Abstract
In this chapter I discuss some of the leading ideas in Leibniz’s philosophy of biology with an eye to their relevance to modern astrobiology. Leibniz’s views make for an interesting contrast with the modern synthesis in biology, since although he posited the encoding of genetic information in each individual as a programme for its structure and development, his biological philosophy was developmental rather than evolutionary. But he had interesting and still topical views on (among other things) the compatibility of teleological explanation with mechanism, on what constitutes a living organism, on what a biological individual is, and on organic matter being more fundamental than inorganic. In what follows we will see that many of his insights and distinctions have been rediscovered by contemporary biologists working in the modern synthesis of evolution, natural selection, mutation, molecular biology and speciation, anatomy, physiology and homeostasis, developmental biology and reproduction, ecology and geochemistry.
*Leibniz wrote largely in Latin and French; all translations given here are my own, although I have referenced contemporary English translations where they exist. An earlier version of this paper was given on 9 February 2015 for the Origins Institute Colloquium Series at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. Thanks to my audience there, also to my audience at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David in July 2015. Special thanks to Tarushika Vasanthan for the reference to Kinchin’s book on tardigrades, and to Jo Edwards for stimulating discussions on the implications of Leibniz’s ideas for modern biology. Thanks also to Lloyd Strickland and Erik Vynckier for their comments on the penultimate version, and to Erik in particular for his stimulating suggestions for improvements and further reading.
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Notes
- 1.
In his final essay, What Makes Biology Unique?, Ernst Mayr expresses profound scepticism about the principles on which SETI (the search for intelligent life) is based, and stresses the probable ubiquity of non-intelligent life in the cosmos.
- 2.
A VI 4, 1508/LC 289.
- 3.
A VI 4, 1509/LC 289.
- 4.
A VI 4, 1513/LC 295.
- 5.
GM 3, 553. In his reply of 6 December 1698, Bernoulli says he is “not surprised that you agree with me when I conjecture that there are animals in the world as much bigger than ours as ours are bigger than the animalcules of the microscopists. For to you the whole universe is a congeries of animals.” But Bernoulli thinks those animals would be “animals in the usual sense, having bodies and members similar to ours, or something analogous instead; and that among those animals there would also be intelligent ones or ones using reason, i.e. people” (GM 3, 557). To this Leibniz replies on 17 December: “I too would readily admit that there are animals in the usual sense incomparably greater than ours; and I once said as a joke, that there could be some system similar to ours that would be the pocket watch of a huge giant” (GM 3, 560).
- 6.
A VI 2, 241/LC 338.
- 7.
GP II, 99/WFT 125–6.
- 8.
GP II, 87-8/WFT 121.
- 9.
Among Leibniz’s reasons for considering there to be such indestructible principles in bodies everywhere was his conviction that a purely material body would be incapable of acting or of being the same thing through time; and in the case of humans, a commitment to the Lutheran interpretation of the soul as remaining in a state of sleep until resurrection. See Arthur, Leibniz, 60–76.
- 10.
GP II, 124/WFT 134.
- 11.
See Smith, Divine Machines, especially 151 ff., for an account of Leibniz’s knowledge of contemporary empirical evidence for micro-organisms.
- 12.
Smith, Divine Machines, 189.
- 13.
Kinchin, Biology of Tardigrades, 2.
- 14.
Tardigrades were first described in detail by Johann Goeze in 1773. They have been shown recently to be able to survive fire, drought, freezing, intense pressure and near vacuum, and even irradiation by cosmic rays in outer space! If Leibniz knew anything of such creatures’ durability, it would help explain his insouciance in the face of Arnauld’s scorn.
- 15.
Smith, Divine Machines, 188.
- 16.
See Arthur, Leibniz, for a detailed account of the origination of Leibniz’s philosophy in relation to his scientific interests.
- 17.
A VI 4, 1798/LC 277.
- 18.
A VI 4, 1508/LC 287.
- 19.
GP VI, 600/PPL 644.
- 20.
A VI 4, 1370/PPL 207.
- 21.
GP II, 112/PPL 339.
- 22.
GP VI, 609/PPL 644.
- 23.
GP VI, 599/PPL 637.
- 24.
For a lyrical and highly readable account of Aristotle’s science of life, I recommend Leroi, The Lagoon.
- 25.
GP I, 197-8/PPL 189.
- 26.
A VI 6, 139/NE 139.
- 27.
GP VI, 544/PPL 589.
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Stahl, Negotium otiosum, 6–7.
- 30.
Smith, Divine Machines, 290.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
I should stress that the use of the term “energy” is not anachronistic here. One of Leibniz’s greatest contributions was his identification of it as a central concept in physics and biology, with the correct measure, as well as proposing its universal conservation as a basic law of physics. See Arthur, Leibniz, for details.
