[P1international]

I was just reading up on the European philosopher Leibniz and noticed a few things. He had a metaphysics that was very similar to the atomism of Ash'aris and he used it to:

1. Refute pantheism.

2. Refute dualism pretending to be occaisonalism (i.e, Descartes).

3. Affirm the real existence of the world created by a transcendent active God by His active willful choice.

If you read through his monadology, it sounds uncannily similar (if I copy and pasted some of his points you might confuse them for some work of an Islamic Ash'arite theologian). He called these things "monads". These were not jawhar and 'aradh (substances and accident) but a fundamental unit combining both (atoms of "force" you could say). This is actually like combining the metaphysics of Imam Ash'ari and Imam Maturidi (Imam Maturidi focused his metaphysics on the idea of "natures" which he defined as a class of constitutive accidents, so these correspond to our modern idea of "forces" even though he was using ancient terminology... he used this part of his metaphysics to refute dualism, which is what Imam Maturidi also did centuries before him against the Manicheans).

This of course posed a lot of problems so his metaphysics became famously convoluted and notoriously difficult to understand for later Western commentators (who could not tell the difference between any of these ideologies and pantheism). Ironically this weird misstep caused him to come up with other ideas similar to Islamic theology (the idea that everything has some kind of perception or will, but not active or free... man has free will and active perception while a rock, for example, would have a very passive form of perception and a will slaved to the Divine Order of God which he called "pre-established harmony" present in the essence of every thing (it's applying the idea of fitrah to everything)).

He was not an occaisonalist though, not directly. Indirectly he attributed causal dependence of all finite things on God. But since the only occaisonalism he encountered in Europe was either Dualism, Pantheism, or Idealism in occaisonalism's clothing, he thought it was a mistake he should avoid.

Anyway this view of the world was fundamental behind his development of calculus and the modern concept of "energy", which he called vis viva ("the living force"), and which he defined as mv^2 (this later became the definition of kinetic energy, 1/2 mv^2).

He became involved in a dispute with Isaac Newton, the Englishman who also independently developed calculus (and "discovered" gravity). Newton himself was a very strong monotheist but his metaphysics was very "deistic" (like the example of God creating a clock, winding it up, and letting it go). Leibniz isn't as famous in the English-speaking world because obviously Newton was favored. Whereas Newton's math was amazing, Leibniz' physics was amazing and foreshadowed later developments by Einstein (mass-energy equivalence, special relativity) and in the field of quantum physics, and this was all due to his view of the world. Einstein himself said he was inspired by Spinoza (pantheist but his metaphysics can be understood from any "panentheistic" perspective, whether Leibniz's or Islamic theology) and Hume (known for an occaisonalist skepticism of causality without the occaisonalism).

I'm bringing this up because sometimes Muslims wonder what would have happened had we not "given up science". Well, Leibniz is a direct ideological link between Islamic-type metaphysics and modern physics (Leibniz was inspired by Cartesian occaisonalists who, even European historians have said, pretty much regurgitated things they probably read from Imam al-Ghazali or what Ibn Rushd wrote of Imam al-Ghazali). Of course the biggest thing there was the spirit of competition in Europe between intellectuals which had disappeared from the Muslim world. It was not present in the Ottoman state, it kind of disappeared after the Abbasids although there was a brief high period for astronomy after that in Persia.

I've always wondered why Muslims didn't teach their 'aqeedah to people getting involved in the natural sciences as a matter of course, because it can serve as inspiration for further direction. Though I don't think it can help too much anymore (physics has hit some physical dead ends), except perhaps with our view of time (as it relates to the problem of gravity), it can, at least, refute all those atheist arguments from physics to attack religion and use what has been done in physics so far to inspire people, especially non-Muslims, with the power of Allah as the most perfect conception of God in theology.

I don't understand the focus on biology and medicine by some Muslim speakers. These are spiritual subjects, the foundational language of everything is math and physics. You can even address evolution through that very effectively (by challenging the meaning of "nature" and "law") which is far more difficult from a straight biological perspective. Besides the Qur'an clearly describes the creation of the universe in terms of a Big Bang-like scenario (and its destruction in a "Big Crunch"), something no one can say was borrowed from the Greeks or anyone else. Not that I'm a fan of using "scientific miracles", but in the sense that Islam is really the only religious option compatible with science (not just the methodology, but even the developments).

[P1international]

An example of his argument against "anti-realist" metaphysics (of pantheism/dualism/etc),

