Letter of Mr. Leibniz on a General Principle Useful in Explaining the Laws of Nature Through a Consideration of the Divine Wisdom; to Serve as a Reply to the Response of the Rev. Father Malebranche

Abstract

This paper is Leibniz’s second reply in a controversy begun by the Abbé Catelan in Bayle’s journal, on the criticism of Descartes’s physics in the ‘Brief Demonstration’ (No. 34). In it Leibniz extends his criticism to Malebranche’s laws of motion in Book VI of the Recherche de la vérité, charging that he as well as Descartes has violated the principle of continuity. The paper contains a clear statement of this principle and its importance in physical analysis. There exists also a Latin version (GM., VI, 129–35)