Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics, part 2 (1727?)

I noticed that in my investigation of the theoretical part of Thümmig's work I left out a crucial element, namely, the very structure of the science in question. A quick schematic is here:

Few words of explanation. Logic forms its own module in Wolffian philosophy. On the one hand, logic precedes all other sciences, because it introduces the very method used in all sciences. On the other hand, logic is clearly based on psychological considerations: to know how human cognition should work, we must know something about human cognitive powers. Because psychology is partly an empirical science, Wolffian logic, as described by Thümmig, must also have an empirical element.

The second module in the picture consists of metaphysics. Here the foundation of the whole lies in ontology, of which it is difficult to say whether it is empiricist of rational – remember the controversy about the principle of sufficient reason. On ontology are based both cosmology and psychology, first of which deals with the sum of all complex objects and second of which deals with one type of simple object or soul. Both cosmology and psychology also have empirical foundations. In addition to the ontological theory of complex objects, cosmology contains also the highest generalizations from physical laws, clearly based on observations. Even more clearly, psychology contains an empirical part, which the so-called rational psychology then tries to explain. Furthermore, rational psychology is also partially based on cosmology, because psychology must explain the supposed interaction of the soul with its body, a complex object. Finally, natural theology is based on both cosmology and psychology – for instance, the existence of God is deduced cosmologically from the existence of the world and the soul.

The final module of theoretical philosophy is then structured similarly as psychology. First, there is the so-called experimental philosophy, which contains results of the physical observations and experiments. The physics proper offers then a rational explanation for the content of the experimental philosophy , just as rational psychology was supposed to explanation of the results of empirical philosophy. Physics is also grounded on cosmology, which defines the most general laws governing the physical things.

If we finally move to Thümmig's vision of the practical philosophy of Wolffian school, we may firstly note how the practical philosophy is dependent on the theoretical philosophy – logic is used to show how human being should use their intellectual capacities, ontology to define the concept of goodness, psychology to show what humans are capable of and theology to determine how humans should take God into account.

In Wolff's writings practical philosophy was detailed in two writings, the one dealing with ethics and the other with civil philosophy, Thümmig's scheme makes it much clearer that the two disciplines are actually just two parts of one discipline. Indeed, the practical philosophy forms a more definite unity with Thümmig than theoretical philosophy:

The practical philosophy has then a general part, on which both of its major divisions are based. The aim of this general part is to establish natural law as the guiding principle of all good actions – all actions must aim towards perfection. The natural law is then divided into two different sublaws, depending on whether the actions involve only a single human being or whether they involve also interpersonal relations. In the former case, the natural law determines the obligation for an individual to perfect one's intellect, volition, body and external state, while in the second case natural law commands members of a community to make other members as happy as possible and the community in general as prosperous and tranquil as possible. The former aspect of natural law is then the foundation of moral philosophy or ethics, which is then nothing but a system of rules for making oneself perfect. The latter aspect, on the other hand, is the foundation of civil philosophy or politics, which is divided into two parts. The first part or economics deals with the prosperity of simple communities or households, while the second or politics proper, which is also based on economics, deals with the prosperity of communities consisting of households, that is, republics.

Thümmig has thus made two additions to the Wolffian practical philosophy: firstly, he has introduced the idea of a general practical philosophy, and secondly, he has divided the ethics and the politics into two parts, first of which investigates the primary goal of these disciplines and the second of which determined the practical measures for obtaining those goals. When it comes to details, Thümmig fails to make any substantial additions to what Wolff himself had said in his works on ethics and politics. This leads us naturally to the question of the role Thümmig played in the development of German philosophy. I shall endeavor to make similar concluding remarks on every philosopher, once I get to the last text I read from them.

The texts of Thümmig considered thus far have had little of lasting interest. In addition to Institutions, he has edited one collection of Wolffian articles and authored a book on scientific curiosities and an article defending Wolff's German metaphysics. Even the Institutions, which has been clearly the main publication of Thümmig, has been mostly a mere summarized translation of Wolff's works. Of course, Institutions still was important for the Wolffian school, because it presented the doctrine of the school for the very first time in the international language of the time.

