Dynamism (metaphysics)

Dynamism is a general name for a group of philosophical views concerning the nature of matter. However different they may be in other respects, all these views agree in making matter consist essentially of simple and indivisible units, substances, or forces. Dynamism is sometimes used to denote systems that admit not only matter and extension, but also determinations, tendencies, and forces intrinsic and essential to matter. More properly, however, it means exclusive systems that do away with the dualism of matter and force by reducing the former to the latter. This is evident in the classical formulation of Leibniz.

Dynamism is the metaphysics of Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) that reconciles hylomorphic substance theory with mechanistic atomism by way of a pre-established harmony, and which was later developed by Christian Wolff (1679–1754) as a metaphysical cosmology. The major thesis for Leibniz follows as a consequences of his monad, that: “the nature of every substance carries a general expression of the whole universe. [The monad provides] the concept of an individual substance that contains...all its phenomena, such that nothing can happen to substance that is not generated from its own ground...but in conformity to what happens to another”... Whereby Leibniz "counters the tendency inherent in Cartesian and Spinozistic rationalism toward an “isolationist” interpretation of the ontological independence of substance... Leibniz’s account of substantial force aims to furnish the complete metaphysical groundwork for a science of dynamics".

In the opening paragraph of Specimen dynamicum (1692), Leibniz begins by clarifying his intention to supersede the Cartesian account of corporeal substance by asserting the priority of force over extension... This allows him to affirm that the Aristotelian principle of form is needed for the philosophical account of nature. He does this in view of four main facets of his doctrine of force: (1) the characterization of force (vis naturae) as that which is constitutive of substance itself; (2) the concern to sharply distinguish this concept of force from the Scholastic notion of potentia; (3) the correlative interpretation of force in terms of conatus or nisus, i.e., as something between mere potency and completed act; and (4) the affirmation of the fundamental correctness of Aristotle’s own concept of form as entelechy, and Leibniz’s corresponding attempt to make this concept fully intelligible.

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