Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Leibniz’s Philosophy of Physics

First published Mon Dec 17, 2007; substantive revision Fri Jul 26, 2019

Although better known today for his bold metaphysics and optimistic
theodicy, Leibniz’s intellectual
contributions extended well
beyond what is now generally thought of as philosophy or theology.
Remarkably
in an era that knew the likes of Galileo, Descartes,
Huygens, Hooke and Newton, Leibniz stood out as one of
the most
important figures in the development of the Scientific Revolution.
This entry will attempt to provide
an overview of the central themes
of Leibniz’s philosophy of physics broadly understood, as well
as an
introduction to some of the principal argumentative strategies
he used to defend his positions. The merits of
Leibniz’s
criticisms, contributions, and their relations to his larger
philosophical system remain fascinating
areas for historical and
philosophical investigation.

1. The Historical Development of Leibniz’s Physics

2. Leibniz on matter
2.1 The critique of atomism
2.2 The critique of Cartesian corpuscularianism
2.3 The passive powers of bodies
3. Leibniz’s Dynamics
3.1 A Brief Demonstration
3.2 Physics and active forces
3.3 Forces and Metaphysics
4. Leibniz on the Laws of Motion
4.1 Refuting Cartesian Laws of Motion
4.2 A system of conservation principles
4.3 Absolute or relative motion?
5. Leibniz on Space and Time
5.1 Against Absolute Space and Time
5.2 Leibnizian Space and Time
Bibliography
Selected Primary Texts
Selected Primary Texts in Translation
Selected General Studies and Collections
Leibniz’s Life and Works
Leibniz’s Early Physics
Leibniz on Matter
Leibniz’s Dynamics
Leibniz on The Laws of Motion
Leibniz on Space & Time
Academic Tools
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries

1. The Historical Development of Leibniz’s Physics

In his earliest days, Leibniz read a wide range of works drawn from his father’s considerable library. Later he
was formally educated at the University of Leipzig (1661–1666), briefly at the University of Jena (1663),
and finally at the University of Altdorf (1666–1667). From these sources, Leibniz gained an early
acquaintance
with the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, as well as a taste of neo-platonic themes common in
Renaissance humanism. By his own account, he quickly “penetrated far into the territory of the Scholastics,”
and derived “some satisfaction” from “Plato too, and Plotinus” (G III 606/L 655). Although he consciously
broke with the Scholastic tradition while still quite young, its doctrines clearly made a lasting impression on
him, and served him both as a font of ideas and a readily available target of criticism. Indeed, one can
justifiably see many of Leibniz’s mature doctrines as reactions – either positive or negative – to
the
Scholastic views that he first became acquainted with while still
a student in Germany.

According to his own recollection, it appears that Leibniz threw himself into the mechanical philosophy
sometime around the year 1661.[1]
In a well-known letter to Nicolas Remond, Leibniz – then in the
twilight
of his years – recounted his early conversion:

After having finished the trivial schools[2],

I fell upon the moderns, and I recall walking in a
grove on the outskirts of Leipzig called the Rosental, at the age of fifteen, and deliberating
whether to preserve substantial forms or not. Mechanism finally prevailed and led me to apply
myself to mathematics. (G III 606/L 655)

Although we have no records of Leibniz’s work from the years immediately following his youthful adoption
of mechanism, there is abundant evidence that by the late 1660s, he had studied the writings of a wide range
of mechanistic
philosophers,[3]
committed himself to the “hypothesis of the moderns, which conceives no
incorporeal entities within bodies but assumes nothing beyond magnitude, figure, and motion,”[4]
and had
begun to search for ways to improve the mechanistic philosophy of his
predecessors.[5]

The early influence of natural philosophers such as Gassendi and Hobbes – whom Leibniz would later
characterize as working in the Epicurean tradition – is particularly apparent in his first pair of systematic
works on motion. In the Theoria motus abstracti (TMA), dedicated to the French Academy in 1671, Leibniz
introduces a set of abstract laws of motion (A VI.ii.261–276/L 139–142). At the heart of those laws is the
Hobbesian
notion of conatus, which Leibniz describes as “the beginning and end of motion,” and which he
seems to conceive of as a tendency to motion in a particular direction. Leibniz argues that the
motion of a
body in isolation is determined entirely by its own conatus, and that the motions of colliding bodies are
determined solely by the combination of their respective conatuses. In this way,
Leibniz’s abstract theory of
motion assigns no role whatsoever, with respect to the fundamental laws of motion, to the sizes or masses of
material bodies. According to the TMA, a tiny pebble with a certain velocity striking a large boulder at rest
would, under idealized conditions, continue to move with the boulder with the same velocity that it had
initially.

Leibniz, of course, recognized that the laws of motion sketched in the TMA are radically at odds with the
testimony of everyday experience. After all, it would seem to be the case that if the world
were governed by
the laws of the TMA, it should be no more difficult to move a planet than a pebble.[6]
Leibniz sought to close
this gap between the fundamental laws and experience with the publication of his Hypothesis physica nova
(HPN) also known as the Theoria motus concreti, which he also dedicated in 1671, this time to the Royal
Society of London (A.VI.ii.221–257). In the HPN, Leibniz argues that the laws of
the TMA yield the
Huygens-Wren laws of impact when taken together with the contingent structure of the actual world. Central
to Leibniz’s strategy is the idea that all bodies in the actual world are elastic due to a pervasive aether, and
are composed of discrete particles. Although mass continues to play no foundational role in his applied
system of physics, Leibniz is cleverly able to argue that
larger bodies will generally be more resistant to
motion due to the larger number of particles from which they are constituted. A pebble striking a planet will
thus fail to have any significant effect because the pebble’s velocity is propagated to the planet not at a single
blow but particle by particle. Its motion is consequently diluted – and even reversed – as it is repeatedly
summed with the velocity of each subsequent particle.

In 1672, Leibniz was sent to Paris as part of a diplomatic mission where he stayed – short trips aside – for the
next four years. His time spent in the intellectually vibrant French capital proved crucial to the development
of his mature views in physics. While in Paris, Leibniz gained an expert’s knowledge of the mathematics of
his time, embarked on an intensive study of Cartesian physics, and made contact with many of the leading
natural philosophers of his day.

In such fertile circumstances – which included tutoring by Huygens himself and direct access to Descartes’s
unpublished notebooks – Leibniz quickly fashioned his own penetrating critique of Cartesian physics. As
early as 1676,[7]
he had found what he considered to be a fatal flaw in Descartes’s cornerstone conservation
law, namely, that it violates the principle of the equality of cause and effect. When Leibniz published
essentially the same objection in his Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes’s and Others
Concerning a Natural Law
in 1686, it sparked a now famous dispute among natural philosophers that has
become known as the vis viva controversy (GM VI 117–119/L 296–298).[8]
For Leibniz the argument of the
Brief Demonstration marked not only an important event in his understanding of the Cartesian system, but
also a turning point in the development of his own distinctive physics.

On the one hand, the argument of the Brief Demonstration

forced Leibniz to rethink the foundations of his
early theory of
motion. For the charge of violating the principle of the equality of
cause and effect that he
leveled against Cartesians spoke as well
against the laws of the TMA and the HPN. The paradoxical result of
the
ideal laws of the TMA – that a tiny body moving with a given
speed might impart the same speed to a
relatively enormous body
– appeared, at least intuitively, as an example of a potentially
even greater increase
in local force than anything allowed by
Descartes’s rules of impact. Conversely, according to the
phenomenal
laws of the HPN, since the combination by impact of two
conatuses can fall short, but never exceed, the
strict sum of the
conatuses of the two individual bodies, the total conatus present in
the world must naturally
decline over time – another violation
of the equality principle. In short, in the argument of the Brief
Demonstration, Leibniz found a devastating criticism not only of
Cartesian physics, but also of Early
Leibnizian physics.

On the other hand, Leibniz’s embrace of the principle of the equality

of cause and effect helped inspire his
development of a series of ambitious positions that would collectively serve as the moorings of his mature
physics. The failure of Descartes’s conservation law encouraged Leibniz to attach new significance to an
alternative conservation principle that he had learned from Huygens by 1669 at the latest.[9]
Leibniz came to
see that if force is taken to be equivalent to the quantity of vis viva – rather than the quantity of motion as
Descartes had implied – then, in cases such as those highlighted by the Brief Demonstration, no violation of
the principle of equality of cause and effect need be tolerated. In subsequent works, including his Dynamica
de Potentia et Legibus Naturae corporea (1689), Essay of Dynamics on the Laws of Motion … (1690), and
Specimen Dynamicum (1695), Leibniz attempts to build on this discovery by suggesting further implications
not only for the conservation of force, but also for the laws of motion and even the fundamental nature of
physical bodies. One can see in
his devastating critique of the Cartesian conservation law the seeds of much
of what is distinctive in his own mature physics.