Furthermore, it is clear that Wolff and at least other Wolffians took Thümmig seriously and referred to his writings various times. Indeed, it is just to be expected that a promising young philosopher follows for a time the writings of his mentor closely, before breaking into some truly new territory. Thümmig never really had the chance to break away from the shadow of Wolff, because he died rather young in 1728.

Still, in light of Thümmig's writings it is difficult to say whether he could have really changed the tone of Wolffian philosophy. He does introduce novelties, but these novelties are not so much reformations of Wolff's doctrines, but merely additions concerning issues Wolff had not discussed – think, for instance, of Thümmig's fascination with animal psychology. In contrast with later Wolffians, like Baumgarten, Thümmig is more like a person who applies a theory to new fields of investigation, while the later Wolffians sometimes even disputed the theory and the axioms on which it was based – not to mention Kant, who replaced even the methods and aims of philosophy.

So much for Thümmig, next time we shall find out the purpose of the world.

Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of the Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics - Do animals have souls?

Thümmig's psychology or theory of soul remains familiarly Wolffian in its main characteristics. Human soul certainly exists, Thümmig says, because we are conscious of many things and being conscious presupposes something that is conscious. Furthermore, this conscious being or soul cannot be material, because material or in general complex objects could not form a continuous unity out of its experiences. Thus, souls must be simple entities defined by their unique force or striving towards perfection.

Then again, Thümmig does not wish to dminish the role of body. On the contrary, he supports Leibnizian idea of a harmony between soul and body – changes in the soul are reflected in body and vice versa, because God has set the two to work in harmony, although neither has any true effect on the other. Thümmig's consideration of the doctrine bears an obvious resemblance to Bilfinger's discussion. As both works appeared in the same year, the reason for the similarity is probably to be found in discussions between the Wolffians. Particularly noteworthy is that both locate the bodily element corresponding to soul in brain.

Thümmig notes now that human brain is similar to brains of many animals. As the human brains are in a sense the physical manifestation of human soul, Thümmig suggests that animal brain is also a manifestation of a soul. In effect, Thümmig is advocating the idea that animals are also souled and therefore aware of their environment. This is important as the first opinion on the question of animal psychology in the Wolffian school.

Animals then have soul, but what sort of capacities are their soul is supposed to have? Animals do have sense organs, just like men – eyes, ears and noses. Thus, it is reasonable to suppose that they are capable of having perceptual experiences – they can, for instance, have an experience of redness, when their eyes come in contact with red light.

The question of conceptual capacities of animals is more difficult. Thümmig states that concepts as such cannot be directly manifested in the brain. He apparently thinks that even perceptions occur in brain as some sort of physical images – picture of a rose is somehow imprinted on the mind. Now, instead of concepts, words referring to concepts might well be imprinted in this manner, which would explain what corresponds to thinking in human brains.

Thümmig takes it granted that animals do not usually have any language skills – even parrots do not really talk. Thus, no words as such are imprinted in the animal brains and therefore they cannot at least have abstract thoughts without any clear perceptual content. Thümmig is thus saying that animals do have sensations, but not concepts. As we have seen, in Wolffian philosophy the difference between sensations and concepts is one of degree: sensations are at best clear, while concepts might be more or less distinct cognitions. In other words, animals can distinguish e.g. apples from pears, but they cannot define what is it in apples that differentiates them from pears.

In Wolffian philosophy, reasoning was seen as an essentially conceptual process. Thus, Thümmig couldn't admit that animals had any capacity for reasoning. This appears strange, because animals appear to make inferences. For instance, if a dog smells a piece of food coming from under two boxes and it cannot find any food from one box, it appears to know that the smell originates from the other box – in this case the dog has apparently deduced from statements of the form ”p or q” and ”not p” the third statement ”q”. Thümmig solves the dilemma by introducing the idea of a reasonlike behaviour – a non-concpetual capacity analogous to reason is operating in the dog's mind. In other words, dog has instincts that simulate the conscious use of reason.

So much for animal psychology. Next time I'll be moving to the second part of the book.

Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of the Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics - Fully determinate individuals

The difference of individuals and universal properties has been recognized at least since the time of Aristotle. Indeed, it is obvious that the universal genus of horse is not an individual horse, although on some reading Plato had treated the genus just as one individual among others. Despite the familiarity of the distinction, it is quite hard to say what exactly differentiates universals from individuals.

