%0 Journal Article
%T Organic Monadology in Maupertuis
%A Maur¨ªcio de Carvalho Ramos
%J Advances in Historical Studies
%P 17-28
%@ 2327-0446
%D 2015
%I Scientific Research Publishing
%R 10.4236/ahs.2015.41003
%X The present paper aims to define the seminal parts in the generation theory in Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis¡¯s System of nature as Leibnizian physical monads of a special type, organic monads, whose main characteristics are: 1) uniting, within the same explanatory system, epigenesis and preformation, following from an interpretation where initial conditions for epigenesis are a homogenous, non-organic seminal matter; 2) having psychic properties which give them a preformational character, allowing seminal parts to display a combination of material and representational morphologies, elaborated from a distinction between the substantial and relational character of chemical affinities proposed by François-Geoffroy; 3) bringing, through the previous two characteristics, the System of nature to intelligibly express preexistence, a concept present in Maupertuis¡¯ conjectures on the origins of the first organisms, where to a strongly naturalistic scenario, a supernatural cause is added¡ªone consistent, within limits, with the natural indestructibility of the physical monad within a panspermic reading of the original Leibnizian monadology. Together, these characteristics allow us to define Maupertuis¡¯s generation theory as an organic monadology, capable of expressing itself in other components of the modern sciences of life and the organic, revealing a historical continuity for the heuristics of Leibniz¡¯s natural philosophy.
%K Organic Monad
%K Maupertuis
%K Monadology
%K Epigenesis
%K Preformation
%K Chemical Affinity
%U http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=55156