Organisms and Infinitude in the Chain of Being
Leibniz, Classical Theism, and the Problem of Evil - Chapter 2 (part 2)
Greetings, subscribers. As followers of Theological Letters know, I’m working feverishly to finish my forthcoming book on Leibniz and the problem of evil, and I have promised to post fresh installments of my progress every Sunday.
To date, I have posted the Introduction, all four parts of Chapter 1, and the first part of Chapter 2. Today, I post the second installment of Chapter 2, Organisms and Infinitude in the Chain of Being.
If you have yet to read all that comes before, I recommend you do so for context. Links to all prior sections are below. Be watching for the third installment of Chapter 2 next Sunday. Enjoy!
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Chapter 2
Organisms and Infinitude in the Chain of Being
The philosopher of Leipzig explores two means by which infinitude might express itself. The first likely feels less alien to the contemporary reader, thanks to modern science. So we’ll begin there.
Leibniz is convinced that each organism within our world is a living machine that is composed of smaller organisms, which are composed of still smaller organisms, and so on to infinity (e.g., G 6.152).1 To use Leibniz’s own words, God wished to create:
… an infinity of other beings, some of which are enveloped in the organs of others. Our body is a kind of world full of an infinity of creatures which also merit existence; and if our body were not organized, our microcosm or little world would not have had all the perfection that it must have, and the great world would not be so rich as it is. (G 3:356)
Setting aside the empirical sciences, the metaphysical reasons for this belief begins with how Leibniz conceives of “monads” (the building blocks of reality). We will discuss the monadology more extensively when looking at the second theory of infinity. But for Leibniz’s theory of organisms, we need only grasp that he understands monads to be simple — which is to say, they are not composed of parts.
Leibniz was far from the first to suggest that the building blocks of reality are simple. The ancient atomists and the Mechanical Philosophy, which resuscitated atomism, argued the same. The very name, “atom” (ἄτομος), means that which cannot be cut, a trait that presumes simplicity.2 But in atomic philosophy, the theory produced a rift between empirical realities and rational truths. For according to this theory, atoms have mass and extension, which means they should be divisible, according to the laws of mathematics.3 Leibniz’s theory of monads takes the commitment to simplicity much further, insisting that monads are true simples, having no extension or mass or shape (Monadologie §§1-3/E 705).4 The ramification that is most relevant here is that monads cannot undergo generation or corruption, since their radical simplicity leaves no room for the assemblage or shedding of parts, mass, extension, or shape. Their existence is therefore binary: They can be created, bursting into existence fully formed, or annihilated, ceasing to be instantaneously. But their simplicity excludes degrees of generation or corruption (Mon. §§4-6/E 705).
The reason this conclusion is significant is it impels Leibniz toward a theory of preformation — that is, the theory that the parts of a creature do not come into being by generation but already exist in miniature and merely expand or unfold in the generation process. Once again, the classical backdrop offers some help.
The puzzle of generation is one of the oldest problems in the history of ideas. The problem first emerges because the philosophers of Elea (Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno) fretted over a problem of language that reveals a problem in ontology. To wit, whenever we speak about that which is not, we speak as though it is. Parmenides explains,
… [I]t cannot be the case, that nothing exists. For what would this strange thing be that we are endowing with existence? It would be “that which is not,” and if it is not, then, by the law of contradiction, we cannot say that it is; and we cannot say anything else about it either, because there simply is no “it” there for us to say it about. To try and talk about it therefore is not simply to say things which are false, but to fail to say anything coherent at all; we must say that “it is” whenever we talk about anything at all.5
In other words, when we say a thing does not exist, our language invariably employs nouns and verbs, which indicate things and acts. If one argues, as the Greek atomists did, that atoms exist in a void, so “there is nothing between atoms,” then one ascribes to the void existence (is) and refers to “it” with nouns and pronouns (nothing, void, vacuum, it), all of which denotes something, not nothing.6 So, Parmenides complains, there arises a trail of falsehoods when one speaks about that which is not.
The same problem arises in talk of generation — the coming to be of things. Gorgias, the Greek sophist, paradies the point in a passage preserved by Sextus Empiricus: “what is cannot be generated. For if it has come into being, it must have done so either out of what is or out of what is not. But it has not come from what is; for if it is a being, it has not come into being but already is.”7 The first step of the argument is plain enough. If being p came to be, then p either came from something or nothing. But “nothing” cannot give rise to p, since “it” is not a thing at all. Hence, p must come from some-thing. The second step of the argument is more subtle. Opting that p came from something, our language falls into the same problem we face when speaking about the void, namely, our language suggests that p both exists and does not exist. For only things can “come from” something, as the phrase denotes an act. Put simply, the phrasing suggests that p acts before it exists, moving from nonexistence into existence.
The problem, the Eleatics argue, is that existence is binary: A thing either is or is not. If p is, then it is — period. There is no partial existence. If, however, p is not, then it cannot move into existence, since it is no-thing at all. In sum, we either grant that p is, and then it is and need not come into being. Or we grant that p is not, and then it can do nothing, including come to be.
Several solutions emerged in the ancient world. The Eleatics embraced static monism to resolve the issue: All is One, and generation, corruption, and other phenomena are illusions.8 The dynamic monism of the atomists offered a second solution. Yes, there is a set quantity of being in the world that simply exists, immune to coming to be and passing away, namely, the atoms. But these everlasting bits take on various arrangements, bringing about complex composites. Such composites give the impression of additional being, but the phenomena is nothing more than the reordering of what already exists.9
A third, non-monistic solution was Aristotle’s theory of prime matter, which sought to break the Eleatic binary and preserve the common sense impression that things do in fact come to be and pass away.10 Aristotle’s answer identifies the key flaw in Eleatic thought as its binary ontology: either being (in an absolute sense) or nothing (in an absolute sense); there is no middle. In reply, Aristotle introduces the distinction between actuality (ἐντελέχεια) and potentiality (δύναμις),11 which offers an ontological middle between being and nothing. In this solution, coming to be is not a transition from nothing to something, as the Eleatics suggest.12 Instead, generation is a movement from potentially something to actually something.
To use Aristotle’s explanation, actuality is to potentiality as “someone waking is to someone sleeping, as someone seeing is to a sighted person with his eyes closed.”13 The analogy is meant to capture the difference between an active and a latent power and the transition from dormant to active. Another example might be physical strength. I have the potential to grow stronger than I am presently. This potential is more than nothing. But whatever this potential is, it is less than fully realized strength. This “more than nothing” that is “less than something” is what Aristotle calls potential, and from this substratum (ὑποκείμενον) of potential actualities arise. Generation refers to this transition from potential to actual.14
Aristotle’s solution ultimately won the day.15 But in Modernity, the anti-Aristotelian push of the Mechanical Philosophy resuscitated a tendency toward dynamic monism, at least in philosophy proper.16 Not all of Modern thought embraced this volte face. In Modern biology, the question was first revisited in Fabricius’ De formato foetu (1600) and William Harvey’s Exercitationes de generation animalium (1651), which ran contrary to the monism impulse, advancing a theory of epigenesis: The traits of offspring are not present in the parent prior to generation, and generation occurs by differentiating the primordium of the parent.17 But the philosophical pull toward dynamic monism meant that epigenesis, which seemed a bit too Aristotelian for most, was rarely entertained until 1827.18 Hence, the spirit of the age favored preformation.