DIVINE MACHINES:
LEIBNIZ’S PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
1. The Place of Biology in Early Modern Science
2. Hard Problems, Old and New
3. The Corporeal Substance Problem: Compatiblism, Incompatibilism, and Beyond
4. Leibniz’s Towering Predecessors: Aristotle, Descartes, and Hobbes
5. Leibniz’s Synthesis
6. A Note on Terminology
PART I: FIRST THINGS
CHAPTER 1: ‘QUE LES PHILOSOPHES MEDICINASSENT’: LEIBNIZ’S ENCOUNTER WITH MEDICINE AND ITS EXPERIMENTAL CONTEXT
1. Chemistry and Iatrochemistry
2. The Directiones ad rem medicam pertinentes (1671)
3. The Paris Notes
4. The 1690s: Griping Pains and ‘Fables to the Deaf’
5. The De causis febrium (1704-5)
6. The Polemic against G. E. Stahl in Relation to Leibniz’s Earlier Works on Medicine
7. Leibnz and Animal Experimentation
CHAPTER 2: ‘THE HYDRAULICO-PNEUMATICO-PYROTECHNICAL MACHINE OF QUASI-PERPETUAL MOTION’: LEIBNIZ ON ANIMAL ECONOMY
I. The Idea of Animal Economy
8. Introducing the Animal-Economical Manuscripts
9. The Machina animalis (1677)
10. The Corpus hominis et uniuscujusque animalis est machina quaedam (1682-6)
3.1. Nutrition
3.2. Fermentation
4. The De scribendis novis medicinae elementis (1682-3)
5. The De causis febrium (1704-5)
6. Nerve Fibers and Muscle Contraction: The Influence of Bernoulli, Baglivi, and Hoffmann
7. The Animadversiones in G. E. Stahlii Theoriam medicam veram (1709-10)
7.1. Soul as Perceiver vs. Soul as Body-Preserver
7.2. Animal Economy, Preestablished Harmony, and the Best of All Possible Worlds
8. Conclusion
PART II: FROM ANIMAL ECONOMY TO SUBTLE ANATOMY
CHAPTER 3: ORGANIC BODIES, PART I: NATURE AND STRUCTURE
I. Organic Body and the Question of Leibniz’s Idealism
1. Organism
2. Organic Body/Machine of Nature
3. Corporeal Substance
4. Animal
5. The Machine of Nature in Comparison
6. Organic Body and Aggregate
II. Platonic Body Theory, Plastic Natures, and Derivative Force
1. Origenism and Panorganicism
2. Cudworth on Plastic Natures
3. Leibniz, Masham, and the Theory of ‘Material Plastic Natures’
4. Material Plastic Natures as Derivative Forces
CHAPTER 4: ORGANIC BODIES, PART II: CONTEXT AND LEGACY
1. Leibniz’s Model of Nested Individuality
2. Nested Individuality and Microscopy
3. The Spectre of Parthenogenesis
4. Monads, Cels, and Worms
PART III: THE ORIGINS OF ORGANIC FORM
CHAPTER 5: THE DIVINE PREFORMATION OF ORGANIC BODIES
1. Introduction
2. From Approximation of Eternity to Eternal Existence
3. ‘Seeing’ vs. ‘Thinking’ in the Search for the Primordia of Life
4. Observability and Probability
5. Leibniz and Leeuwenhoek
6. Leibniz, Swammerdam, and Monadic Metamorphosis
7. Preformation and Preestablished Harmony
8. Conclusion: Whither Spontaneity?
CHAPTER 6: GAMES OF NATURE, THE EMERGENCE OF ORGANIC FORM, AND THE PROBLEM OF SPONTANEITY
1. Introduction
2. Imagination, Trait Acquisition, and the Doctrine of Marks and Traces
3. ‘An Alteration of Man, a Generation of Worm’: From Spontaneous Generation to Heterogenesis
4. Geogony and the Problem of Fossils
5. Conclusion: From lusus naturae to Spieltrieb
PART IV: SPECIES FROM A BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW
CHAPTER 7: THE NATURE AND BOUNDARIES OF BIOLOGICAL SPECIES
I. Biological Species and the Question of Leibniz’s Nominalism
1. The Problem of Species Reproduction in Mechanist Natural Philosophy
2. Transformism, Gradationism, and Nominalism
3. Botanical Method and the Conventional Nature of Classification
4. The Domain-Specificity of Leibnizian Nominalism
5. Species as Activity and the Ethological Basis of Species Morphology
6. Morphological Deviation and the Problem of ‘Monsters’
II. Design, Diversity, and the Spectre of Evolution
1. The Fossil Evidence for Morphological Change
2. Natural Theology, Organic Function, and Adaptation
2.1. Speech, Reason, and Design
3. The Spectre of Ape-Human Kinship: Leibniz, Locke, and the Influence of Edward Tyson’s Orang-Outang
4. The Problem of Human Diversity
APPENDICES
1. Directions Pertaining to the Institution of Medicine (1671)
2. The Animal Machine (1677)
3. The Human Body, Like That of Any Animal, Is a Sort of Machine (1682-6)
4. On Writing the New Elements of Medicine (1682-3)
5. On Botanical Method (1701)
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