ibid., 128.
[81] Ibid., 129.
[82] Ibid., 132.
[83] Ibid., 133.
[84] Ibid., 141.
[85] Ibid., 142.
[86] Ibid., 142.
[87] Ibid., 142.
[88] Ibid., 143.
[89] Ibid., 144. Concerning Aristotle’s Categories, this is the list and the terminology reported by Leclerc: ‘(1) how large, (2) of what kind or sort, (3) with reference to what, (4) where, (5) when, (6) in what position or attitude, (7) in what state, (8) how active, (9) how acted on.’ Confront it with the translation by the English philosopher and classicist J.L. Ackrill: ‘each [thing] signifies either substance [1. Substance] or quantity [2. Quantity] or qualification [3. Quality] or a relative [4. Relation] or where [5. Place] or when [6. Time] or being-in-a-position [7. Position] or having [8. State or Condition] or doing [9. Acting] or being-affected [10. Being Acted]. To give a rough idea, examples of [1]substance are man, horse; of [2] quantity: four-foot, five-foot; of [3] qualification: white, grammatical; of [4] a relative: double, half, larger; of [5] where: in the Lyceum, in the market-place; of [6] when: yesterday, last-year; of [7] being-in-a-position: is-lying, is-sitting; of [8] having: has-shoes-on, has-armour-on; of [9] doing: cutting, burning; of [10] being-affected: being-cut, being-burned.’ In: Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle – The Revised Oxford Translation, Volume One and Two, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 27. See note [143] in the article Being as Place: Introduction to Metaphysics – Part Two (The Limitation of Being)
[90] Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, 144.
[91] Ibid., 145.
[92] Ibid., 145.
[93] Ibid., 148.
[94] Ibid., 150.
[95] Ibid., 166.
[96] Ibid., 167.
[97] Ibid., 167.
[98] Concerning the noun ‘sustema’, σύστημα, see
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=su/sthma
Concerning the verb hístēmi’, ἵστημι, see
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=i(/sthmi
Concerning the verb ‘sunístēmi’, συνίστημι, see
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=suni/sthmi
[99] Leclerc, The Philosophy of Nature, 168.
[100] Ibid., 169.
[101] Ibid., 178.
[102] Ibid., 178.
[103] Ibid., 178-179.
[104] Ibid., 179.
[105] Ibid., 182.
[106] Ibid., 183.
[107] Ibid., 183.
[108] Ibid., 183.
[109] Ibid., 184.
[110] Ibid., 184.
[111] Ibid., 184.
[112] Ibid., 187.
[113] Ibid., 187.
[114] Ibid., 191.
[115] Ibid., 191.
[116] Ibid., 191.
[117] Ibid., 191.
[118] Ibid., 193.
[119] Ibid., 194.
[120] Ibid., 195.
[121] Ibid., 195.
[122] Ibid., 204.
[123] Ibid., 206.
[124] Ibid., 206.
[125] Ibid., 206-207.
[126] Ibid., 207.
[127] Ibid., 208.
[128] Ibid., 208.
[129] Richard F. Kitchener, ed., The World View of Contemporary Physics: Does it Need a New Metaphysics? (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), 1.
[130] Ibid., 27.
[131] Ibid., 27.
[132] Ibid., 28.
[133] Ibid., 28.
[134] Ibid., 29.
[135] Ibid., 29.
[136] Ibid., 30.
[137] Ibid., 30.
[138] Ibid., 31.
[139] Ibid., 32.
[140] Ibid., 32.
[141] Ibid., 33.
[142] Ibid., 34.
[143] Ibid., 34.
[144] Ibid., 34.
[145] Ibid., 36.
Works Cited
Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.
Gibson, James J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New York: Psychology Press Classic Editions, 2015
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.
—, ‘The Relation Between Natural Science and Metaphysics’, in The World View of Contemporary Physics: Does It Need a New Metaphysics? edited by Kitchener, Richard F. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Prigogine, Ilya. From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences. New York: Freeman and company, 1980.
Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle. Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1985.
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2 Comments
D.Heir
Thank you for giving a spot on Ivor Leclerc’s work
Alessandro Calvi Rollino
He certainly deserved it.