Although Leibniz continued to refine, develop, and extend his views on the laws of motion and impact, his
work in the philosophy of physics was most famously capped by his correspondence with
Samuel Clarke [10]
The controversy between Leibniz and Clarke began when the Princess of Wales passed along to Clarke in
1715 a letter written by Leibniz decrying the decline of religion in England inspired by the rise of Newton’s
natural philosophy. Taking place against the backdrop of a bitter dispute over the priority of the calculus,
Clarke responded in Newton’s defense and a series of five letters and replies were exchanged. Among the
many topics covered in the correspondence, the letters are best known for the opposing views of space and
time which they offer:
Leibniz defending roughly the view that space is an ideal system of relations holding
between bodies, and Clarke defending the view that space is something more like a container in which
bodies are located and move. The increasingly detailed and pointed exchange ended only with Leibniz’s
death in 1716, with Clarke, in the historical sense at
least, having the last word.

2. Leibniz on matter
Leibniz’s views on the nature of matter are subtle and layered. From the time of his youthful conversion in
the Rosental, he remained broadly sympathetic to the explanatory project of the new mechanical philosophy
and its ambition to explain natural phenomena in terms of matter and motion rather than in terms of a wide
range of irreducible
formal natures. In spite of this general sympathy, however, he was also one of the most
penetrating critics of the dominant conceptions of matter in the mechanistic tradition. This section looks first
at Leibniz’s critiques of the two most important of those conceptions before turning to his own positive
account of the passive powers of bodies.

2.1 The critique of atomism

Although there was much disagreement over details, early modern atomists generally affirmed that complex
bodies are to be understood as being composed of naturally indivisible material atoms moving about in an
independently existing space. Such atoms were commonly held to lack all but a few basic properties such as
size, shape, and possibly weight. While Leibniz himself was attracted to such a conception of body in his
early years, he eventually came to see atomism as deeply antithetical to his general understanding of the
natural world. Not surprisingly then, many of Leibniz’s arguments against atomism attempt to show how
common atomist commitments conflict with central principles of his mature natural philosophy.[11]

One such argument highlights a tension between Leibniz’s principle of

continuity – according to which “no
change happens through a leap” – and the common assumption that material
atoms must be perfectly hard
and inflexible. Taking for granted this supposed perfect hardness and inflexibility, Leibniz argues that the
collision of any two atoms would lead to a discontinuous change in nature:

[I]f we were to imagine that there are atoms, that is, bodies of maximal hardness and therefore inflexible, it
would follow that there
would be a change through a leap, that is, an instantaneous change. For at the very
moment of collision the direction to the motion reverses itself, unless we assume that the bodies come to rest
immediately after the collision, that is, lose their force; beyond the fact that it would be absurd in other ways,
this contains, again,
a change through a leap, and instantaneous change from motion to rest, without passing
through the intermediate steps. (SD II.3/AG 132)

Leibniz’s suggestion here is that collisions between perfectly hard, inflexible atoms would violate the
principle of continuity since – being unable to flex or give – their directions and speeds would have to
change instantaneously upon contact. Tacitly rejecting the possibility that continuity could be preserved by
action at a distance, Leibniz insists that continuity presupposes elasticity, and that elasticity in turn
presupposes having parts that
can move relative to one another. Given that the original argument can be
invoked no matter how small the colliding bodies, Leibniz concludes that all bodies must be elastic, and must
therefore have parts, contrary to the central thesis of atomism.
He thus concludes that “no body is so small
that it is without elasticity, and furthermore … there are no elements of bodies … nor are there little solid
globes … both determinate and hard. Rather, the analysis proceeds to infinity” (SD.II.45/AG 132–133).

Another line of argument offered by Leibniz against material atomism highlights a tension with what might
be called his “principle of plentitude.” That principle, grounded in Leibniz’s broader theological and
metaphysical views, maintains that existence itself is good, and as a consequence God creates as much being
as is consistent with the laws of logic and his own moral goodness. Naturally, Leibniz sees the principle of
plentitude as being inconsistent with the existence of a barren void or interspersed vacua:

[T]o admit the void in nature is ascribing to God a very imperfect

work … I lay it down as a
principle that every perfection which
God could impart to things, without derogating from their
other
perfections, has actually been imparted to them. Now let us fancy a
space wholly empty.
God could have placed some matter in it without
derogating, in any respect, from all other
things; therefore, he has
actually placed some matter in that space; therefore, there is no
space
wholly empty; therefore, all is full. (G VII.378/AG
332)

Interestingly, Leibniz uses the principle of plentitude not only to argue against the atomists’ postulation of
empty space, but also against the possibility of simple indivisible atoms themselves. For, Leibniz argues, no
matter how small one imagines atoms to be, as
long as they are reckoned internally simple and homogenous,
the world
could still contain more variety, richness, and being if they were more finely divided. He thus
draws the characteristic conclusion that
“The least corpuscle is actually subdivided in infinitum and contains
a world of other creatures which would be wanting in the universe if that corpuscle were an atom, that is, a
body of one entire piece without subdivision” (G VII.377–378/AG 332).

A third, somewhat obscure, but especially intriguing line of argument

takes off from a position defended by
Descartes in his Principles
of Philosophy and touches on Leibniz’s work on the so-called “Labyrinth of the
Continuum.” In the Principles,
Descartes had argued that (i) the world is a plenum, (ii) all motion in a
plenum must be circular, and (iii) such circular motion presupposes the “infinite, or indefinite, division of the
various particles of matter” as they adjust and shift to accommodate a continuous flow around bends and
through narrows (AT VIIIA.59/CSM 1:239). Concerning these propositions, Leibniz approvingly remarks,
“What Descartes says here is most beautiful and worthy of his genius, namely, that every motion in filled
space involves circulation and that matter must somewhere be actually divided into parts smaller than any
given quantity” (L
393). But whereas Descartes had insisted only on the “indefinite” division of “merely
some part of matter” (AT VIIIA.60/CSM 239) Leibniz pushes for a stronger conclusion. Dismissing
Descartes’s cautious “indefinite division” as “being not in the thing, but in the thinker,” he takes the
argument to show that every part of matter is actually infinitely divided (A VI.ii.264). Similarly, rather than
apparently restricting the infinite division of matter to
some select moving parts, Leibniz maintains that
every part of matter
is everywhere moving, and so the sort of accommodation envisioned by Descartes must
occur everywhere (A. 6.3.565f; 6.3.58f). Thus, for Leibniz, not only are some parts of matter actually
infinitely divided, but every part of matter is divided to infinity (Levey 1998,
fn6)!

The actual infinite division of all matter is, of course, sufficient to rule out any standard picture of material
atomism since any body that might lay claim to being an indivisible atom would itself be actually subdivided
into smaller sub-bodies. But Leibniz is not done.
Even more radically, he argues that Descartes’s initial
considerations lead not “merely” to the conclusion that there are no smallest bodies, but furthermore show
that strictly speaking no determinate shapes can be ascribed to bodies at all.

[W]ith respect to shape, I uphold another paradox, namely, that there

is no shape exact and real, and that
neither sphere, nor parabola, nor other perfect shape will ever be found in body…. One will
always find there
inequalities to infinity. That comes about because matter is actually subdivided to infinity. (translated, Sleigh
1990, 112)

Although how to best interpret Leibniz’s arguments for the ideality of exact shape – and indeed how to best
interpret his admittedly paradoxical conclusion – remains open for debate, the general idea here seems clear
enough. While mechanistic physics appeals to exact shapes like cubes and spheres, the actual infinite
division of matter reveals that these can be at best approximations of the shapes of real bodies. For the
shapes of real bodies must – again at best – be infinitely complex since
they are everywhere divided into
bodies actually distinct in virtue of their differing accommodating motions. Although Leibniz’s conclusion is
especially bold and enigmatic, it is nonetheless not untypical for him in so far as it suggests that mechanism
– carefully thought through – points towards a radically different underlying metaphysical reality.

2.2 The critique of Cartesian corpuscularianism

Leibniz allied himself with Descartes and most later Cartesians in opposing material atomism. Nonetheless
he was equally concerned to rebut the Cartesian account of matter according to which the whole essence of
matter is extension – that is, the thesis that matter is something like geometrical extension made concrete.
Although Leibniz characteristically offers a wide range of arguments against the Cartesian identification of
matter with extension, it will serve our purposes to focus on three especially important arguments all rooted
in the guiding idea that the notion of
extension is simply too impoverished to provide an intelligible
foundation for physics.

The first of these arguments presses on the relationship between the nature of matter and the laws of motion.
Leibniz, in effect, argues that the thesis that the whole essence of matter is extension saddles
Cartesians with
a dilemma: they must either hold that the laws of motion are grounded in the nature of extension, or that God
acts directly to bring about the lawful regularities that are observed in the world. Leibniz maintains that the
first horn is inconsistent with
the true laws of motion, while the second horn leads to the untenable
postulation of perpetual miracles. In order to better appreciate Leibniz’s line of reasoning here, it is worth
unpacking a little his thinking with respect to each horn of the dilemma.

