The Compossible, the Contingent and the Hypothetically Necessary:

Leibniz on the Spectrum of Necessity for Possible Worlds

The meaning of the concepts ‘necessity’ and ‘possibility’ have become vitiated and

equivocal as the dual ideologies of relativism and empirical skepticism have undermined their

metaphysical moorings.

Empirical skepticism from its foundations with Heraclitus and Gorgias up to its heyday

with Hume have cast a ‘duality’ spell on our vision of the world. They preach an ‘evening’

knowledge that idealizes the past and the dead as the model for the living. Knowledge of the

world is like, and therefore reducible to the stable and inert facts that have already passed.

Anything that is not of this nature is ethereal or merely of the mind.

Empirical skeptics are ‘twoness’ thinkers where necessity can either be from reason or

from the world. Under this spell, necessity is either empty (from reason) or a mythical narrative

we tell ourselves, but not fully applicable to the world. The only type of necessity that is

relevant to reality is one based on habit and empirical probabilities.

Relativism on the other hand, attempts to transfix our vision toward the ‘morning’

knowledge of an ever unformed future, where all things are equally possible. Berkeley’s

‘threeness’ perspective rejects any robust distinctiveness between truth and fiction and instead

holds that the justified beliefs of any community or individual are equally ‘true’.

Within this Protagorean vision, necessity is in the eye of the beholder, with rhetoric the

only tool of negotiating whether one view is more useful than another.

We need to return to a time before the great transfixing webs of Hume and Berkeley to

appreciate the possibility of a more balanced idea of truth. It is in the subtle and complex
metaphysical nuances of Leibniz that we may begin to purge our souls of these dual

contaminants of modernity.

I will make the case that Leibniz had a metaphysics of possibility and necessity that

attempted to clarify and develop the usages of the two concepts. I will further show that this

system attempted to bridge the reciprocal weaknesses of both relativism and skepticism in order

to nurture an organically realist view of the nature of truth and its corresponding reality.

Working out the details of his full system is complicated by two factors. He never lays

out the full details of this system in any extended work. And he often overstates the conditions

of one or another of these categories in response to contentious debates he is involved with at the

time. I will try to show that we can develop a unified reading of his position by comparing a

number of his works on freedom, determinism and causality into a seamless and consistent view

on the nature of possibility and necessity.

One concrete way in which to envision Leibniz’ full spectrum for the grounds of

necessity and possibility is to project his kinds of judgments onto a model of a Divided Line:

2
 A Divided Line can help us to recognize how two distinct kinds of relationships may be

brought under a consistent relational rubric. On one side we have the ontological relationships

between the levels of being. There is a spectrum of necessity and possibility that holds with

respect to their position on this continuum. There is also the lateral relationships between the

ontic levels and their epistemic counterparts. In a realist line the conditions of knowability flow

from the conditions of being and the epistemic gradations are analogical to the ontic.

A Divided Line can for Leibniz, as it did for Plato, mediate the passage between

skepticism and relativism. As a continuum with objective ‘cuts’, a Divided Line represents a

kind of ‘fourness’ thinking that is able to reconcile the apparently conflicting logics of relativism

and skepticism, through a dimensional embellishment of our ontological model.

There are some interesting differences and similarities we can immediately mine when

compared with Plato’s version. For one, there are unworkable inconsistencies in Plato’s model.

The knowability of ontological kinds is laid out on a continuum with the faculties of knowing.

Yet Plato has clearly specified that within man, it is usually the lower faculties that predominate,

and that we have little tenuous direct access to the divine nous. The two sides of the line should

rightly be in inverse proportion, with knowledge itself some monstrous hybrid ratio.

In the Leibniz Line there is no demand for such a tension. It is the judgment of truth that

he consistently lines up with the types of possible being. Since judgments just are the identity

between knowledge and being no inconsistency could arise. The grounds of knowing and those

of being just are the same:

The nature of truth consists in the connection of the predicate with the subject, or the
predicate is in the subject either in a way that is manifest, as in identities, or hidden.. In identities
this connection and the inclusion of the predicate in the subject are explicit; in all other

3
prepositions they re implied and must be revealed through the analysis of the notions, which
constitutes a demonstration a priori.1

But there is also great similarity. The truths of logic and mathematics are together as two

distinct categories on one side of a major division, with those of the phenomenal world on the

other. The truths of logic and mathematics are truths of reasoning. They are necessary truths and

their opposites are contradictions. Truths of the phenomenal realm are truths of fact; they are

contingent, and their opposites are possible:

There are in turn two genera of derivative truths: for some can be reduced to primary
truths; others can be reduced in an infinite progression. The former are necessary, the
latter are contingent.2

We should be careful not to interpret this seemingly complete disjunction as any kind of

absolute dualism in either ontology or judgment. Leibniz’ Line, like Plato’s is in fact a line, a

continuum. The truths of fact can also be construed as identities. The continuum of relationships

between the subject and predicate cannot, however, be made explicit in a finite number of steps.

