An important feature
of world, according to Wolff, is that it is a composite, that is, it
consists of parts. Some of these parts are familiar to us from
experience. Wolff points out that none of these experienced parts are
indivisible, but consist of further parts – we might call them in a
modern philosophical vocabulary middle-sized objects.
As composites, Wolff
continues, everyday worldly objects must be such that can be
completely explained through the structure and mutual relations of
these parts – in effect, they are machines similar to the world
itself. Because of the dependence, one need just change parts of a
middle-sized object in order to change the object itself. In fact,
this is the only way to truly have some effect on these objects.
All the changes on
the bodies require then moving some stuff from them or moving some
stuff in them – that is, movement or motion and direct physical
contact is an essential element in changes of the worldly objects. It
is then no wonder that a huge part of Wolff's cosmology is dedicated
to determining the so-called laws of motion – mostly descriptions of
what happens when several bodies collide with one another, depending
on their size, mass, velocity and cohesion. Although determining what
the correct laws of motion were was an ongoing philosophical and
scientific theme at least from the time of Descartes' Principia
philosophiae, I won't go
into any further details here, besides one exception.
The
one interesting element in the laws of motion is the notion that a
resting body will not by itself start to move and that a moving body
will not by itself change its velocity or direction. This property,
known nowadays as inertia, is called by Wolff a passive force of a
body, and according to him, should be taken as defining what is
called matter, which he takes
to be the extension of passive force.
With just matter, bodies would then just have stayed
in the same place for all eternity. The movement must have then been
generated by something else, that is, by an active force, which is
then transferred from one body to another in various collisions.
Matter
and active forces are then what one requires for explaining the
constitution of our world and
they might be taken as substances in what we observe of the world.
Yet, matter and
active forces are not the whole story. As I've mentioned in a previous text,
beyond the level of material bodies exists the level of elements of
bodies, because as composite entities material bodies must
ultimately consist of some simple entities. As simple, these elements
cannot have any extension and are therefore indivisible. They are not
like atoms are thought to be, Wolff says, because atoms are supposed
to have no true distinguishing qualities, which would contradict the
ontological principle that no two entities can have exactly same
qualities.
The differentiating
principle of the elements, Wolff suggests, should be their conatus,
that is, the basic force containing in nuce all the changes that will
happen to a particular element. In effect, elements are
differentiated by their whole life history. Because an essential part
of a life history of an element consists of its interactions with
other elements and these interactions are essential part of a nexus
forming a world, an element cannot exist except in a single world,
that is, by changing world you must change also its elements and vice
versa.
The actual relation
of elements to bodies is rather confusing in Wolffian philosophy.
What is clear is that elements constitute the realm of bodies we
observe. This means that many features we appear to observe in bodies
must be deceptive. For instance, bodies appear to consist of
continuous masses of such types of stuff as water. Yet, because all
matter and even water must consist of individual, indivisible and
completely distinct elements, they must actually be discontinuous.
What is unclear is how this phenomenal realm of continuities is
supposed to arise from true realm of discontinuities. The question is
muddled even more by corpuscles, which Wolff introduces as
constituting a level between observed bodies and elements. The
behaviour of bodies Wolff explains as constituted by the corpuscles,
parts of body, which still are divisible. Yet, no explanation is
given how corpuscles are generated from the level of elements, and
number of confusing questions remain. For instance, should a
corpuscle consist of an infinity of elements?
This enigma is a
point where we must leave the Wolffian concept of microcosm. Next
time I still have something to say about the order and perfection of
the world in Wolff's cosmology.