From Alfred Weber commenting on Leibniz in his 'History of Philosophy',

And, indeed, does not the state of extension, which constitutes the nature of body, presuppose an effort or force that extends itself, a power both of resistance and expansion? Matter is essentially resistance, and resistance means activity. Behind the (extended) state there is the act which constantly produces it, renews it (extension). A large body moves with more difficulty than a small body; this is because the larger body has greater power of resistance. What seems to be inertia, or a lack of power is in reality more intense action, a more considerable effort. Hence, the essence of corporeality is not extension, but the force of extension, or active force. Spinoza's "substance" is infinite and unique; Leibniz's "force" is neither one nor the other. If there were but one single substance in the world, this one substance would also be the only force; it alone would be able to act by itself, and everything else would be inert, powerless, passive, or rather, would not exist at all. Now, the reverse is actually true. We find that minds act by themselves, with the consciousness of their individual responsibility; we likewise find that every body resists all other bodies, and consequently constitutes a separate force. Shall we say, in favor of Spinozism, that the indwelling forces of things are so many parts of the one force? But that cannot be, since force is essentially indivisible. By denying the infinite diversity of individual forces, the abstract monism of Spinoza reverses the very nature of things, and becomes a pernicious doctrine. Where there is action there is active force; now there is action in all things; each constitutes a separate center of activity; hence there are as many simple, indivisible, and original forces as there are things. This can be seen by some modern atheists as a clever way to disavow the action of God by saying these "forces" are independent of God except according to Leibniz you still need to at least invoke God to put them in place according to an order and to give each "force" its attributes and characteristics. The Muslim would simply add that these "forces" would not be self-sustaining sources of their own change and existence.

In fact, this is the weakest link of Leibniz's metaphysics, he says nothing about how something can continue existing without God's direct constant action... I think he avoided that just because he associated it with Cartesian occaisonalism and pantheism. It is actually logically implied in his writings but he seems to feel like that by saying it outright is to go too close to Descartes or Spinoza.

The European issue there seems to be that they think saying is to imply imperfection in the creation (they have a self-centric viewpoint since they are deriving all these things from philosophy and not scripture) but in Islam it is meant to imply perfection of the Creator (we derive it straight from His message in the Qur'an).

Leibniz's idea of causality is pseudo-occaisonalist because it is so roundabout but it still states essentially divine causality (not outright, however, like we would). These "monads" cannot act as cause and effect on each other, the cause comes from the internal force which is programmed by God. So when a hot poker is inserted in water, the heat transferred to the water can be described as an "action" among multiple objects which is "conducted" by the pre-established harmony that God established in the essences of all things.

[Cyzkrahu]

what great information...subhan Allah.more on this if you have any

[Xqjfxmfk]

I am no expert in this subject, however I have heard experts say that Leibniz who might use the word God or Divinity in his works but this God is not anything like Allah swt. It is a being with no power or attributes it is just a blind energy or force. The atheists who organized the French Revolution also created their own diety and secular religion...but it was not anything like Islam.

[JohnfAclambrJA]

I was just reading up on the European philosopher Leibniz and noticed a few things. He had a metaphysics that was very similar to the atomism of Ash'aris and he used it to:

1. Refute pantheism.

2. Refute dualism pretending to be occaisonalism (i.e, Descartes).

3. Affirm the real existence of the world created by a transcendent active God by His active willful choice.

Please mention the name of the book where you have found this info.

[P1international]

I am no expert in this subject, however I have heard experts say that Leibniz who might use the word God or Divinity in his works but this God is not anything like Allah swt. It is a being with no power or attributes it is just a blind energy or force. The atheists who organized the French Revolution also created their own diety and secular religion...but it was not anything like Islam.

I heard something like that too, but I think they are going by Leibniz's work while criticizing it.

When you criticize the logic of someone's work you can use it and extrapolate it to its natural or logical conclusion, which the person in question might not have ever intended.

Leibniz, even though he reduced God to some divine "substance" like Descartes, clearly intended the following,

This simple primitive substance must contain in itself eminently the perfections contained in the derivative substances which are its effects; hence it will have perfect power, knowledge, and will, that is, it will have omnipotence, omniscience, and supreme goodness."

So his work contradicts itself but his intention was obviously to arrive at the "normal" idea of God. Another mistake he made in addition to the ones I mention above was that he separated the idea of "good" from God and said God was the supreme adherent to good, which is not acceptable in Islam. I suppose he did that to try and figure out the theodicy problem (he used the idea of "the current world is the best of all possible worlds so it is the most possibly good") which was an application of a medieval version of the anthropic principle (which goes back to Imam al-Ghazali too), but he applied it in a weird way to a different problem.

His God was not like Spinoza's which was this passive pantheist emanating force. Leibniz uses "force" to show that God is a separate force from the created things (which are their own "forces" by virtue of existence), so the latter has external reality (not pantheism).

He really disliked Spinoza's idea.

Other Europeans liked Spinoza because his theology was used with "democracy" and other secular ideas, but they disliked Leibniz because they associated his theology with "theocracy".

EDIT: This isn't some strange interpretation of Leibniz that I have made up, it is a general view among Western commentators now:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3...-428-4115.html

From that link,

As a philosopher, Spinoza was a radical simplifier: there was ultimately just one stuff of reality (perceived by humans in different ways); it proceeded by immutable laws; and the totality of it was identical with God. Leibniz worked in the opposite direction, constructing a highly complex scheme of the world in which realities were multiplied to infinity. And his aim was the precise opposite of Spinoza's: he wanted to preserve the idea of a God who transcended the world and had made an active choice when He created it. Anyway, I don't think his theology really matters or is worth analyzing in itself. Just to understand his metaphysics and how that influenced his physics, because Islamic metaphysics is similar and inspires similar thinking about the physical world (and physics).