The physical facts of which these truths refer are also can be classified ‘contingent’ only

in a qualified sense. They have a hypothetical necessity for which they are grounded by a

sufficient reason for their being as they are:

There is thus the tendency in his theory to assimilate as far as possible the veritates facti
to truths of reasoning - though this is not stated with complete accuracy, since truths of
fact are supposed to retain their own quality and nonetheless have the character of
Identities.3

Equally as significant as the disjunction between the truths of reason and fact, is that

distinction drawn within the truths of reason. Truths of definition are logically transparent and

immediately identical. They are original truths.

1
Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, tr. of Leibniz quote, (Indiana,
1984), p. 39.
2
Leibniz, Gottfreid Wilhelm, Philosophical Papers and Letters (Dordrecht, 1969), p. 264.
3
Heidegger, p. 43.

4
 Those of mathematics are preponderantly derived. They are implicit or virtual identities

that can be fully analyzed into their explicit identities in a finite number of steps, and are

deducible from them.

There are important implications for the development of late modern philosophy in

general, and Kant in particular, in how we understand Leibniz’ meaning of this process of

analysis.

Wolff’s interpretation of Leibniz, and that of most contemporary logical positivists, is

that mathematical truths just are reducible to logical truths with no residue. This simplistic

reading of Leibniz would seem to ignore many of his most penetrating works on the nature of

mathematical thinking and knowledge. In particular his work on in situ geometry and the

attempt to frame a geometrical semantics in his universal characteristic, indicate that Leibniz

believed that mathematical knowledge was far richer and more determinate than that available

merely through what could be derived from the law of identity itself (Appendix).

There are two ways to examine this conception. One is to show that there are substantial

differences between these two kinds of truth.

Logical propositions are inherently tautologies, in and of themselves completely empty of

semantic content. In order for logic to have any utility beyond playing with definitional

identities, semantic content must be imported from the more determinate segments of our divided

line. It is the precise nature of the limits and possibilities that this spectrum of ontological kinds

introduces which makes Leibniz’ continuum of grounds so provocative. The Principle of

Contradiction holds throughout all the subsequent realms of necessity and possibility, but it has

an extremely thin realm of its own. Analysis is just the working out of the specific spatial or

phenomenal conditions within which the Principle of Contradiction may gain footing.

5
 But for Leibniz analysis went beyond what Hume or Kant meant by the taking apart of a

concept. Leibniz explored a new kind of analysis, an analysis sutus:

The true analysis of situation is therefore still to be supplied. This can be shown
from the fact that all analysts, whether they use algebra in the new manner or deal with
the given and the unknown after the ancient pattern, have to assume many things from
elementary geometry which are not derived from the consideration of magnitude but from
that of figure, and which have not yet been explained in any determinate way. Euclid
himself was forced to assume certain obscure axioms, without proof, in order to proceed
with the rest. And the demonstration of theorems and the solution of problems in his
Elements sometimes seem to be achieved through hard labor rather than method and skill,
even though he also seems sometimes to conceal the ingenuity of his method. 4

Leibniz held that this science was known to the ancients and involved the specific

interpretation of loci. While algebraic analysis could only deal with quantity or magnitude, this

other analysis could capture the inherent nature of quality itself. Key to this distinction was

identifying the essential quality of similarity of figures: “Thus a true geometric analysis ought

not only consider equalities and proportions which are truly reducible to equalities but also

similarities and, arising from the combination of equality and similarity, congruences.” 5

Similarity for Leibniz was the measure of quality for Leibniz and its significance reached

beyond geometry:

Besides quantity, figure in general includes also quality or form. And as those
figures are equal whose magnitude is the same, so those are similar whose form is the
same. The theory of similarities or of forms lies beyond mathematics and must be sought
in metaphysics. 6

Where algebra and logic were forced to reduce all relationships to mere identity,

geometry could work with the more complex and subtle nature of forms that were both alike but

different. Leibniz developed an invariant definition for the concept of similarity which he

believed would finally free the property of quality or form from its subservience to quantity: “In

4
Gottfried Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters (Netherlands, 1989), ed. L. Loemker, p.
254.
5
p. 255.
6
p. 254.