Behind Leibniz’s rejection of the first horn lies the assumption that
if bodies were nothing but matter, and
matter nothing but extension, then bodies would be wholly and essentially passive. But if bodies were wholly
and essentially passive, Leibniz reasons, they would necessarily be entirely indifferent to motion, and
consequently they would obey radically different laws of motion than the ones we actually observe:

If there were nothing in bodies but extended mass and nothing in motion but change of place and if
everything should and could be deduced solely from these definitions by geometrical necessity, it would
follow … that upon contact the smallest body would impart its own speed to the largest body without losing
any of this speed; and we would have to accept a number of such rules which are completely contrary to the
formation of a system. (DM 21/AG 53–54)
There is, of course, some irony in Leibniz’s argument here. For, as we noted above, in his early theory of
motion Leibniz himself held that bodies offer no resistance to being moved, and thus that it would take no
more effort to budge a boulder than a bobby pin. In his
later works, however, Leibniz rejects the ideal laws of
motion that he had espoused in the TMA, while nonetheless continuing to hold that
if matter were indifferent
to motion, then the laws
of his abstract theory of motion would hold. Leibniz thus concludes that since his
early laws of motion do not govern actual bodies, bodies must not be indifferent to motion, and thus must not
be – as Descartes had maintained – simply bits of geometrical extension made real.

All of this, of course, might seem to simply put greater pressure on the second horn of Leibniz’s dilemma.
For it might seem that it is open to Descartes’s defenders to maintain that the laws of motion are
the result of
God’s direct decree, and that consequently they do not – as Leibniz seems to assume – follow from the
nature of body as such. (Indeed, Descartes himself implies that the laws of motion follow inexorably not
from the nature of matter, but rather from the nature of God (AT VIIIA 61–62/CSM 1:240).) For Leibniz,
however, such a view is equivalent to conceding that the laws of nature hold by dint of divine miracle since
“properly speaking,
God performs a miracle when he does something that surpasses the forces he has given
to creatures and conserves in them” (Letter
to Arnauld, 30 April 1687, G II 93/AG 83). Thus, for Leibniz, a
miracle occurs when a creature performs an action that does not flow from its own natural powers, and so
bodies could obey laws of motion not grounded in their own natural powers only through the advent of a
perpetual miracle. If Leibniz’s understanding of miracles is granted,
his second horn is thus much harder to
resist than one might have otherwise supposed.

Leibniz’s second argument focuses on the ability of Cartesian physics

to account for qualitative variety in the
world. The thesis that the whole essence of matter is extension blocks Descartes from holding that matter is
itself intrinsically diverse as well as from supposing
that matter is differentially distributed in empty space.
Clearly recognizing the constraints imposed by his reductive account of body,
Descartes elegantly maintains
that all qualitative variety is to be grounded in the motion of bodies, that is, that “All the variety in matter, all
the diversity of its forms, depends on motion” (Principles 2:23/CSM 1:232). Qualitative variety amongst
bodies for Descartes thus appears to be grounded not in the intrinsic natures of bodies or their parts, but
rather in the way in which the parts of bodies move relative to one another. To take an example friendly to
Descartes, it might be supposed that the qualitative differences between a block of ice, a puddle of water, and
a cloud are to be explained not by appeal to intrinsic differences in the elements that constitute them, nor by
appeal to the density of their elements in space, but rather in terms of the relative speeds holding between
those elements. One might thus imagine – incorrectly of course – that the hardness of ice depends only on
water molecules being at rest with respect to one
another, the fluidity of water only on water molecules
moving with respect to one another at a moderate speed, and the etherealness of a
cloud only on water
molecules moving with an extreme relative speed.

Leibniz’s ingenious attack on this Cartesian model of qualitative variety proceeds in two steps. The first step
charges that motion alone is unable to account for qualitative variety at an instant: since all qualitative
variety in the Cartesian system depends on motion, and there is no motion in an instant, it follows that in a
Cartesian world there could be no qualitative variety at an instant.[12]
The second step of Leibniz’s argument
charges that if the world is qualitatively homogenous at every instant, then it must be qualitatively
homogenous over time as well. For if the world is qualitatively undifferentiated at each instant, then every
instant will be qualitatively identical, and so the world as a whole will not
undergo any qualitative change as
it passes from one instant to the next. To use an anachronistic analogy, the two steps taken together imply
that a Cartesian world would be like a filmstrip whose every frame is blank, and thus whose projection
would not only be homogenous at each instant, but through time as well.

A third argument, especially important in connection with Leibniz’s more general metaphysics, takes issue
with the implication that Cartesian bodies – or at least Cartesian matter taken as a whole – might be on a
metaphysical par with created minds. Again, it might be helpful to see Leibniz’s thinking here as proceeding
in two steps. First, drawing on principles integral to his
metaphysics, Leibniz insists that independence and
unity are marks of true substances. The independence criterion suggests that we can usefully distinguish
between created substances that depend only upon God for their existence, and derivative creatures that
depend not only upon God but also upon the existence of created substances as well. The unity criterion
implies a distinction between creatures that are true, indivisible unities, and creatures that are mere accidental
unities, or “aggregates.” Leibniz maintains that only the former have
a rightful claim to being genuine
created substances, since, as he famously puts it in a letter to Arnauld, “what is not truly one being is not
truly one being either” (G II.97/AG 86).

With his two criteria in hand, Leibniz next argues that the bodies of
Cartesian physics fail to meet the
standards for created substances twice over. For on the one hand, every Cartesian body must be extended and
divisible, and so must be composed of parts. But this, Leibniz maintains, is sufficient by itself to show that
Cartesian bodies are not fundamental created entities: for if every Cartesian body is composed of parts, then
by the independence criterion, the parts will be more fundamentally real than the wholes which they
compose. No body whose essence is simply extension could therefore be
a genuine created substance
according to Leibniz. On the other hand, according to Descartes’s physics the only principle available to
unite bodies – at least as they are studied by physicists – is motion. But it is clear that Leibniz thinks that the
sort of unity that might be provided by mere common motion is insufficient
for genuine, substantial unity.
Even if an army were to always march in perfect step, it would still not be a unity per se, and thus would not
be “truly one being either” (G II
76/AG 79). Thus measured either by the standards of the independence
criterion or the unity criterion, Cartesian bodies can be shown to be
not fully real in the deepest sense
available to created beings. In this thought, Leibniz sees not only an important contrast with human minds –
which as partless simples are plausibly independent and
unified – but also another indication that
mechanistic physics must itself rest on a deeper metaphysical reality quite different from the “manifest
image” with which we are familiar from
everyday experience.

2.3 The passive powers of bodies

Much about Leibniz’s own positive conception of matter as it is studied by physics can be gleaned from his
criticisms of his predecessors. So, for example, his critique of atomism already suggests that Leibnizian
bodies must always be flexible or “soft” to some degree,[13]
fill every region of the natural world, and be
infinitely divisible, indeed, be infinitely divided. Likewise, his critique of the Cartesian conception of matter
implies that the properties of bodies are not limited to their passive powers, that bodies must always admit of
intrinsic variety, and that ordinary physical objects such as desks and chairs must be ontologically dependent
upon a deeper level of metaphysical reality. Nonetheless, we should be able to get an even better grip on
Leibniz’s positive conception of matter by looking more explicitly at four passive powers, or forces, which
he attributes to bodies as they are studied by the physicist.

(1) As we noted above, the physics of the TMA assigns to bodies no resistance to motion, and thus predicts
that under idealized conditions it should be no harder to move something massive than something minuscule.
In distancing himself from this early view, Leibniz comes to argue that, in fact, matter “resists being moved
through a certain natural inertia it has … so that it is not indifferent to motion and rest, as is commonly
believed, but requires more active force for motion in proportion to its size” (G IV.510/AG 161). In short,
Leibniz came to maintain
that bodies have an intrinsic power resistant to motion, which he calls, following
Kepler, “natural inertia.” Significantly, Leibnizian natural inertia is a force which is opposed
to motion itself,
and not merely, as Newton held, to changes in velocity. Thus, while Newton maintains that no active force is
required to keep a body moving with a constant velocity under idealized conditions, Leibniz maintains that a
body in motion in the absence of any countervailing active force will naturally come to rest.

