KANT'S CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGY IN BIOLOGICAL EXPLANATION

102 Antinomy of Division
and thus present a physical alternative to the absolutely dense and
inelastic atoms of Newtonian physics. But on a philosophical level
this theory is every bit as atomistic as Newton's atomism, since it
maintains that matter consists of simple ultimate particles whose
properties explain all phenomena. The difference lies in the choice
of properties; and this is a physical question. In any case, it is to this
sort of monadism that Kant refers in the Second Antinomy and
which he rightly considers to be a variety of philosophical atomism.
Sixty years after the death of Leibniz there was no reason to connect
the word "monad" directly or exclusively with Leibniz. In the meantime
there had been important debates in physics about monads,
and as Kant put it in his lectures on metaphysics at the beginning of
the 1760's: "Since on their account a great quarrel arose, so that the
word Monad is now heard in beer parlors and street songs, one
gradually begins to abstain from the word." 56
The basic principle of Kant's physical monadology: "Bodies
consist of parts which separated from one another have a persistent
existence," could have no place in the physics of Leibniz, which was
a physics of systems not a physics of isolated particles. Leibniz proposed
laws for material systems, which only applied to single particles
in so far as these, too, could be conceived as systems. He did
not (like Newton) trace laws back to the properties of simple
particles which "have a persistent existence" even independent of
the system. Even the active and passive forces of matter, on which
all properties of bodies are based, are attributed only to material
systems; Leibniz does not appeal to centers of force or to simple units
endowed with forces or to any sort of dynamical atoms.
As far as the division of matter is concerned, Leibniz believed
that 57
each part of matter not only is infinitely divisible, as the ancients recognized,
but also is actually subdivided without end, each part into parts, each
of which has its own distinct movement. Otherwise it would be impossible
that each part of matter could express the whole universe.
Since matter is infinitely divided, it can also be organized and structured
in infinitum. At every level of division or composition a body
can be either an organized system of parts (machine) or a mere
aggregate of parts.
56 Ak 28,1,28 (Herder's lecture notes).
57 "Monadology" §65; GP VI,618; PPL, 649.