6
undertaking an explanation of quality or form, I have learned that the matter reduces to this:

things are similar which cannot be distinguished when observed in isolation from each other.” 7

He believed, like Lull and Bruno before him, that he was on the threshold of discovering the

Adamic language of the imagination, which could finally open the soul to the free gaze of the

intellect: “All other matters which the power of imagination cannot penetrate will also follow

from it. Therefore this calculus of situation which I propose will contain a supplement to sensory

imagination and perfect it, as it were.” 8

Defining the Truths of Reason as those that can be analyzed in a finite number of

propositions may be conceptually clear, there remain some problems with it. There are some

mathematical relationships that represent potentially infinite processes. The relationship

between incommensurables or the squaring of a circle are both relationships that are only

approximated within a finite set of calculations. Although there are mathematical operations that

can fully comprehend infinite processes within a finite procedure, like differentiation and

integration, there remain kinds of operative definitions that defy such handling – the calculation

of pi.

But Leibniz also realizes that there is in mathematics the possibility of “capturing” such

potentially infinite processes. This is the very nature of the calculus he helped to develop and it

is clear that we can have necessary knowledge of such “contained” infinite processes in his

example of an asymptote:

Ordinarily, for example, we find that two lines which approach each other
continuously finally meet, and many people would be quick to swear that this could never
happen otherwise. Yet geometry does furnish exceptional lines, called asymptotes for
this reason, that when extended to infinity they approach each other continuously and yet
never meet. 9

7
p. 255.
8
p. 257.
9
Leibniz, p.551.

7
 Mathematics in general, and geometry in particular, has a unique capacity to represent the

unlimited. And it is through the mining of the geometrical facility within the soul that we can

begin to grasp the deeper mysteries of the world and mind:

At last a certain new and unexpected light shined forth from where I least expected it,
namely, from the mathematical considerations on the nature of infinity. For there are two
labyrinths of the human mind, one concerning the composition of the continuum, and the
other concerning the nature of freedom, and they arise from the same source, infinity. 10

Once I have determined a mathematical truth, its statement and derivation can be fully

translated into a logical proof. It is less clear whether that truth could have been reasonably

derived using only logical rules. And if the truth were derivable with logic, the question remains

whether logic would have the capacity to finally identify that truth as a significant mathematical

truth. In this sense the comparison is similar to the problem of computer searches and their

relationship to the Meno paradox: How can I find something if I don’t already know what it is I

am looking for. There is a rich mathematical content, with its own complex order of necessity

and possibility that is ‘lost’ in a reduction to merely logical principles.

In this sense, geometrical thinking is like the strategic logic (vs. the syntactic rules of

play) for winning an infinite game (or the Slave Boy Problem). No logic can develop an

algorithm for final victory. But once an ‘optimum’ strategy is discovered through geometrical

insight, it can subsequently be translated into a logical proof.

If my interpretation is substantially correct, we can discover two relevant insights into its

significance for Kant. First Kant recognized this differential hypotheticality for mathematical

judgment in his interpreting mathematical judging as a priori synthetic. It is a priori in that it can

be fully translatable to logical identities in a finite set of propositions. It is synthetic in the sense

10
G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays (1989, Indianapolis), p. 95.

8
that it takes a synthetical construction to bridge the intuitional gap and discover the explicit

analytical steps.

We must be very careful here in parsing our terms. It is exactly in the period between

Leibniz and Kant that the meaning of the terms analysis and synthesis get completely inverted by

the empiricists. For Leibniz, analysis is that art of the ancient geometers that took apart

problems before inverting them into synthetic proofs. So when he refers to analysis in

mathematics he is referring to the same taking apart of figures and relationships that Kant would

later refer to as synthetic, due to its origins in the intuition. For both thinkers this was an ‘art’

deeply buried in the soul.

