On Nature Itself, or on the Inherent Force and Actions of Created Things

Abstract

Robert Boyle’s proposal, in his Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature (1682), that the term ‘nature’ should be avoided and ‘mechanism’ substituted for it occasioned a controversy between John Christopher Sturm of Altdorf and Günther Christopher Schelhammer of Kiel in 1692–98, in which Sturm defended Boyle’s opinion, while Schelhammer defended the concept of nature. One of the points argued concerned the source and nature of motion, Sturm defending the Cartesian position that God is its only source. Though the correspondence which began between Leibniz and Sturm in 1695 avoided the central question of the status of nature, it turned on the independent reality of the natural order, including man, Sturm maintaining that it is pagan and un-Christian to attribute properties to ‘the nature of things’ and that nature has no energy or force proper to itself Leibniz’s published reply is directed not only at Sturm but at the occasionalists and others who in effect deny the reality of the physical world. It contains a careful exposition of his reasons for a pluralistic, energistic system, and one pre-eminent for its revelation of the motives and the nature of his argument.

The full title adds: To Serve to Confirm and Illustrate the Author’s Dynamics.’