Now, Thümmig suggests the rather curious definition that individuals are fully determinate in every way, while universals are still further determinable. The idea behind the strange definition is actually rather simple. Take some general class of things, such as vertebrates. Now, if we know that an animal is a vertebrate, we know something of it – at least that it has a vertebra. Still, many other characteristics of the said animal are completely undetermined by its being a vertebrate, for instance, whether it flies or not. Universal vertebrate is thus determined through this collection of properties shared by all vertebrates. This collection does still not determine any concrete individual, because a particular vertebrate has still some characteristics not included in the collection.

Similarly, all concrete individuals must be completely determined in respect of all possible characteristics (presumably there's an infinity of such possible characteristics). In other words, we cannot have an individual thing that would neither have a certain characteristic nor not have it: the individual must be determinately one or the other. Furthermore, nothing but a completed determination of possible characteristics could individuate a particular thing. One might object that it could still be possible that an individual is identifiable through some incomplete list of characteristics – for instance, George Washington can be plucked out from the rest of the humanity by him being the first president of United States, even if we didn't knew what he was called. But the objection forgets that in Wolffian philosophy we are allowed to look at other possible worlds. Thus, there could be another possible world where the first president of United States was a man called Thomas Jefferson, and the given description would not distinguish the two possible first presidents. Note that while an individual is determinate in all aspects, we might not be able to determine all its aspects.

Some universals and no individuals are then clearly indeterminate in some respect, but Thümmig's definition suggests also that all completely determinate things are individuals, but never universals. This is a far more uncertain proposition. Suppose for instance that we would know a particular rock and all its characteristics completely. Now, if we could then copy the rock and its exact characteristics, we would have two different individuals with the exactly same characteristics. In fact, the list of these characteristics would be completely determined - this was the presupposition - but it would also define a universal class containing several individuals (the two rocks).

Thümmig's definition thus clearly presupposes the idea that no two individuals could have a matching set of characteristics. This principle of the identity of indiscernibles originates actually from Leibniz, who according to a story once challenged courtiers to look for two exactly similar leaves just to prove the principle. Indeed, the principle might well be empirically sound, but as the thought experiment shows, it shouldn't be really accepted as an incontestable axiom of pure reason – and certainly it should not be hidden within a definition. Still, Thümmig's mistake is small when compared to what Baumgarten later did with the same notions – more on this later.

Next time we shall look on animal psychology.

Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Institutions of the Wolffian philosophy provided for the use of academics (1723)

In the development of a theory there becomes a time, when the ambiguities of academic research become distilled in the succinct form of a text book. In the development of Wolffian philosophy this distillation occurred with Thümmig's Institutiones philosophiae Wolfianae in usus academicos adornatae. The book appeared in two parts, firs of which dealt with the theoretical part of Wolff's philosophy – it covers issues dealt in Wolff's logical, metaphysical and physical works.

Summarising an intricate philosophical work is undoubtedly an achievement in itself, but one might wonder how original it can be. Then again, Thümmig's work was not completely without its novelties. While Wolff himself had written his main works thus far in German, Thümmig wrote in Latin, making Wolffian philosophy so available for an international audience. Indeed, many of the Latin terms used for concepts of Wolffian philosophy – e.g. ontologia – are fixed for the first time in Thümmig's work.

An interesting example of a terminological novelty is the notion of infinite judgements. In Wolff's logic judgements are divided into affirmative and negative judgements (respectively, ”A is B” and ”A isn't B”). Now, Thümmig mentions also a third possibility, where the form of the judgement is affirmative, but the predicate is negative (i.e. ”A is not-B”). The notion of infinite judgement was to be important later on, because it allowed Kant to classify judgements in triplets according to their quality (more of this when we reach Critique of pure reason.)

Now, it is undoubtedly questionable whether these terminological novelties were truly Thümmig's own inventions: the notion of ontology had appeared even before Wolffians used it and I suspect that same is true with the idea of an infinite judgement. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether Thümmig was really the first Wolffian to use these terms. A year later Wolff noted in a preface to a work on teleology that Thümmig's works were essentially faithful representations of Wolff's own doctrine. This makes one suspect that Wolff himself had already used the terminology in his lectures and private correspondences and Thümmig had merely wrote down what Wolff had said.