(2) In addition to offering resistance to motion, Leibniz thought it

essential to bodies that they resist mutual
collocation – to
some degree, they must be “solid” or impenetrable. In
attributing solidity to bodies, Leibniz
rejects the Cartesian
suggestion that impenetrability simply follows from the property of a
body’s being
extended. For, Leibniz argues, it could be the case
that a body’s solidity is due to a body’s having a certain
reluctance – but not an unconquerable one – to share a
place with another body, and thus he implies that it is,
for example,
at least conceivable that two bodies might be forced to overlap in
much the same way that we
generally imagine bodies and regions of
space to coincide (NE, Book II, Ch. iv). Having distinguished
solidity
from extension, Leibniz goes on to further distinguish solidity from
hardness. He suggests that
whereas solidity concerns the ability of a
body to resist being collocated with another body, hardness
concerns
the ability of a body to resist changing its shape or structure. Thus
a body, according to Leibniz,
might be perfectly solid
(i.e. impenetrable) and yet not hard, a point he illustrates by noting
that “if two
bodies were simultaneously inserted into the two
open ends of a tube, into which each of them fitted tightly,
the
matter which was already in the tube, however, fluid [or
‘soft’] it might be, [the matter] would resist just
because of its sheer impenetrability [i.e.
‘solidity’]” (NE, Book II, Ch. iv).
(3) In addition to the (relatively) basic powers of natural inertia and solidity, Leibniz recognizes two further
derived passive powers of bodies. The first, which we might call “firmness” or “cohesiveness,” concerns the
ability of a body to resist being scattered or torn into pieces. (An egg and a baseball differ not only with
respect to their “natural inertia” and impenetrability, but also with respect to their ability to hold themselves
together, as it were, under impact.) In the New Essays, Leibniz writes:

But now a new element enters the picture, namely firmness or

the bonding of one body to
another. This bonding often results in one’s being unable to push one body without at the same
time pushing another which is bonded to it, so that there is a kind of traction of the second body.
Because of this bonding, there would be resistance even if there were no inertia or manifest
impetus. For … if space were full of small cubes, a hard body would encounter resistance to its
being moved among them. This is because the little cubes – just because they were hard, i.e.
because their parts were bonded together – would be difficult to split up finely enough to permit
circular movement in which the position being evacuated by the moving body would at once be
refilled
by something else. (NE Book II, Ch. iv)

Although Leibniz recognizes “firmness” as an important passive power attributable to bodies, like many
other mechanists, he is reluctant to posit the existence of primitive attractive forces in nature (SD II.52/AG
136; see also Leibniz’s Fifth Letter to Clarke, paragraph 35/Alexander 66). He thus insists that firmness is a
derived passive power of bodies since “we should not explain firmness except through the surrounding
bodies pushing a body together” (SD II.52/AG 136).

(4) A final passive property of bodies might go without mention if not for the special twist that Leibniz puts
on it. Even while arguing
against the Cartesian thesis that the whole essence of matter is extension, Leibniz
could hardly deny that bodies as they are studied by physicists are extended, or if one prefers, that they have
the property of physical extension. Nonetheless, Leibniz intriguingly suggests that physical extension – far
from constituting the whole essence of matter – is not even a basic property of bodies. In an informative
piece dated to 1702, Leibniz writes:

… I believe that the nature of body does not consist in extension alone … since extension is a
continuous and simultaneous repetition … it follows that whenever the same nature is diffused
through many things at the same time, as, for example, malleability or specific gravity or
yellowness is in gold, whiteness is in milk, and resistance or impenetrability is generally in
body, extension is said to have place … From this, it is obvious that extension is not an absolute
predicate, but is relative to that which is extended or diffused, and therefore it cannot be
separated from the nature of that which is diffused … (G IV.393f/AG 251; see also GP II
269/AG 179, and GP II 183/L 519).

Leibniz thus grants that while physical extension is to be ascribed to the bodies of physics, it is not to be
treated as a basic or fundamental property of matter. Rather, physical extension itself is to be understood as a
repetition, or distribution, of more basic forces. Leibniz’s radical suggestion would, in effect, turn the
Cartesian understanding of matter on its head: whereas, for example, Descartes attempted to explain solidity
in terms of physical extension,[14]
Leibniz proposes to explain physical extension in terms of solidity – a
body isn’t solid because it is extended, it is extended because it has the ability to exclude other bodies!

3. Leibniz’s Dynamics
One of the cornerstones of Leibniz’s mature physics is to be found in
his thesis that the bodies studied by
physicists must be viewed not only in terms of passive powers and motion, but also active forces. This
section sketches Leibniz’s chief physical argument for the postulation of active forces and then looks
respectively at the roles
that active forces play in his mature physics and how they are related to his deeper
metaphysics.

3.1 A Brief Demonstration

In his Principles of Philosophy, Descartes had argued that the quantity of motion in the world remains
constant, where the quantity of motion of a body is determined by its speed times its size. So, for example, at
Principles 2:36, Descartes argues that “if one part of matter moves twice as fast as another which is twice as
large, we must consider that there is the same quantity of motion in each part; and if one part slows down, we
must suppose that some other part of equal size speeds up by the same amount” (AT VIIIA 61/CSM 240).
This general conservation principle, which Descartes takes to be grounded in God’s immutable nature, in
turn serves as the foundation for his three laws of motion
as well as his rules of impact.

In a short piece fully and tellingly entitled A Brief Demonstration of a Notable Error of Descartes and
Others Concerning a
Natural Law, According to which God is Said Always to Conserve the Same Quantity of
Motion; a Law which They also Misuse in Mechanics, Leibniz publicly attacked Descartes’s conservation
principle and thereby the foundations of Cartesian physics (GM VI.117–119/L 296–302). The central
argument of the Brief Demonstration is ingenious and elegant, but only deceptively straightforward, and
Leibniz continued to develop and expand upon its
central theme for many years after its initial public
presentation in
1686.[15]

At the heart of Leibniz’s main line of argument lie four premises: (1) The amount of force a body acquires in
virtue of falling from a certain altitude is equal to the amount of force that would be required to raise that
same body to the same altitude. (2) The amount
of force a one pound body acquires by falling from a height
of four meters is equal to the amount of force a four pound body acquires by falling from a height of one
meter. (3) Galileo’s Law: the distance traveled by a falling body is directly proportional to the square of the
time it falls (i.e. d = at2 where a is a constant); so, to illustrate, a falling body traveling a distance of one
meter in one second will travel four meters in two seconds, nine meters in three seconds, and sixteen meters
in four seconds, etc.[16]
(4) The total amount of force in the world is conserved both locally and globally
with the result that there is always as much force in a cause as in its effect.

Using these four premises, Leibniz attempts to establish three principal conclusions. First, he argues that
Descartes’s quantity of motion is not an adequate measure of force. To see this, suppose that
a four pound
brick falls from a height of one meter in one second. Its quantity of motion = 1 m/s × 4lbs = 4 units. By
Galileo’s Law it follows that a one pound brick dropped under similar circumstances will travel four meters
in two seconds (since the distance traversed is proportional to the square of time). The quantity of motion of
a one pound brick falling through a distance of four meters therefore = 2 m/s × 1lbs = 2 units. Since by the
second premise the force of the two bodies is equal, but
their quantities of motion are unequal, Leibniz
concludes that quantity of motion is an inadequate measure of force.

Second, Leibniz is similarly able to argue that the quantity of vis viva (mv2) is an adequate measure of force.
For, the quantity of vis viva of the four pound brick falling from a height of one meter = (1m/s)2 × 4 lbs = 1
m/s × 4lbs = 4 units, and
the quantity of vis viva of the one pound brick falling from a height of four meters =
(2 m/s)2 × 1 lbs = 4 m/s × 1 lbs = 4 units. Thus if force is measured by the quantity of vis viva rather than the
quantity of motion the equality of the force acquired by the one pound body during its four meter fall will be
equal to the force acquired by the
four pound body during its one meter fall.

Third, Leibniz is further able to argue that the quantity of vis viva rather than the quantity of motion is
conserved. To see this, suppose that a one pound brick, having been raised to a height of four meters, falls on
the end of a teeter-totter imparting a motion to a four pound brick on the other end. Now if the amount of
active force is conserved – if there is as much force in the effect as in the cause – then (by the first premise)
the brick should be raised to a height of one meter. That being the case, however, it is clear from the
preceding demonstrations that the quantity of vis viva but not the quantity of motion will be conserved (since
the quantity of motion has decreased from 4 units to
2 units).[17]

It is important to note that the fourth premise plays a crucial role not only in Leibniz’s proof, but also in the
larger picture of what he takes his proof to show. Early in his career, Leibniz took the principle of the
equality of cause and effect to be a necessary truth.[18]
Later, however, he came to hold that it is only
hypothetically or morally necessary – a contingent feature that must nonetheless be found in the best of all
possible worlds (see, for example, G IV 281/L272). From the status of the principle of equality of cause and
effect, Leibniz in turn drew two important conclusions, one metaphysical, one methodological. With respect
to metaphysics, he took the contingent status of the principle of equality of cause and effect to be evidence
that the laws of motion and force are themselves contingent, and thus he argued that the elegance of the laws
of nature provides evidence of God’s benevolent design of the universe. With respect to methodology, he
took the derivation of the conservation of vis viva as confirmation of the utility – indeed the practical
necessity – of considerations of divine teleology in making scientific discoveries even in the domain of
physics.

