Leibniz

force as the essence of substance

Walter Kinkel

pp. 70-102

in: J. C. Boudri, What was mechanical about mechanics, Berlin, Springer, 2002

Abstract

Everyone who addresses the controversy surrounding the concept of living force discusses Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, or rather, his legacy. In fact we owe both the definition of the term and the beginning of the controversy to Leibniz.² One might consider a less emphatic view of his importance, if one took only the superficial and one-sided transmission of Leibniz's philosophy in the eighteenth century into account. Many of the physicists from that period, even those who were sympathetic to his ideas, had a caricatured picture of Leibniz's system.