But Kant goes perhaps too far in establishing the uniqueness of mathematical concept

formation. He wants to absolutely distinguish it from that of concepts of the understanding. In

this effort he comes up with the enchanting, but misleading maxim: “Philosophical cognition is

rational cognition from concepts. Mathematical cognition is rational cognition from the

construction of concepts.” This neat divide produces two one sided caricatures of conceptual
11

formation and leaves both frameworks open to skeptical attack:

Hence philosophical cognition contemplates the particular only in the universal.

Mathematical cognition, on the other hand, contemplates the universal in the particular,
and indeed even in the individual, yet does so nonetheless a priori and by means of
reason.12

First we must recognize how important it is for Kant to establish the principle of

mathematical cognition on an absolutely firm and autonomous grounding. Mathematical

knowledge holds the key to defeating the Humean skeptical fork, i.e. that synthetic a priori

judgments were possible. The vicious dichotomy of nominalism maintains that there are two

absolutely incommensurable types of knowledge, the a priori analytic and a posteriori synthetic,

11
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason (Indianapolis, 1996), p. 668.
12
p.669.

9
each deriving from two radically distinct sources, reason and experience. This divide makes the

product of reason, logic, empty and relegates knowledge of nature as merely particular and

therefore blind. Kant's insight was to recognize that mathematical knowledge seems to bridge

this dichotomy in a way that defeats the skeptical claim. Mathematical thinking is both a priori

in the universality and necessity of its results and synthetic in the expansively ampliative promise

of its inquiry.

To understand why he got mathematical thinking so wrong we will have to understand

how an inherent disposition interacted with this driving motivation.

Kant is not a dialectical thinker. His priority as a critical philosopher is clarity over

coherence, and he most often dismisses dialectical oppositions as ‘antinomies’ and

‘paralogisms’. Even though he needs mathematics to hold as an absolute ‘middle’ to bridge the

Humean fork, he is little able to illustrate the essentially luminal nature of mathematical thinking.

Kant creates an absolute duality between the mathematical and the philosophical uses of

reason. One ‘quantitative’ while the other is ‘qualitative’; One is constitutive of its object, the

other merely regulative; One is rational cognition from concepts while the other is rational

cognition from the construction of concepts: “Mathematical definitions can never err. For since

the concept is first given through the definition, it contains exactly just what the definition wants

us to think through the concept.” 13

This clean dichotomy between the mathematical and dynamical uses of reason does allow

Kant to set an autonomous ground for mathematics against the reductive thesis of the empiricists.

It also allows him to build a critical bulwark against the claims of dogmatism that haunts the

historical rationalists like Leibniz and Plato who apparently just assume that mathematical ideas

apply to the world.

13
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1987, Indianapolis), p. 682.

10
 But there is a serious cost to this clarity. Concepts that I construct can have constitutive

clarity, but how do I objectively compare and contrast them to the empirical concepts I have

formed through abstraction? How do I know that the circle I have constructed in my intuition

has at all the same sense as the circle I ‘see’ in the plate? 14

It is at this point where we transition from the truths of Reason to those of Fact where the

consequences of Kant’s first mathematical error gets compounded. The rigid distinction between

the construction of concepts in math and the use of concepts in the understanding, leads Kant to

develop an equally rigid distinctive ground for their determination of phenomena. The physics

of Newton, based on the constructive patterns of geometry just are constitutive of the phenomena

of nature, while the dynamic purposiveness of biology can only be ‘regulative’ of our

understanding of nature: “It has just been shown that since this principle of purposiveness is only

a subjective principle of the division and specification of nature, it does not determine anything

with regard to the forms of the products of nature.” 15

These two sets of disjunctions are merely aspects of the same error. This insight can be

illustrated with a look at the inherent ambiguity within the emerging controversies surrounding

the biological definition of species.

14
This issue has a very old pedigree. The ancient academy was divided over the issue of whether universals were
abstracted or projected. The mathematical followers of Plato leaned toward the projection thesis, while those of the
linguistic oriented Aristotle leaned towards an abstraction thesis.
A similar debate would rage after Kant within the philosophy of mathematics. Dedekind and Cassirer
followed Kant in holding that mathematics was a projective process, typified by the ordinal generation of the
number line. Russell and Cantor, on the other hand, seeing mathematical concepts as the cardinal abstractions from
set theory.
But if mathematical thinking can truly bridge the conceptual divide of concepts and experience it must be
inherently liminal. Numbers must somehow be both ordinal and cardinal – constructed and discovered.
There is an implicit proof of the invariance of mathematical liminality in the Theaetetus. The only way to uniquely
understand the number six is to see it as a scaled relationship between its cardinal and ordinal properties: six is the
uniquely smallest perfect number, where its multiplicative or formal factors add up to its material sum. This hybrid
formulation of the nature of number would match well Leibniz’ idea of an invariant, universal characteristic.
15
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment (Cambridge, 2000), p. 22.