3.2 Physics and active forces

In his important summary of his dynamics – generally known by its Latin title “Specimen Dynamicum” –
Leibniz distinguishes between two kinds of active force. The first, and most important, is of course vis viva
itself. In the context of his physics, vis viva, or “living force,” represents for Leibniz a measure of a body’s
ability to
bring about effects in virtue of its motion. It is an active force which allows a moving body to, say,
raise itself up to a given height
or impart a motion to a slower body. (Intuitively, we might think of it as the
“force” that a bowling ball, for example, has in virtue of its falling from some height, or the power a baseball
has once released from a pitcher’s hand.) As noted above, Leibniz maintains that vis viva is conserved both
locally in particular cases of impact, and globally in the created world taken as a whole. The living force a
body expends in raising itself to a given height must therefore be equal to the living force it gains by falling
from that height; the vis viva a body is able to transfer to another body through impact must be equal to the
measurement of vis viva it loses during that impact.[19]

The fact that collisions between actual bodies are never perfectly elastic represents a prima facie objection to
the conservation of vis viva. Although the law looks tolerably accurate if we consider the collision of, say,
two billiard balls, or
two steel spheres, it seems woefully off if we consider, say, the collision of two lumps of
clay, or two scoops of ice cream. Indeed, in non-elastic collisions it appears that much – even all – of the
active force of the colliding bodies as measured by mv2 may be lost. In addressing this fairly obvious worry,
Leibniz returns to the idea that any body – no matter how small – must be composed of infinitely many
smaller bodies. He then argues that the apparent loss of vis
viva in cases of inelastic collision is to be
attributed to the fact that living force has been transferred to the smaller parts of the gross bodies in a way
that does not contribute fully to the motion of the whole. It is thus lost in the sense that it does not contribute
to the motion of the larger bodies, but it is nonetheless conserved in the deeper sense that it is still present in
the motion of the smaller bodies from which the larger bodies are constituted. Leibniz therefore insists,
“when the parts of the bodies absorb
the force of the impact, as a whole, as when two pieces of rich earth
or
clay come into collision … when, I say, some force is absorbed by the parts, it is as good as lost … But this
loss … does not detract from the inviolable truth of the law of the
conservation of the same force in the
world. For that which is absorbed by the minute parts is not absolutely lost for the universe,
although it is
lost for the total force of the concurrent bodies” (GM VI.230/Langley 670).

In his Specimen, Leibniz terms his second postulated active force “vis mortua” or “dead force,” although it
also appears in connection with the titles, “solicitation,” “conatus,” and “impetus.” In spite of their
correlative labels, the notion of dead force appears to be less carefully worked out by Leibniz than the notion
of living force. In the Specimen he tells us:

One force is elementary which I also call dead force, since motion does not yet exist in it, but
only a solicitation to motion, as with … a stone in a sling while it is still being held by a
rope….
An example of dead force is centrifugal force itself, and also the force of heaviness or centripetal
force, and the force by which a stretched elastic body begins to restore itself. But when we are
dealing with impact, which arises from a heavy body which has already been falling for some
time, or from a bow that has already been restoring its shape for some time, or from a similar
cause, the force in question is living force, which arises from an infinity of continual
impressions of dead force. (GM VI.238f/AG 121f)

From this passage and surrounding texts, we can glean three central ideas Leibniz associates with the notion
of dead force. First, just as we might think of vis viva as a measure of the force a moving body has in virtue
of its being in motion, so we might think of vis mortua as a measure of the force a body has to bring about
motion even while at rest, or at an instant. Second, living force is related to dead force by an infinite
summation; vis viva is, as it were, an infinite accumulation of individual instances of vis mortua.[20]
Third,
dead force is thus more immediately related to the study of statics than to the study of dynamics, and Leibniz
repeatedly suggests that Cartesians have indeed been misled into maintaining the
conservation of quantity of
motion by confusing the laws of statics with the laws of dynamics.
On some ways of reading of Leibniz’s texts, the measure of dead force
approaches very closely the measure
of force more clearly at work in Newton’s Principia.[21]
It is therefore worth noting that although he could
hardly deny the technical achievement of Newton’s masterpiece, Leibniz was nonetheless eager to distance
his own thinking about force from that of his great rival’s. In a polemical piece whose title has been
translated as “Against Barbaric Physics,” Leibniz writes:

It is, unfortunately, our destiny that, because of a certain aversion

toward light, people love to be
returned to darkness…. That physics which explains everything in the nature of body through
number, measure, weight, or size, shape and motion, and so teaches that, in physics, everything
happens mechanically, that is, intelligibly, this physics seems excessively clear and easy….
It is
permissible to recognize magnetic, elastic, and other sorts of forces, but only insofar as we
understand that they are not primitive
or incapable of being explained, but arise from motions
and shapes. However, the new patrons of such things don’t want this. And it
has been observed
that in our own times there was a real suggestion of this view among certain of our predecessors
who established that the planets gravitate and tend toward one another. It pleased them to
make
the immediate inference that all matter essentially has a God-given and inherent attractive power
and, as it were, mutual love,
as if matter had senses, or as if a certain intelligence were given to
each part of matter by whose means each part could perceive and desire even the most remote
thing. (G VII.337–339/AG 312=313; see also Leibniz’s fourth paper to Clarke, paragraph
45/Alexander 43)

The grounds for Leibniz’s negative reaction to Newton’s conception of

force, and specifically Newton’s
apparent postulation of a universal force
of gravitation, are various and complex. One especially important
theme, however, indicated in the passage above, concerns what conception of force should be allowed to
operate in the study of physics. On the negative side, Leibniz thought that by postulating what he understood
to be an irreducible force holding between bodies and acting at a distance, Newton had abandoned the
intelligible explanations of the mechanical philosophy, and returned to uninformative scholastic accounts that
rested content with the postulation of primitive powers. On the positive side, Leibniz thought that by treating
forces as inherent powers of bodies tied inextricably to their ability to move and be moved, his own
conception of force could preserve the intelligibility that was the great hallmark of mechanism, while
nonetheless improving upon the work of those such as Huygens, Descartes and Galileo. For, by Leibniz’s
lights, the active and passive forces he postulates not only render physics itself more accurate and consonant
with reason but at the same time set the stage for its intelligible grounding in his own deeper metaphysics. In
this way, Leibniz’s understanding of dynamics becomes inextricably bound up with his more thoroughly
metaphysical views to which we must now briefly turn.

3.3 Forces and Metaphysics

If the most important distinction of the Specimen Dynamicum with respect to physics is between active and
passive forces, its most important distinction with respect to metaphysics is between what Leibniz calls
“primitive” and “derivative” forces. He holds that while derivative forces are of primary interest to the
working physicist, they are metaphysically secondary to primitive forces, and he speaks of the former as
being “modifications” or “limitations” of the latter (GM VI.236/AG 119). Although the topic of the
relationship between derivative and primitive forces
quickly takes us away from Leibniz’s treatment of
physics and into the heart of his metaphysics, it should be worthwhile to at least call attention to this
interface where what we are inclined to think of as Leibniz’s physics so clearly bumps up against – indeed
overlaps with – what we are inclined to think of as his metaphysics.

It is widely accepted that Leibniz’s primitive forces are supposed to

serve as the intelligible metaphysical
grounds for the forces that are
of concern in physics, and more specifically that active derivative
forces are to
be grounded in active primitive forces while passive
derivative forces are to be grounded in passive primitive
forces. Furthermore, there is no denying that Leibniz sees his
distinction between active and passive
primitive forces as being in
some way analogous to the distinction between Aristotelian form and
matter.
Thus in the Specimen, he tells us that
“primitive [active] force (which is nothing but the first
entelechy)
corresponds to the soul or substantial form [of
the scholastics]” while “the primitive force of being
acted
upon or of resisting constitutes that which is
called primary matter in the schools” (GM VI.236–237/AG
119–120). What has remained less certain is the answer to the
question, “Where, as it were, does Leibniz
think active and
passive primitive forces are located?”

Answering this question is complicated by Leibniz’s embrace of the seemingly fantastic thesis that the gross
bodies studied in physics are to be understood as being composed of infinitely many organisms:

I am very far removed from the belief that animate bodies are only a small part of the others. For I believe
rather that everything is full of animate bodies … and that since matter is endlessly divisible, one cannot fix
on a part so small that there are no animate bodies within, or at least bodies endowed with a basic entelechy
or … with a vital principle, that is to say corporeal substances, about which it may be said in general of them
all that they are living. (G II.118/Garber 1998, 294)

Thus, according to Leibniz, the block of wood that is pushed up an inclined plane, or the ball dropped from a
leaning tower must be composed of infinitely many organisms, with each of those organisms being
composed of further organisms, etc. These organisms therefore must in some way be counted as more
ontologically basic than the gross bodies which they compose.

Drawing on his commitment to panorganicism, his talk of corporeal substances, and his explicit invocation
of the Aristotelian notions of form and matter, it has been suggested that in his middle years Leibniz held to
an essentially Aristotelian ontology according to which the fundamental level of reality is occupied by
organisms composed of substantial forms and matter. As Daniel Garber – the reading’s most influential
defender – puts the view, it is “a world whose principal inhabitants are corporeal substances understood on
an Aristotelian model as unities of form and matter, organisms of a rudimentary sort, big bugs which contain
smaller bugs,
which contain smaller bugs still, all the way down” (1985, 29). According to this picture, the
derivative forces studied by physicists are grounded in the active and passive natures of the
organisms from
which they are composed. Organisms strive and are acted upon at the most basic level of ontology, and those
strivings and passions serve as the ground for the active and passive derivative forces examined, for
example, in collisions between elastic spheres. Although Leibniz’s panorganicism remains striking, this
picture promises a relatively straightforward account of the foundations of Leibniz’s physics, and squares
tolerably well with many of his texts,
especially from his middle years.