Whomever the real innovator is, Thümmig's book does contain in addition to terminological novelties also some substantial additions to and reworkings of Wolff's original writings. I shall discuss few of them in later blog texts, but for now I shall concentrate on the question of what was the ideal of science in Wolffian school.

Ever since Leibniz the field of truths had been divided into truths based on the laws of logic and truths based on empirical facts. Following this division, Thümmig speaks of a priori and a posteriori cognitions. The terminology is interesting. At least since Kant, philosophers have been accustomed to speak of a posterior cognition, based on experience, and a priori cognition, not based on experience. Now, this hasn't been the case always. Originally, a priori referred to reasoning that derived effects from their causes, while a posteriori reasoning referred to the opposite method of deriving causes from effects. I am sure that someone has already investigated the topic, but it would be interesting to know when exactly the two terms changed their meaning – certainly it happened then before Kant.

For Thümmig, a posteriori cognition was based in experience, while a priori cognition was based something called pure reasoning. Experience was the epitome of intuitive cognition that required a direct intuition of things. Judgements based immediately on intuitions concerned always individual things, and experience was a sort of generalization from intuitive judgements. The transition was possible, because at least the predicates of intuitive judgments were general and therefore even they had something to do with generalities. Thus, by knowing properties shared by many individuals we could discover empirical laws connecting certain general properties.

Pure reasoning, on the other hand, was the high point of symbolic cognition, which used words or other symbols to stand for things themselves. Reasoning in general had to do with making discursive judgements, that is, judgements deduced from other judgements by means of syllogisms. Reasoning was pure, when among the starting points of deduction there was no intuitive judgement, but everything was based on mere definitions and self-evident axioms.

As it was common at the time, Thümmig characterized mathematics as the primary example of a priori cognition – both Hume and Leibniz would have agreed that mathematics was based on self-evident axioms. We have seen that Rüdiger had criticized such an idea, because at least geometry appeared to have an intuitive aspect. Kant in a sense struck a compromise between the two positions, because on his opinion mathematics is both a priori and intuitive – here Kant had obviously changed the meaning of a priori and intuitive.

A primary example of a posteriori science is for Thümmig physics. Although Wolff and Wolffians were mistakenly thought to disparage empirical matters, we can immediately see that over half of Thümmig's book is dedicated to physical and hence empirical questions.

A more intriguing problem is where in the classification metaphysics should be situated. We have seen that Wolff at least apparently tried to axiomatize at least a major portion of metaphysics: everything begins from the self-evident principle of non-contradiction, while even the crucial principle of sufficient reason is supposedly deduced from it.

Thümmig, on the other hand, does not even mention this deduction. Instead, he emphasizes the justification that Wolff had barely mentioned – the principle of sufficient reason is required so that we can distinguish between a dream and reality. Thümmig thus apparently bases the main principle of metaphysics on an empirical proposition.

Does that make Thümmig's version of Wolffian metaphysics then a posteriori? Not necessarily. The possibility to distinguish dreams and reality is in a sense a necessary presupposition of even having experiences. We might hence interpret the justification as transcendental – metaphysics would then be synthetic a priori in the Kantian sense.

Next time I'll be looking at Thümmig's metaphysics in a more detail.

Daniel Strähler: Test of the reasonable thoughts of Mr. Court-Councillor Wolff concerning God, world and soul of men, also all things in general, in which the deductions of Mr. Author are examined, their incorrectness shown, their errors brought to daylight, and both the metaphysical and the connected moral truths set in better light (1722) and Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: An impartial sentiment of a lover of worldy wisdom concerning D. Strähler's Test of the reasonable thoughts of Mr. Court-Councillor Wolff concerning God, world and soul of men (1723)

Philosophical disputes tend to be dirty. You are allowed to misunderstand your opponent and in ambiguous cases always choose the most ridiculous way to read the text. In fact, you can just make a simple straw man as your punching bag and pretend it is your opponent. Because your opponent is allowed to act in an identical manner, philosophical disputes rarely have any winners – or more precisely, they have two winners, at least if we listen to the disputants.