- 33.
Smith, Divine Machines, 292.
- 34.
Ibid., 290–1.
- 35.
Ibid., 292.
- 36.
“Autopoiesis” is the term introduced in 1972 by Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela to define the self-maintaining chemistry of living cells. In a later work they write: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.” Maturana and Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition, 78.
- 37.
See Kauffman, At Home in The Universe, for a readable account of his ideas about life beginning with the evolution of collectively autocatalytic systems.
- 38.
GP IV, 482/PPL 456.
- 39.
For an account of these aspects of Leibniz’s thought see Arthur, Leibniz, chaps. 2 and 5.
- 40.
Cf. Terence Deacon: “For Dawkins, the organism is the medium through which genes influence their probability of being replicated. But as many critics have pointed out, this inverts the location of agency and dynamics. Genes are passively involved in the process while the chemistry of organi[c] bodies does the work of acquiring resources and reproducing.” Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 132. See Chap. 8 (“Selection”) in Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique?, for a good overview of this topic, as well as the references for the criticisms of Dawkins (by Mayr himself, Wimsatt, Sober and Lewontin) that Deacon alludes to here.
- 41.
Bouchard, “What Is a Symbiotic Superindividual”, 248.
- 42.
Pross, “Toward a general theory of evolution”, 12.
- 43.
GM 3, 553.
- 44.
Cf. Deacon: “And even those [parts of organisms] that biologists believe to have originated independently, like the mitochondria of eukaryotic cells, are no longer fully separable cell components. … much of the genetic information necessary for their maintenance has been relocated outside of the mitochondrion, in the cell’s nucleus.” Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 135.
- 45.
Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 135.
- 46.
Ibid., 465.
- 47.
GP IV, 482/PPL 456.
- 48.
Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 273.
- 49.
Kauffman, Investigations; Pross, “Toward a general theory of evolution”, 9.
- 50.
Pross, “Toward a general theory of evolution”, 9.
- 51.
Ernst Mayr distinguishes between function in the sense of the physiological functioning of an organ or other biological feature, “which can be largely translated into physiochemical explanations” (What Makes Biology Unique?, 50), and function in the sense of a biological role that such a feature might (contingently) have.
- 52.
Voltaire, Candide, 48.
- 53.
See Eric Palmer’s introduction to his edition of Voltaire, Candide.
- 54.
Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 202–3 (Principles of Philosophy, I §28).
- 55.
Spinoza, Ethics, Appendix to Part 1.
- 56.
Pasini, Corpo e Funzioni Cognitive in Leibniz, 217; Smith, Divine Machines, 290.
- 57.
A VI 4, 1405/LC 257.
- 58.
I am indebted to Erik Vynckier for some of the wording here.
- 59.
Hess, “G.W. Leibniz aus der Zeit seines Parisaufenhaltes”, 204.
- 60.
Fichant, La réforme de la dynamique, 145.
- 61.
Ibid., 146.
- 62.
Smith, Divine Machines, 92.
- 63.
Stahl, Negotium otiosum, 176.
- 64.
Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique?, 50–2.
- 65.
Ibid., 58–9. Mayr also distinguishes these four types of process, teleomatic, teleonomic, functional and adaptive, from the “cosmic teleology” implicit in the kind of orthogenetic worldview endorsed by Leibniz. As he rightly points out, this has been refuted by the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s (ibid., 60). But, I have argued here, Leibniz’s interpretation of divine predestination is full of insight, and not to be equated with the kind of naïve finalism one finds in La Pluche, where every single function is supposed to have been divinely selected for the purpose it happens to serve.
- 66.
A VI 6, 236/NE 236.
- 67.
Collier, “Hierarchical Dynamical Information Systems With a Focus on Biology”.
- 68.
Deacon, Incomplete Nature.
- 69.
Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique?, 55.
- 70.
Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 136. This builds on Kauffman’s claim: “But evolution requires more than simply the ability to change, to undergo heritable variation. To engage in the Darwinian saga, a living system must first be able to strike an internal compromise between malleability and stability. To survive in a variable environment, it must be stable, but not so stable that it remains forever static.” Kauffman, At Home In The Universe, 73.
- 71.
Deacon, Incomplete Nature, 136.
- 72.
Ibid., 549.
- 73.
Ibid., 467.
- 74.
Pross, “Toward a general theory of evolution”, 13.
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Arthur*, R.T.W. (2017). Leibniz, Organic Matter and Astrobiology. In: Strickland, L., Vynckier, E., Weckend, J. (eds) Tercentenary Essays on the Philosophy and Science of Leibniz. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38830-4_4
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