11
 The question as to whether species are constructed or discovered is made more

contentious by the emergence of a number of opposed views on how to frame what a species is.

Taxonomists and cladists argue for two radically distinct ways by which to group organisms.

Functional or dynamical causal frameworks will determine a substantially different kind of

biological classification than one presuming a morphological or genetic basis for the generation

of species. Are morphological similarities to be explained homologously or analogously? The

choice one makes is presumed by and further determines ones causal narrative. Even in

mathematics, the same kind of equivocation is inherent in the analysis of complex polyhedrals,

that can be defined in substantially distinct ways, assuming opposed principles of construction

and morphology (Lakatos: Proofs and Refutations).

With Leibniz, the form of mathematical thinking cannot be so easily simplified. In

different writings Leibniz appears as both a logicist and a functionalist with regard to the

formation of mathematical concepts. We have shown earlier that he develops the idea that there

is a unique and implicit qualitative knowledge within geometry that can never be merely

captured by quantity or reduced to logic. And mathematics has a double directionality. There is

an ‘upward’ and a ‘downward’ path in the differential and integral calculus. Some critics have

judged this dualist-like approach within Leibniz as a type of weakness or equivocation, but as we

move towards an examination of the ‘lower’ half of our Divided Line, we find that this pluralism

is the source of much of the enduring richness in his metaphysics.

Leibniz in his work with the calculus would be aware that it is the dynamical and

functional aspects of geometrical representations that empower mathematical models to

completely capture and determine the hypothetical necessity of the phenomenal world. The

dynamical relationships of the regulative laws of nature are every bit as determinate of the

12
phenomenal world as the mathematical relationships of the mechanical causes. In fact for

Leibniz they are sufficiently more so.

For Leibniz this mutuality already infects his model of the grounding of phenomenal

truth. We can understand causes of the physical from both a mechanical and a purposive

perspective, and each is equally as ‘mathematical’.

In the fall of 1697, Leibniz wrote, "On the Radical Origination of

Things", in which he attempted to illustrate the complex orders of necessity

that ruled the compossible world of nature. His major focus in this essay was

to “explain how temporal, contingent, or physical truths arise out of truths

that are eternal and essential, or if you like, metaphysical…” 16

Leibniz proceeds by attempting to demonstrate how those forms which

are most likely to emerge into reality are those which have some sort of

priority of metaphysical perfection in possibility. So he states that in the

undertaking of the drawing of an unspecified triangle, that figure which will

be most easily constructed with a compass will be also the ‘best’ one - the

equilateral triangle, "From this it is obvious that of the infinite combinations

of possibilities and possible series, the one that exists is the one through

which the most essence or possibility is brought into existence." 17

He goes on

to complete this formulation with his statement that the actual world is the

best of all possibilities in that it is "the maximum effect at the minimum

cost." 18

16
Gottfried Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters (Netherlands, 1989), ed. L. Loemker, p.
487.
17
G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, (Indianapolis, 1989), p. 150.
18
Ibid.

13
 This definition of optimality or elegance by the specification of the

identity of sides is completely consonant with contemporary information

theory. The accepted standard of measuring the complexity of a

phenomenon is by the amount of information it takes to specify it. The

recursiveness of the equilateral triangle makes it the ultimately ‘simplest’

triangle from this aspect of informational describability.

Paul Schrecker has noted that this effort by Leibniz is in fact an

explanation of how order arises out of chaos in Plato’s Timean receptical . 19

Plato implies that his elemental triangles are the result of the interplay

between likelihood (symmetry) and necessity (dynamic stability). There is a

thermodynamic rational for why the triangular, mechanical vectors rule the

micro-dynamics of atomism.