These unwritten rules of philosophical dispute are well exemplified by Daniel Strähler's criticism of Wolff's German metaphysics, Prüfung der vernünftigen Gedancken des Herrn Hoff-Rath Wolffes von Gott, der Welt, und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt, des Herrn Autoris Schlüsse examiniret, die Unrichtigkeiten derselben gezeiget, dessen Irrthümer an den Tag geleget und die Metaphysische ingleichen die damit verknüpfte moralischen Wahrheiten in grösseres Licht gesezet werden and Ludwig Thümmig's criticism of Strähler's criticism, Eines Liebhabers der Weltweissheit unpartheyisches Sentiment von M. Daniel Strählers Prüfung der Gedancken des Herrn Hoff-Rath Wolffens von Gott, der welt und der Seeles des Menschen. As you can see, the gentlemen hardly required any abstracts, when even their titles were a mouthful.

Work of Thümmig we have already met, but Strähler is a new acquaintance. Actually this will probably be the last time when we'll hear of him, as he was more of a mathematician than a philosopher, although he did comment on the fashionable topic of Wolffian philosophy also after this text. In fact, the text in hand deals only with the ontological parts of German metaphysics, while the further parts of Wolff's book were covered in a later publication.

As if sometimes the case in philosophy, none of the disputants disagree about the correct results – Wolff, Strähler and Thümmig all appear to hold e.g. that God exists and has created the souls and the material world, with which the soul is in some sort of contact. Instead, it is the justification of these positions on which the disputes arise.

Many issues that Strähler points out in his criticism concern the definitions used by Wolff. For instance, Strähler notices that Wolff's definition of space as the order of simultaneously existing things is far from satisfactory. For instance, Strähler notes, if I have a shelf full of disordered books, the books will still take space, and in fact, even more space than if they were well ordered.

Strähler's criticism hinges, of course, on the question of what do we mean by order, as Thümmig also notes – it is not the common sense meaning used in sentences like ”he kept the house in good order” that is meant, but a more abstract idea whereby e.g. numbers are ordered according to their size. Investigators of physics, such as Leibniz and Huygens, had defined order in a precise mathematical manner, which enabled them to discuss space in terms of relations between material objects. Thümmig even suggests that Strähler is not much of a mathematician, when he cannot follow such methodology.

If Strähler's criticism is often just nitpicking, Thümmig's countercriticism is usually no better. Thus, Thümmig recurrently notes that Strähler's own preferred definitions are nothing but definitions, because they merely repeat what should be defined in synonymous terms – for instance, changeable is something that can changed but this does not really define anything.

Sometimes such nitpicking does point out crucial errors. For instance, when Strähler criticises Wolff for justifying the principle of sufficient reason by deriving an erroneous proposition from its negation, because one could as well derive true proposions from the same negation, Thümmig is quite right to point out that Strähler has confused a valid and an invalid argument form – that is, while from ”not-p → q” and ”not-q” it is valid to derive ”p”, we cannot use ”not-p → r” and ”r” to derive ”not-p”.

On the other hand, when Strähler notes that Wolff fails to distinguish between real and ideal division of things, he appears to note the very fault I have already commented in the Wolffian theory of substances – i.e. that things might well be potentially divisible into an infinite number of potential parts and still actually undivided and simple, just like in Aristotelian physics. Thümmig fails to comprehend Strähler's point here, because he confuses Strähler's distinction with the related distinction of merely thought and concrete division. Thus, Thümmig identifies Strähler's ideal division with the case of an actually indivisible thing that could be divided in thought – a classic physical atom that still takes up space.

At other times, the disputes seem like mere quibbles of words, for instance, when Strähler accuses Wolff of not distinguishing between ideal or mathematical and real or physical space and Thümmig retorts by noting that Wolff is doing ontology and thus naturally is interested only of the real space. A similar dispute over words occurs when Strähler remarks how the Wolffian definition of substance covers only finite substances and thus assumes either the non-existence or finity of God, and Thümmig answers by insisting that this is only a question of presentation – at this point of Wolff's discourse we are aware only of finite substances, so we might as well leave them out of the definition of substance – and furthermore, emphasises the complete disparity between finite and infinite things – Thümmig even thinks that Strähler himself finitises God by placing him in the same class with finite entities.

In such questions it seems obvious that both Strähler and Thümmig have begun from a presupposition that the target of their criticism is wrong – and then they have just tried to find any evidence for this presupposition. Strähler has assumed that Wolff must be an atheist or at least a bungler, while Thümmig has been convinced of Wolff's ingenuity and thus of Strähler's idiocy, and these preconceptions have coloured their reading.