The “bugs all the way down” model is not, however, the
only model of fundamental metaphysics that one
can find in Leibniz’s
writings. In his most mature works, Leibniz suggests that at the
deepest level of
ontology, we find only simple, mind-like
substances, or “monads.” Although strictly indivisible,
Leibniz
insists that monads can nonetheless be thought of as unities
of form, insofar as they are active, and matter,
insofar as they are
passive. According to this metaphysics, the gross bodies studied by
physicists are at least
twice removed from monadic reality. Gross
bodies are grounded in organisms, or “corporeal
substances,”
while corporeal substances are themselves grounded
in simple substances, or “monads.” This same chain of
ontological dependence, however, likewise holds for forces: the active
forces attributed to gross bodies are
“well-founded” in
the active forces attributable to organisms, which are
“well-founded” in the active forces
of monads, just as the
passive forces attributable to gross bodies are
“well-founded” in the passive forces
attributable to
organisms, which in turn are “well-founded” in the passive
forces of monads. A full
understanding of these grounding relations
would of course require a more detailed explication of the
relations
between monads, corporeal substances, and gross bodies, as well as a
fuller account of
what“grounding” amounts to in this
context. Nonetheless, even this rough sketch should suffice to
indicate
the broad outlines of Leibniz’s commitment to founding the
active and passive forces he postulates as part of
his physics in the
most fundamental level of reality which he postulates as part of his
most mature
metaphysics.

4. Leibniz on the Laws of Motion

The laws of motion held a privileged place in the mechanical philosophy of the early modern period.
Together with bodies they served as the chief explanatory postulates of the new physics. It is thus not
surprising that Leibniz held strong views concerning the justification of the laws of motion, the content of
those laws, and their implications for the epistemology and metaphysics of motion. In
thinking about
Leibniz’s positive views on the laws of motion, it might prove once again helpful to first look at his reasons
for being
dissatisfied with the account offered by Descartes.
4.1 Refuting Cartesian Laws of Motion

In addition to maintaining that the quantity of motion in the world is conserved, Descartes held that material
bodies are governed by three laws of motion and seven rules of impact (AT VIIIA 62–71/CSM 1:240–245).
[22]
The first two laws in the Principles concern the movements of bodies in isolation, and taken together
constitute Descartes’s formulation of the principle of inertia. The third law in the Principles regulates the
behavior of bodies colliding under idealized conditions:

When a moving body comes upon another, if it has less force for proceeding in a straight line than the other
has to resist it, then it is deflected in another direction, and retaining its motion, changes only its
determination. But if it has more, then it moves the
other body with it, and gives the other as much of its
motion as it itself loses. (AT VIIA.65/CSM 1:242)

Significantly, the third law thus distinguishes between two kinds of cases that Descartes believes to be
importantly different. The first kind of case occurs when a moving body with a given power for proceeding
collides with another body that has a greater power for resisting. Descartes maintains that in such situations
the moving body’s direction or determination is altered, but that nonetheless the quantity of motion for each
of the colliding bodies remains the same. The second kind of case occurs when a moving body with a given
power for proceeding collides with another body that has a lesser power for resisting. Descartes maintains
that in such situations, the
moving body’s determination remains the same, and that the moving body carries
the resisting body along with it in such a way that their shared total quantity of motion remains the same. The
seven rules further spell out the implications Descartes takes his laws of motion to have for more specific
cases of impact.

Although Descartes’s laws of motion go beyond his conservation law in

placing further constraints on the
directions of bodies, they nonetheless presuppose that the total quantity of motion of bodies remains the
same. Leibniz is therefore able to argue that Descartes’s
laws of motion are untenable because they would
lead to violations of
the conservation of force as measured by mv2. Thus, in a letter to Bayle of 1687, Leibniz
introduces, as an example, a case where a ball B moving with 100 degrees of speed collides head on with a
ball C moving with 1 degree of
speed. Before the collision the two balls collectively have 101 units
of
quantity of motion as measure by ms, and 10,001 units of vis viva as measured by mv2. According to
Descartes’s Third Rule, after the collision the two balls should move together in the direction of B with a
speed of 50 ½ units. Their quantity of motion will be 101 units as dictated by Descartes’s conservation law,
but their quantity
of vis viva will be 2(50 ½)2 or 5100 ½ units. Leibniz thus objects that Descartes’s laws of
motion would violate the conservation of vis viva and with it the principle that the whole cause must be equal
to the entire effect (G III.46).

In addition to attacking Descartes’s laws of motion on the basis of the principle of the equality of cause and
effect, Leibniz also maintains that they would violate another “metaphysical” principle, namely, the principle
of continuity according to which continuous changes in inputs should lead to continuous changes in outputs.
[23]
Thus, for example, in a letter to Malebranche of July 1687, Leibniz writes:

I shall not repeat here what I have said before about the other source of [Descartes’s] errors, in
taking the quantity of motion for the force. But his first and second rules, for example, do not
agree with each other. The second says that if two bodies B and C collide in a straight line and
with equal velocities, but B is but the least amount greater than C, C will be reflected with its
former velocity, but B
will continue its motion. But according to his first rule, if B and C are
equal and collide in a straight line, both will be reflected and return at a velocity equal to that of
their approach. This difference in the outcome in these two cases is unreasonable, however, for
the inequality of the two bodies can be made as small as you wish, and the difference between
the assumptions
in the two cases, that is, the difference between such inequality and
a perfect
equality, becomes less than any difference; therefore according to our principle, the difference
between the effects or consequences ought also to become less than any given difference. (G
III.53/L 352)

Leibniz’s argument here is that as the sizes of the bodies B

and C change continuously from inequality to
equality the effects of that change should be continuous as well. Descartes’s rules of impact, however, would
have an infinitesimal change in input
– a change from B’s being infinitesimally bigger than C, to C’s being
equal in size to B –
result in a leap of output – from C rebounding while B remains stationary, to both B and
C rebounding. Leibniz maintains that Descartes’s rules of impact must therefore be false since they violate
the principle of continuity.

It is worth noting that, for Leibniz, the significance of the principle of continuity runs deeper than providing
yet another reason
for thinking that the Cartesian laws of motion are flawed.[24]
For him the principle of
continuity is a contingent principle of order grounded not in brute necessity, but in divine benevolence – a
discontinuous world would not be impossible, but merely sub-optimal. As such, Leibniz takes it to yield
further support for the metaphysical and methodological points noted above in connection with his “proof”
of the conservation of vis viva. Metaphysically, Leibniz takes the principle of continuity to support the claim
that the true laws of motion are contingent since they follow not from God’s immutable nature or eternal
truths, but rather from God’s wisdom and benevolence. Methodologically, he takes it to support once again
his view that the most promising route
to the discovery of nature’s secrets is neither blind empiricism, nor
deductive rationalism, but a combination of observation, pure reason,
and reflection on the constraints
imposed by considerations of the best.

4.2 A system of conservation principles

From the perspective of kinematics, there is little new in Leibniz’s
positive account of the laws of motion. As
we have seen, Leibniz’s
earliest systematic physics sought to accommodate the laws of impact
as developed
by Huygens and Wren by showing how those results might be
derived from more fundamental laws of
motion and the structure of the
actual world. In his later work, that strategy is replaced by the
attempt to
show how essentially those same (“concrete”)
laws of motion may be derived from a set of three
conservation
laws. Although Leibniz’s contribution to the kinematics of motion and
impact was thus not
revolutionary, he nonetheless had the good sense
to champion the best accounts going, and made them his
own through his
elegant derivations and by relating them to the broader themes of his
dynamics and
metaphysics.

One of the conservation laws that Leibniz takes to govern the behavior of material bodies is what he calls the
conservation of relative velocity (GM VI.227/Langley 667). According to this principle, two perfectly elastic
bodies will maintain the same relative velocity with respect to their common center of gravity before and
after collision.[25]
That is, letting A and B represent two elastic balls involved in a head on collision:

Velocity Abefore − Velocity Bbefore =

Velocity Bafter − Velocity Aafter

or more simply:

VA before − VB before = VB after − VA after

Leibniz suggests that the conservation of relative velocity is rooted

in the conservation of the ability of the
two colliding bodies to perform work on one another. The guiding idea here seems to be that the ability of,
say, the balls A and B to act on one another in virtue of their relative motion, should not be lost at
all (at least
in idealized cases), so that after a collision they should continue to have the same ability to act on one
another as they had before they collided, and thus that they should have the same relative velocity after the
collision as they had before.[26]

A second conservation law Leibniz calls the conservation of quantity of progress. According to it, two bodies
will maintain the same relative progress – where progress is measured by the quantity of mass (molem) times
velocity – before and after collision (GM VI.227/Langley 667). Thus, letting A and
B once again represent
two balls involved in a head on collision:

(Mass A × VA before ) + (Mass B × VB before ) =

(Mass B × VB after ) + (Mass A × VA after )

or more simply:
 MA × VA before + MB × VB before =

MB × VB after + MA × VA after

Leibniz’s conservation of progress is closely related to the Cartesian law of conservation of quantity of
motion (and the more familiar law of the conservation of momentum). As Leibniz is at pains
to emphasize,
however, his law differs from the Cartesian law at least in that it traffics in “signed” velocities rather than
scalar speeds. Leibniz is thus able to maintain that although “it will be found that the total progress is
conserved, or that
there is as much progress in the same direction before or after the impact” nonetheless the
quantity of motion, as measured simply by speed times mass is not conserved (GM VI.217/Langley 658).