This reading of the consonance between the Leibnizean and Platonic

cosmos’ perhaps does not go far enough. According to Leibniz the order that

rules the diverse levels of the phenomenal hierarchy is determined not by

God’s reason, or the laws of Newtonian mechanics (although it can be

translated to them), but rather the goodness of God’s will. It is not enough,

however, to merely show that the mechanical laws are an exemplification of

the most probable. For both Leibniz and Plato mechanics represents the

bare necessary conditions, that set of constraints within which possibility can

be framed. It cannot be Socrates’ “ligaments and bones” that finally keeps

him in his imprisonment.

19
Paul Schrecker, "Leibniz and the Timaeus," Review of Metaphysics, 4: 495–505.

14
 In the Timaeus it is reason, in the form of the harmonic movements of

the heavens that finally persuades necessity to do its bidding. This

formulation of persuasion is also central to Leibniz’ concept of God’s will

determining towards what is best. Heidegger notes that Leibniz’ framing of

the Principle of Sufficient Reason, with the phrase “rather than” is a direct

implication of ground as “pre-ference”: We can only have the ground as

preference where freedom and ground go mutually together as a “decision

about value.” 20
For both Plato and Leibniz the value that is designed into the cosmos is the

stochastic good of mathematical order. In this sense there can be no conflict between God’s will

and His knowledge, the Good is just the perfection of the whole and to know the good is to do it.

Since the time of Voltaire's Dr. Pangloss, defending Leibniz' dual doctrines of

pulchritude and plenitude- that God has chosen the most perfect world, "the simplest in

hypothesis and the richest in phenomena," - has become a double burden. First, one must show
21

that such a belief can be based on scientific principle, not simply optimism or blind faith. And

then one must further demonstrate that such a principle is not in substantial conflict with

established scientific practices.

If such a task should seem daunting, hopeful challengers can take heart in the quality of

the company. Leibniz is joined by no less that Fermat, Maupertuis, and Euler in his belief that

the universe was guided by some principle of beauty or efficiency. And all four of these great

minds thought they had found the fount of that elegance in some form of "least action" principle.

While modernity has mostly accommodated some form of such a principle, it has unilaterally

rejected the metaphysical implications drawn by these four great mathematical philosophers.

20
Heidegger, p. 116.
21
Leibnz, GW, Selectons, "Discourse on Metaphysics," ed. Philip Wiener, (New York, 1951),
p.297.

15
The enduring stature of these brilliant and sober intellects demands that we carefully re-examine

such an easy dismissal.

Leibniz based his principle of an efficiently ordered universe, like Fermat before him,

largely on evidence such as Snellius' Law for the propagation of light . The fact that light
22

seemed to seek the path of shortest time, eliminated the possibility of mechanical or efficient

explanations. Only an end driven or teleological hypothesis could explain such activity, and that

end was to an efficient order. Leibniz' own development of the methods of differential calculus

aided him in envisioning the economic elegance of such an optimization principle.

Even though Leibniz’ work predates the theoretical work on thermodynamics by more

than a generation, it is clear that his vision of nature is equally as ‘stochastic’. Compossibility is

the unitary outcome of the totality of mechanical micro-states of a system. Compossibility is

Leibniz’ anticipation of thermodynamic theory. Both the principle of least action and his work

in the Origination show a sophisticated dynamic view about how such systems are

mathematically dispositioned toward self-organization. I will therefore, try to make the case that

his vision about the way the phenomenal world is ordered to following God’s will towards what

is the most perfect, is inherently a rigorous elaboration of what will be thermodynamic theory.

The Second Law most clearly is a teleological principle. The Second Law just does

determine the final state of any closed system, regardless of any unique initial configuration of

the elements. This condition establishes that the Second Law is "end driven" or "pulled" rather

than "pushed."

The establishment of the Second Law as teleological would seem to be little consolation

to the grand optimism and romance of our Metaphysical Mathematicians. Their vision was of a

22
Ibid., p. 322.

16
universe designed by God to be the best and most beautiful, not a chaotic soup of heat death. In

this sense Maxwell's finalism seems untranslatable to Aristotle's.

What Aristotle implies by his "telos" is not disorder, but quite the opposite. Purpose is

some ordering entelechy that, except for its autonomy from initial conditions, seems the very

antithesis of the end predicted by the Second Law. Here we must account for the fact that

Aristotle affirmed that the final cause was most closely associated with the formal cause. It is

this relationship, between the formal principles of how transitions must take place, and the

teleological or final conditions, of where the transitions are headed, that must be understood if

we are to make sense of either order or disorder.

