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Roger Ariew (University of South Florida)
Abstract
I discuss some of
Leibniz’s pronouncements about fringe phenomena – various monsters;
talking dogs; genies and prophets; unicorns, glossopetrae, and other
games of nature – in order to understand better Leibniz’s views on
science and the role these curiosities play in his plans for scientific
academies and societies. However, given that Leibniz’s sincerity has
been called into question in twentieth-century secondary literature, I
begin with a few historiographical remarks so as to situate these
pronouncements within the Leibnizian corpus. What emerges is an image of
Leibniz as a sober, cautious interpreter, a skeptic one might say, but
one who is prepared to concede the possibility of many strange
phenomena. Leibniz expects these fringe phenomena to take their place
among the natural curiosities catalogued as part of a hoped for
empirical database intended as means toward the perfection of the
sciences.
Bio
Roger Ariew
is Professor and Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of
South Florida. He is the author of Descartes and the Last Scholastics
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999) and co-author of Historical
Dictionary of Descartes and Cartesian Philosophy (Lanham:
Scarecrow Press, 2003); he has recently published editions and
translations of Descartes, Philosophical Essays and Correspondence
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), Leibniz and Clarke, Correspondence
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond
(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003), and Pascal,
Pensées
(Hackett, 2005). His present research concerns Cartesian philosophy in
the second half of the seventeenth century. |
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