Leibniz’s third law applies the conservation of vis viva to cases of impact. It therefore maintains that the
“motive” or “living” force, as measured by mass times velocity squared for a pair of bodies is the same
before and after collision (GM VI.227/Langley 667–668):
2 2
MA × (VA before ) + MB × (VB before ) =
2 2
MB × (VB after ) + MA × (VA after )

Unlike the quantity of progress, but like relative velocity, the quantity of vis viva appears to be conserved
only in elastic collisions. At the macro-level, when a lump of soft clay strikes another lump of soft clay, their
momentum is conserved but kinetic energy is lost. As noted above, rather than abandon the universality of
his third law, Leibniz suggests instead that energy is conserved but redistributed to the minute parts of which
the clay is composed. In this way, he tells us “that which is absorbed by the minute parts is not absolutely
lost for the universe, although
it is lost for the total force of the concurrent bodies” (GM VI.231/Langley
670).

In his Essay on Dynamics, Leibniz shows how from any two of his conservation laws the third law may be
derived. This might suggest that Leibniz sees all three as being on a par with one another. In fact, however,
he insists that the conservation of vis viva is more fundamental than the conservation of relative velocity or
common progress. His reasons for privileging mv2 in this way are far from clear, but he must have
recognized them to be necessarily metaphysical. Although the measurement of mv2 is relative to a choice of
reference frame, Leibniz probably thought that it had a better claim to tracking an intrinsic property of bodies
in light of the considerations he raises in his Brief Demonstration. For Leibniz, vis viva is a force attributable
to particular bodies in virtue of which they are able to perform work on other bodies – or as in the case of a
pendulum – on themselves; he thus held the conservation of vis viva to be the most fundamental, overarching
conservation law for the physical world.

4.3 Absolute or relative motion?

As far as kinematics is concerned, Leibniz, like most of his contemporaries, accepted the observational
under-determination of constant linear motion. That is to say, he granted that – if we
bracket considerations
of force – there’s no saying which of two bodies moving relative to each other with a constant velocity is
really moving. So, for example, Leibniz would have conceded that we can’t tell just by looking whether
Train A or Train B is really moving, even if they are moving with a constant velocity relative to one another.
This observational under-determination or “invariance” – often called Galilean invariance – is still accepted
today, although the natural assumption that it makes sense to speak of any body as “really” moving with a
constant velocity independently of an arbitrarily chosen frame of reference is not.

Continuing to restrict ourselves to kinematics, Leibniz appears to embrace something even stronger than
Galilean invariance. He suggests
that not only is constant linear motion observationally underdetermined, but
furthermore that “If we consider change in
position alone, or that which is merely mathematical in motion,”
then all motion is observationally underdetermined (A VI.iv.2017/Lodge 2003, 278). That is to say, he seems
to accept that not even accelerations – changes in direction or speed – can be detected by empirical
observation. Thus, for example, he writes:

The law of nature concerning the equivalence of hypotheses that we established earlier, namely,
that a hypothesis which once corresponds
to the present phenomena will always correspond to
the subsequent phenomena in that way, is not only true for rectilinear motion but more generally,
 however the bodies act on one another, just as long as the system of bodies is isolated from
others, or no external agent
comes along. (GM VI.507/Lodge 2003, 280)

Even if we grant that we cannot tell whether it is our train that is gliding along with a constant velocity or the
train that we see through the window, we might nonetheless maintain that we can tell – by, say, the sudden
jerk we feel – if our train has just accelerated by increasing its speed, or – because we feel ourselves pushed
against the wall – that it is rounding a sharp
corner. Leibniz, however, seems to deny this,[27]
insisting
instead that “no eye, wherever in matter it might be placed, has a sure criterion for telling from the
phenomena where there is motion, how much motion there is and of what sort it is, or even whether God
moves everything around it, or whether he moves that very eye itself” (AG 91).[28]

From the observational under-determination of all motion considered kinematically, Leibniz infers that if
there were nothing more to motion than change of position relative to other bodies, then there would be no
real or genuine motion in the world at all.[29]
He is thus committed to maintaining that if there were nothing
more to motion than relative change of position, then, since motion could be ascribed with equal right to, say,
Train A or Train B, then there would be no fact of the matter as to whether Train A or Train B is moving, and
thus it would make no sense to say that either Train A or Train B
is moving. The suggestion that motion be
treated as irreducibly relational – so that motion could be ascribed to Train A relative to one reference frame,
and to Train B relative to another reference frame – would have had no attraction for Leibniz, who
consistently denied that there are any genuine external relations (i.e. relations that do not wholly supervene
on intrinsic properties).

Accepting the observational under-determination of motion understood as mere change of relative position,
and finding absurd the consequence that there is no genuine motion in the world, Leibniz denies the premise
that there is nothing more to motion than relative
change of position. He thus maintains that rather than grant
that there is no real motion, “in order to say that something is moving, we will require not only that it change
its position with respect to other things but also that there be within itself a cause of change, a force, an
action” (G IV.396/L 393). Intuitively, Leibniz’s suggestion is that genuine motion requires, in addition to
relative change of place, a cause of that relative change. To return to our earlier example, if Train A moves
relative to Train B, we should say, according to Leibniz, that Train A really moves if and only if, it is the
active cause of their relative motion. Since, for Leibniz, being an active cause, or locus of force, is a non-
relativistic property attributable to individual bodies, it is in principle capable of breaking the “equivalence
of hypotheses” and thus grounding true or genuine motion.

While force, however, thus provides the necessary metaphysical grounds for the existence of genuine
motions, it does not, at least as far as the physicist is concerned, solve the empirical issue of which bodies
can be ascribed genuine motion (Garber 1995, 307; but see also Lodge 2003). For, as we have seen, the
ascription of force – of vis viva or mv2 – is itself empirically relative to a frame of reference. The postulation
of force makes genuine motion possible; it does not tell us which bodies are genuinely in motion and which
are moved merely relatively. In practice Leibniz thus counsels that – as in astronomy – “one can hold the
simplest hypothesis (everything considered) as the true one” (GM II 184/AG 308). Although the
metaphysician can rest assured that true motion must be absolute, the physicist must therefore be content to
work with relative motions and simplifying assumptions.

5. Leibniz on Space and Time

In his Principia, Newton had suggested that the absolute
motion of bodies is to be defined relative to
absolute space and time,
and to be discovered by its properties, causes and
effects.[30]
Leibniz, as we have
just seen, opposed such a view, holding instead
that true motions are to be defined with respect to the active
forces
that he took to be inherent in truly moving bodies. This disagreement
between Newton and Leibniz
over the nature of true motion surfaced
more explicitly in their disagreement over the nature of space and
time in the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. In the five letters he
managed to write before his death, Leibniz
succeeded in articulating
not only his reasons for opposing what he took to be Newton’s
conception of
absolute space and time, but also sketching an
alternative picture according to which they are to be
understood as
abstract systems of relations.
5.1 Against Absolute Space and Time

In his correspondence with Leibniz, Clarke defends what has become known as an absolute theory of space
and time. The version championed
by Clarke on Newton’s behalf might briefly be characterized for our
purposes as having four central theses. First, space and time are logically and metaphysically prior to
physical bodies and events. That is to say, although space and time could exist even if there were no physical
bodies or events, the existence of things like planets and flashes could not exist without space and time.
Second, physical bodies and events exist within space and time – the beach ball is collocated with a region of
space equal to its volume; the explosion endures through a determinate measure of absolute time. Third,
although we may distinguish regions, or “parts,” of space and time, neither space nor time strictly speaking
are divisible since no region of space or time could be separated, or “pulled apart,” from any other region.
Fourth, ontologically speaking, space and time may be identified with attributes of God: infinite space just is
the attribute of God’s Immensity, while infinite time just is the attribute of God’s Eternity.

Leibniz introduces three main lines of attack against the Clarke-Newton conception of absolute space and
time. The first line focuses on the suggestion that space and time might be identified with the divine
attributes, and on Newton’s claim – made in his
Optics[31]
– that space is, as it were, the sensorium of God.
Leibniz, at root, argues that such claims are deeply misleading at best, heretical at worst. Thus, for example,
against the suggestion that space might be identified with God’s Immensity, he writes to Clarke, “if space is a
property of God … space
belongs to the essence of God. But space has parts: therefore there would be parts
in the essence of God” (Fifth Paper, paragraph 43; G VII.399/Alexander 68). Likewise, he argues that if time
were identified with God’s Immensity, then we would have to say that since things are in time, they are in
God’s Immensity, and thus in God’s essence, “Strange expressions; which plainly show, that the author [i.e.
Clarke] makes a wrong use of terms”
(Fifth Paper, paragraph 44; G VII.399/Alexander 68).[32]
Finally, from
his first letter on, Leibniz seizes on what he takes to
be the impious implication of Newton’s suggestion that
space might in
some sense be considered the seat of divine perception or cognition, writing, “Sir Isaac
Newton says, that space is an organ, which God makes use of to perceive things by. But if God stands in
need of any organ to perceive things by, it will follow, that they do not depend altogether upon him, nor were
produced by him” (First Paper, paragraph 3; G VII.352/Alexander 11).

