Research On Leibniz's Natural Organicism

Leibniz was a famous scientist and philosopher in the 17th century. He produced the organic view of nature opposite to the mechanism which was keeping up. After the mid-1950s, with worsening of environment and global development of eco-movement, eco-philosophy emerged as the times require. Mechanism was considered as the important ideological root of eco-problems. Based on the new scientific practice, the natural view began turning to organicism.In the 17th century the foundation of Cartesianism indicated the philosophy completed the historic change from medieval theological teleology to modern mechanism. The world and even human were described as mechanical systems by mechanism and strictly followed the law of causation. Leibniz deemed that there were not only the rationalities but also certain limitations in the mechanism. Firstly mechanism couldn't offer the phenomena of life reasonable explanations. Secondly the mechanism concept of substance included the contradiction between continuity and indivisible point, and thirdly mechanism couldn't deal properly with the relations between the necessity and freedom. Based on embodying eastern and western cultures from ancient times to modern times, Leibniz created the organic view of nature through rethinking and criticizing mechanism. In this philosophical system monads were simple substance and the law of continuity and the pre-established harmony were the basic principles regulating the actions of countless monads. In the light of Leibniz's theory, the nature was a great organic system made up of the subsystem of deferent levels which were all organic. The whole world was in general contacts and everlasting movement and the pre-established harmony was its essence and the sufficient reason of any being. The whole world consisted of the human society and the nature, so the human as a part of the world should keep harmony with nature.Leibniz's natural view hardly won support at that time and was even rated as pure mystery. However from the point of view nowadays, not that Leibniz's theory is mystery, but that it tallies with the modern science especially ecology in many aspects. Under the circumstances of the serious ecological crisis and the organic turning of western philosophy, Leibniz's world view undoubtedly has theoretic value and practical importance today.Up to now there had been a great deal of studies about Leibniz, but the systemic study about his organicism could not be found from them. The main purpose of this paper is to do an attempt in this field. Leibniz's philosophy was so profound that it was necessary to take various methods to make researches from many points of view. For one thing, over all analysis was made about European and German social status in the 17th century as well as Leibniz's personality and experiences which was the contexts that Leibniz's organicism generated. In this part the paper also discussed the thinking means by which Leibniz formed and originated his organic philosophy from the point of view of methodology. For another the idealistic and cultural sources of Leibniz's organicism were investigated by discussing several significant views of nature from eastern and western cultures at all times. Based on the above, in chapter 4 the dominating standpoints about Leibniz's organic view of nature were discussed, then his nature view as an integral system was investigated and explained. The scientific study was the main action all Leibniz's life and so science was the foundation of rationality of his philosophy. So with that investigations were made on the scientific foundation of Leibniz organicism of nature. The last chapter discussed the present-day value of Leibniz's philosophy from the view of axiology. In this section the paper mainly investigated the underlying thought of modern science and the eco-philosophical value in the Monadology. In conclusions of the paper the main points of view were reemphasized, and then the structural characters of the paper were annotated in brief. Finally several questions were put forward which had certain reference significance for further researches.The innovations of this thesis are as follows: first, a systemic study of Leibniz's natural organicism was made which hadn't been found up to the present. Second, this study discussed Leibniz's creative thinking. Third, the scientific base of Leibniz's philosophy and its implications was made systemic analysis. Fourth, the paper analyzed in detail the relations between Leibniz's organicism and the constructive post-modern holistic organicism. Fifth, the thesis discussed the eco-ethical thought of Monadology and the eco-epistemological importance of the principle of sufficient reason from the view of eco-philosophy. Furthermore the history of monad concept was tentatively investigated about which no study had been found at least in Chinese Mainland.