SISTEMI, STRUTTURE, SFORZI, MOTI. L¿ANALOGIA TRA SCIENZE FISICO-MATEMATICHE E SCIENZE CIVILI NELLA FILOSOFIA DI G.W. LEIBNIZ

The research aims at tracing underlying connections, in Leibniz’s writings, between ethical, legal and political science – on the one side –, and physics, mechanics, biology, and his later dynamics – on the other. More clearly: this research undertakes to fully uncover existing convergences and underlying analogies between “Natural Science” and “Civil Science”, i.e. between the analysis of the properties and forces that regulate collision – and, more generally, competition (concursum) and cohesion – in physical bodies and systems, and the analysis of the features and mechanisms underlying associated life, unity and cohesion, in socio-political bodies and systems. The search for these connections is theoretically grounded in some theological-metaphysical tenets which essentially bring all systems together in Leibniz’s thought. By “systems” I mean all sets of elements originally organized and disposed by God in such a way that they can be said to be regulated by ordinary means, namely laws. This analogy draws its initial drive by the Hobbes-inspired idea that motion is the elementary explanatory unit of all reality, capable of connecting the three essential elements of philosophy: corpus, homo and civis. The goal of the research is thus to show how Leibniz came to develop this idea in his own original terms and within his own philosophical framework. The pattern underlying the structures in a unitary physical system is to be found through the discovery of the laws that regulate interactions – in terms of competition, collision and coordination (conspiratio) – between the parts, and of the related “biological” conditions that make internal cohesion possible in each structure. Likewise, the pattern underlying the structures in a unitary civil system is to be found through the discovery of the laws and the related “biological” configuration of the parts at the basis of a coherent and enduring composition in each body / structure, which regulate interactions in terms of dispute, competition (concursum) and cooperation (conspiratio). In the structures of both systems, cohesion is necessary to avoid dissolution / disaggregation by internal causes, which is also essential for their ability to stand against dissolution due to external causes. Both types of structures are essentially aimed at their own perpetuation. The main difficulty – which also remarkably contributes to show the possibility of conceiving of an analogy between physical and civil science – lies in their being conjectural sciences, where any anticipation or prediction is built on a high number of variables. To depict the profile of this analogy as clearly as possible, it will be necessary to try and answer this series of questions, thematically grouped into seven main theoretical cores: 1. How does Leibniz defines Jurisprudence, Ethics, Moral Science and Civil Science? To what extent can they be called “sciences”, and how are they related to each other? 2. Which are the respective field of study and application of Arithmetic, Geometry, Mechanics, and Physics? And what kind of relationship exists between them? 3. How are all these sciences (that is, the sciences listed in points 1. and 2.) classified, and how are they related to each other? Which methodologies do they share, and which order do they follow? 4. Why does Leibniz formulate two different theories of motion, and how is their articulation in terms of “abstract” and “concrete” reflected in “civil” science? 5. What are the key terms of a shared vocabulary between physico-mathematical and ethical-political science? 6. Systems, bodies and unity: what kind of continuity exists between the use of the word “body” to refer to physical bodies and political bodies? And, thus, what kind of body is the civil compages? What kind of unity can it achieve, and under what conditions? 7. How does the analogy change with the discovery of “dynamics”?