A second, more philosophical, line of attack pivots on Leibniz’s commitment to the Principle of Sufficient
Reason (PSR). In the present context we can understand the PSR as demanding that there be some reason for
God’s creating the world in one way rather than another since “A mere will without any motive, is a fiction,
not only contrary to God’s perfection, but also chimerical and contradictory” (Fourth Paper, paragraph 2; G
VII.371–2/Alexander 36). Leibniz argues that if the PSR is granted, the apparent possibility of absolute space
and time can be undermined. For, on the supposition that God creates the world in an infinite, homogenous,
absolute space, there could be no reason for his creating the world oriented in one way with respect to that
space
rather than another way – that is, there could be no reason to prefer the world situated in one way
rather than, say, rotated in space by ninety degrees. Since the supposition of absolute space thus
leads to a
violation of the PSR, the supposition itself must be rejected as chimerical or confused according to Leibniz.
Similarly, on the supposition that God creates the world in an infinite, homogenous, absolute time, there
could be no reason for God’s creating the world at one time rather than at another time. Again, since the
supposition leads to a violation of the PSR, Leibniz maintains that the supposition itself must be rejected as
chimerical or confused.

A third line of attack offered by Leibniz against the Newtonian conception of space and time draws on
another principle familiar from
Leibniz’s metaphysics, namely, the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles
(PII). In the present context we may understand the PII as ruling out the possibility of two things being
distinct, but not distinct in virtue of some discernible property. It thus suggests that where we cannot identify
a recognizable difference between two things or possibilities, those two are in fact only one – that is, as
Leibniz puts it, that “To suppose two things indiscernible, is to suppose the same thing under two names”
(Fourth Paper, paragraph 6; G VII.372/Alexander 37). Armed with the PII, Leibniz argues once again that
the apparent possibility of absolute space and time can be undermined. For on the supposition of absolute
space, the world oriented in one way with respect to space would have to be a distinct possibility from the
world oriented in another way with respect to absolute space. But, according to Leibniz, two such purported
possibilities would be indiscernible since no being – not even God or an angel –
could recognize any
difference between them. Leibniz thus concludes that since the supposition of absolute space leads to a
violation of the PII, the supposition itself must be rejected. By essentially the same reasoning, Leibniz argues
similarly that the apparent possibility of absolute time is also inconsistent with the PII and so
too must be
rejected as chimerical or confused.

5.2 Leibnizian Space and Time

Leibniz’s positive account of space and time might be thought of as resting on two primary pillars and being
filled out by a number of ancillary theses. The first pillar consists in an alternative model, or conception, of
space and time offered in conscious opposition to the Newtonian conception absolute space and time.
According to Leibniz, space and time are not so much things in which bodies are located and move as
systems of relations holding between things. He thus famously tells Clarke in his Third Paper:

As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely
relative, as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of
successions. (Third Paper, paragraph 4; G VII.363/Alexander 25–26)

The main idea is perhaps illustrated more intuitively by a helpful example that Leibniz introduces in his Fifth
Paper. There he suggests
that space and time are analogous to a family tree. Unlike the relationship between,
say, a mighty oak and its leaves, a genealogical tree is not something which exists as a thing independently
of, and prior to, its members, but is itself rather something like an abstract system of relations holding
between brothers, sisters, parents, children, aunts, uncles, etc. Analogously
for Leibniz, space and time are
not to be thought of as containers in
which bodies are literally located and through which they move, but
rather as an abstract structure of relations in which actual (and even possible) bodies might be embedded.

The second pillar of Leibniz’s positive account of space and time is rooted in his view that – even understood
as systems of relations – space and time as “beings of reason” are in a sense at least two steps removed from
the monads of his mature metaphysics. (i) Although bodies may be held to stand in spatial and temporal
relations to one another, Leibniz claims, space and time themselves must be considered abstractions or
idealizations with respect to those relations. For while relations between bodies and events are necessarily
variable and changing, the relations constituting space and time must be viewed as determinate, fixed, and
ideal. (ii) As we have briefly noted, however, according to Leibniz’s
most mature metaphysics, physical
bodies and events are themselves to
be understood as merely well-founded phenomena. Relations of relative
distance and duration holding between bodies must therefore themselves be a step removed from monadic
reality, and thus space and
time must be, as it were, a second step removed from the most basic non-
relational entities of Leibniz’s most mature metaphysics. In spite of this double relation holding between
ideal space and time on
the one hand and monadic reality on the other, Leibniz nonetheless insists that ideal
space must be intelligibly related to the various perceptions by which monads represent the world, each from
its own “point of view,” just as ideal time must be intelligibly related to the various appetites in accordance
with which monads sequentially unfold in synchronized harmony. Although the details of this intelligible
grounding story remain less than perspicuous, there
can be no doubt that Leibniz saw his relationalism about
space and time as dovetailing with the foundations of his monadic metaphysics.

Beyond arguing that space and time are ideal systems of relations, Leibniz also defends a number of less
central theses that help to flesh out his positive conceptions of space and time. For our purposes it might be
worth quickly calling attention to three of the most significant. First, although he takes space and time to be
ideal
systems of relations, Leibniz nonetheless insists that they are conceived of as infinite. In doing so he
takes a characteristically intermediate position, partially siding with most early moderns in rejecting the
notion of an imaginary space surrounding a finite cosmos, but also partially siding with earlier medieval
thinkers in affirming that “Since space is itself an ideal thing … space out of the world must needs be
imaginary [but] … The case is the same with empty space within the world; which I also take
to be
imaginary” (Fifth Paper, paragraph 33; G VII.396/Alexander 64).[33]
Second, Leibniz maintains that
although the existence of empty space is possible – logically speaking, two bodies could exist at a spatial
distance with nothing between them – nonetheless it is morally certain that the actual world is a plenum. For,
as we have already noted in connection with his critique of atomism, Leibniz maintains the existence of
empty space would be inconsistent with God’s decision to create the best of all possible worlds. Third, in
spite of his critique of Newton, Leibniz affirms that space and time are continuous, homogenous, and
infinitely divisible (although not actually divided to infinity). He holds that the ascription of such properties
to space and time is only possible once they are recognized to be ideal, or “imaginary,” and in this way
Leibnizian space and time are further distinguished not only from Newtonian absolute space and time, but
also from extended Leibnizian bodies.

Bibliography
Selected Primary Texts

[A] German Academy of Sciences, ed., Gottfried Wilhelm

Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe,
Darmstadt and
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1926–. Reference is to series,
volume and page.
[AT] Oeuvres de Descartes, eds., Charles Adam and Paul
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[G] C. I. Gerhardt, ed., Die philosophischen Schriften von
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[GM] C. I. Gerhardt, ed., Mathematische Schriften von
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Selected Primary Texts in Translation

[Alexander] H. G. Alexander, ed., The Leibniz-Clarke

Correspondence, Manchester: Manchester
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[AG] R. Ariew and D. Garber, eds., G. W. Leibniz:
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[CSM] The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, ed. and
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[FW] R. Franks and R. Woolhouse, G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Texts, New York, Oxford
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[L] L. E. Loemker, ed. and trans., G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters, 2nd ed.,
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[Langely] Langely, Alfred G. 1949. New Essays
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[NE] P. Remnant and J. Bennett, eds. and trans., G. W.
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Selected General Studies and Collections

Adams, Robert, 1994. Leibniz: Determinist,
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Antognazza, Maria Rosa, ed. 1975. The Oxford Handbook of Leibniz,
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–––, 1995. “Leibniz: Physics and
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Hartz, Glenn, 2006. Leibniz’s Final System, New
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Janiak, Andrew, 2008. Newton as Philosopher, New York:
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Mercer, C., 2001. Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University
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Okruhlik, Kathleen and J. R. Brown, 1995. The
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Rutherford, Donald, 1995. Leibniz and the Rational
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Sleigh, R. C., Jr., 1990. Leibniz and Arnauld: A Commentary on Their Correspondence, New Haven,
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Leibniz’s Life and Works

Aiton, Eric, J., 1985. Leibniz: A
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Antognazza, Maria Rosa, 2009. Leibniz: An Intellectual
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in Nicholas Jolley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to
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Guhrauer, G. E., 1966 [1842]. Gottfried Wilhelm
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reprinted, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966.
Jolley, Nicholas, 2005. Leibniz, New
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Mates, Benson, 1986. The Philosophy of
Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language, Oxford: Oxford University
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Leibniz’s Early Physics

Bassler, Otto, 2002. “Motion and Mind in the

Balance: The Transformation of Leibniz’s Early
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–––, 1998. “The Leibnizian Continuum in
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Leibniz on Matter
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–––, 1985. “Leibniz and the Foundations
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Leibniz’s Dynamics
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Leibniz on The Laws of Motion

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Leibniz on Space & Time

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