QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

actually aware. 313
In the style of ancient thinkers, Leibniz also paid attention to problems connected with the
division of matter. In his youth, he had been strongly influenced by atomic theory via Gassend,
and he considered Descartes’ concept of extended matter to be contradictory and inadequate as a
way of explaining the whole of reality. Leibniz viewed the atomic hypothesis as valuable natural
science, but insufficient for metaphysics, in which the search was for ultimate principles. If it is
presumed that matter is continuous and infinitely divisible, there can be no true parts, only
arbitrary division. On the other hand, if matter is presumed to consist of different indivisible
parts, a whole formed from these parts cannot be a real whole, only a arbitrary collection. This
kind of metaphysical theorising about the relationship between parts and wholes has received
new impetus as a result of modern physics, since in some specific situations matter appears as
localised particles, while in others it appears to be continuous waves. 314
As an idealist monist, Leibniz did not have a fundamental belief in the absolute existence of
space and time, he thought that we conceived the idea of them via our natural disposition to fix
and relate phenomena. As the world was an organism which consisted of countless minute
perceivable spiritual organisms (i.e. monads) no substance ever lacks activity. There is never a
body without movement and at every moment in time, there is within us an infinity of
perceptions which are alterations in the soul itself. 315 Like Spinoza, Leibniz rejected Descartes’
interactive doctrine and adopted the idea of parallelism. States consisting of monadic complexes
which we called living bodies and states of conscious monads which we called souls
corresponded perfectly to one another. Leibniz was not however viewed as having been able to
provide a more satisfactory explanation of the relationship between mind and matter than either
Spinoza or Descartes. The orderliness in the sequences of well-founded phenomena was a
consequence of the pre-established harmony ordained by God. 316 The connection between mental
and material aspects was evidently impossible to understand from a dualistic standpoint, in
which the mind could only be aware of its own state and the material world was just a
mechanical machine obeying absolute laws.
312
At the same time, Leibniz realised that the study of probabilities might lead to valuable theoretical and practical
results if this mathematical method could define the statistical probabilities of possible events. Aspelin 1995, 321-
322.
313
Leibniz 1981, 48-49, 51-52.
314
Aspelin 1995, 325.
315
Leibniz 1981, 53.
316
Trusted 1991, 88-92. Aspelin 1995, 326. Collingwood 1960, 110-112
119