From a more neutral viewpoint one clearly sees that such preconceptions are often obstacles for true dialogue. Strähler could have admitted that at least Wolff's intensions were not atheistic, and if Wolff's arguments appear not to support such conclusions, then perhaps Strähler had misunderstood Wolff's definitions. Similarly, Thümmig could have noted that Strähler had been right at least in noting a possible way to misunderstand Wolff – that is, in noting insufficiencies and ambiguities in Wolff's theory.

Next time we'll continue with philosophical disputes, and this time we are particularly interested of the question of pre-established harmony.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts on the effects of nature (1723) and Ludwig Philipp Thümmig: Attempt to most thoroughly clarify the most remarkable incidents in nature, whereby one will be lead to the deepest understanding of them (1723)

Baroque Cycle of Neal Stephenson contains a lovely scene portraying a typical meeting of the Royal Society. A number of curios and weird phenomena are presented to the audience without any regulated order – one members tells a story of fying fishes living in some oceans, another describes a neat trick with a vacuum pump, while third has just developed differential calculus.

Although such a motley of topics seems chaotic, it reveals what has truly captivated the hearts of men for science – it is the extraordinary that interests us. Consideration of curiosities has for long been a part of science – there is even a pseudo-Aristotelian book Problems, which is nothing more than a collection of what the author considered weird and proposed explanations for these dilemmas. Nowadays weird has been used for good measure in popularisation of science – for instance, in the show Mythbusters dealing with such age-old problems as whether cars truly explode when driven off cliffs.

Versuch einer gründlichen Erläuterung der merckwürdigsten Begebenheiten in der Natur, wodurch man zur innersten Erkenntnis derselben geführet wird is a similar collection of curios, written by Ludvig Philip Thümmig, whom we have already met as an editor of a book of Wolffian essays. Here we finally see some of Thümmig's own work, as he ponders such scientific problems as why a boy sees everything double, why animals with two bodies combined are sometimes born, why some trees grow from their leaves and why does gravity work in different grades across the globe – Thümmig's solution to this question convinced at least his mentor Wolff, who mentions it in his own book on natural science, Vernünfftige Gedancken von den Würckungen der Natur, which is also the second book I am considering this time.

While Thümmig's book is a haphazard motley, Wolff does not fail to give us a work with systematically arranged topics. Here Wolff is once again just following a far older tradition. The nameless collector of the works of Aristotle arranged his books on nature in the following order: first came books on the general principles of natural world, then followed books on the cosmos in general and the heavens in particular, after which came books on atmospheric phenomena and earthly objects, while the story finished with books on living nature. This formal scheme was so well thought out that even Hegel essentially followed it in his own philosophy of nature. Thus, it is no wonder that Wolff himself applied this often used model of natural science.

In his natural science or physics Wolff is quite reliant on empirical information and rarely wonders from presenting the conclusions of the science of his time. One exception where Wolff's physics comes in contact with his metaphysics is the description of animal sensation, where Wolff reminds us of the Leibnizian idea of pre-established harmony: while human bodies go through certain changes in their sensory organs, their souls have corresponding sensations, although bodies and souls do not interact with one another.

A more detailed crossing of physics and metaphysics occurs in the very beginning of the work, in the description of the physical objects as complex substances. An important conclusion of this definition is according to Wolff that all the properties of the complex should be derived from the properties of its constituents and the spatiotemporal structure according to which these constituents have been combined - I have called this the lego-block view of the world. Although seemingly innocent, endorsing this view leads Wolff to some substantial consequences.

Observations suggest that there are some peculiar properties that are difficult to explain through mere spatiotemporal structure of things – for instance, the characteristic of objects gravitating toward the nearest big collection of matter or the property of warmth. Now, if these characteristics are not explainable through the spatiotemporal form of the bodies, it must be explained through the constituents of them – that is, there must be types of matter that cause gravitation or warmth.

The assumption of special matters was not a peculiarity of Wolff, but a common occurence at the time, and even Hegel commented on this habit of scientists. One just saw a peculiar phenomenon – certain kinds of metal attract or repel one another – which was explained by assuming a new type of matter, in this case magnetic matter. While the notion of caloric or heat matter and similar properties as matters sound rather quaint, we should not assume that such reification of properties is non-existent nowadays. One just has to open a book on particle physics to learn about photons or particles of electro-magnetism, glueons or the particles holding the nucleus of atoms together and perhaps even gravitons causing gravitation.

Physicists may well have good reasons for such reification in these cases, but taken to its extremes it will lead to the philosophical theory of tropes – all general properties are actually individual things, like this redness, this sweetness, this roundness. The individual things are then just mere conglomerate of these tropes – for instance, the three tropes of particular sweetness, redness and roundness combine to form a particular strawberry.

The setback of trope theories is that it is difficult to see how all properties could be reified. For instance, do not the tropes themselves have properties, such as being a trope? Is this then supposed to be yet another trope? Furthermore, a trope theorist has difficulties explaining how to account of our thinking about universals. Redness of this particular strawberry should in trope theory be completely different from redness of this particular flag – how can then we describe both of them as red? If we suppose that the two tropes are connected by being similar in some manner, we face yet another dilemma – isn't the similarity yet another property?

So much for the physics of Wolffians. Next time I shall discuss the first of many atheism controversies to come.

Ludwig Philipp Th'ummig: Varied essays and rare arguments, collected in one volume (1727)

When we speak of a Wolffian school, it is not just Christian Wolff himself we are thinking of, but a whole parade of more minor figures who in some sense continued the work of their masters. The 1720s appear to be the earliest point at which we can speak of Wolffians as a recognizable philosophical movement. I have already discussed a dissertation of one Wolffian, Bilfinger, that appeared 1722, and the topic of the current post, Meletemata varii et rarioris argumenti in unum volumen collecta, contains dissertations and essays published during 1720s.

Although the name does not reveal it, the continuous references to the works of the illustrious Wolff suggest that the writers are hard core Wolffians. Most of the contributors are quite minor names in the school and apparently did not even publish anything after their dissertation, so I'll skip introducing them. The only exception is the editor of the collection, Ludvig Philip Thümmig, a faithful follower of Wolff.

What I am mostly interested in this collection is the range of different topics discussed, which reflects well the multifarious nature of Wolff's philosophy. A considerable number of the essays concern natural or mathematical sciences, which was the original research field of Wolff and which he still continued to study even when he had already started his famous series on reasonable thoughts on nearly everything – even at this time Wolff published a series called Allerhand nützliche Versuche (All sorts of useful studies), which dealt with such important problems as how we can weigh objects or use a thermometer. The pupils of Wolff appear to have been interested at least of biology (there's an essay on how to study leaves), but especially of astronomy and ”things happening up in the sky”, like propagation of light.

It is not just physics that interested pupils of Wolff, but there are also more philosophical essays that concern all the four Rational thoughts we have encountered thus far. There's a logical discourse on the necessary and contingent concepts, which also has ontological consequences – the writer argues how Wolffian distinction between absolute and conditional necessity discredits Spinoza's idea that the world is necessary, because the existence of the world is not impossible, but depends on the free choice of God. This writing is the first sign thus far of the looming threat of Spinozan pantheism – we have more to say on the matter in a couple of decades.

Furthermore, the collection contains a metaphysical study of the immortality of soul – or more likely, it is an advertisement of the Wolffian proof, which is based on the simplicity of the soul and the supposed impossibility of a material basis of thinking. The only novelty in the essay appears to be the author's idea that the life of soul consists of a clarification of its ideas: the newborn child has only confused ideas, but the soul of a dead person sees everything distinctly. Despite its unoriginality, the essay shows well the appreciation of Wolff's rational psychology in contemporary Germany. Indeed, I think that Kant's theory of paralogisms is primarily targeted towards Wolffian ideas.

Morality is also topic of an essay, which analyses the notion of sincerity. A considerable portion of the essay is dedicated to defending Wolff's ideas of China as an atheist and still a moral nation – an issue that will surface often in the writings of 1720s.

Wolffian politics is not forgotten, although this essasy covers also architectural ideas. The author follows Wolff's suggestion that the needs of a comunnity determine what is good art. The outcome of the argument is that the Wolffian writings on architecture fulfill this criterion of good art perfectly.

It is this final tendency of subjugating art to the moral upbringing of people that will be the topic of my next post, where I'll discuss my first piece of fiction.