The Thermodynamic Origins of Harmony

It has been widely recognized since the time of Helmholtz that the overtone series and its

relationship to musical harmonics, through the occurrence of beats, is an objective phenomenon

of the physical world and not merely a cultural or subjective preference. The motion of a

plucked string successively breaks downs into harmonic patterns, the overtone series, expressing

the progressively increasing ratios of small integers:

Ratio Heard Ratio Harmonic Relationship Note

1:1 Fundamental C
2:1 2nd Harmonic Octave C'
3:1 2:3 3rd Harmonic Fifth G
4:1 3:4 4th Harmonic Fourth F
5:1 4:5 5th Harmonic Major Third E
6:1 5:6 6th Harmonic Minor Third Eb

This harmonic pattern holds great physical significance for a variety of diverse,

continuously dissipative sources that to some degree conform to these same orderly patterns.

From the indefatigable motion of the electron, to the massive symphonic stroll of the heavenly

bodies, the mathematics of harmonic consonances order much of the world around us. Fourier

17
found that heat dissipates from a solid object in such an harmonic pattern. What has been less

clear is why this pattern of simple whole number ratios is a physical determiner of the harmonic

order.

The overtone series of harmonics is the pattern of sinusoidal waves into which a plucked

string progressively declines as its energy dissipates. The pattern is that of simple whole number

ratios and corresponds closely to the traditional harmonic consonances: 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, 4:1,

5:1..etc:

This overtone series is the basis of all the diverse, traditional systems of scaling -

diatonic, just and equal temperament - and therefore cannot in any absolute way determine which

"musical" system is "better". Diatonic scales are determined from the priority of the higher

consonances (3:2, 4:3) and favor their purity. The equal temperament scale, reflected in the

18
twelfth overtone, opts for the convenience of equal size notes in compromising the exactitude of

the higher consonances.

All the varieties of scale "cutting" share certain absolute and objective characteristics.

The octave (2:1) and the higher harmonies, the fifth (3:2) and the fourth (4:3) appear to be

essential to both the "sweetness" and the ordering cpacity of the overtone series. The lesser

harmonies and the sizes of the whole and half notes appear to have only a "normative" or cultural

hold on diverse tastes. Once we are given the overtone series, the arithmetic pattern itself

determines all the relationships of harmony. The mystery remains: Why do continuously

dissipating systems conform to such a pattern?

The Second Law of thermodynamics states that any closed system whose initial state is

out of equilibrium, will eventually work its way to a final state of equilibrium. In a two chamber

system with a set number of particles (eight) in one half and a vacuum in the other, will

eventually settle into the equilibral state of maximum probability distribution when the chambers

are opened to each other. The final and most probable state of the system is given by the equal

distribution of particles in the two chambers. With all eight molecules in one chamber the

maximum number of unique distributions is eight. However, with four molecules in each

chamber the number of possible distribution states maximizes at 70:

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 When a continuous string, bounded at both ends, is plucked out of an initial state of rest,

it naturally seeks to return to its rest state of motionless equilibrium. In order to achieve rest

state it must return through a succession of intermediate states. It turns out that some of these

intermediary states are "attractors" which capture the transitional motion of the string in more

highly probable niches, momentarily resisting the progressive deterioration of the wave form.

Since the disturbance is to a continuous medium, the string, the number of possible

intermediary states approaches the infinite. Not all intermediary states, however, are equally

probable. Those states that attain an equal distribution of the system's parts will attract the

motion of the string as being the states of maximum possible distribution. Different from the cell

example, taken from experiments with ideal gases, the bounded string has multiple possible

configurations where the wave form may be separated into equal segments. Since equality can

only attain where there are an integer number of divisions: 2, 3, 4, etc., the successive

intermediary states of the string returning to its rest state will be through the series of integer

divisions - the harmonic series.

What seems to be occurring in the harmonic ordering of the overtone series is that some

secondary or compensating ordering mechanism is balancing the systems drive to the

"disordered" state of equilibrium. This is the case of expressing the ordered intermediary states

as "resisting" the drive towards maximal disorder by means of some form of a Least Action

Principle.

The case is in fact somewhat different. Those intermediate states that "attract" the

string's motion are themselves determined by their status as maximally probable distributions

according to the Second Law. In effect, the tendency of the moving string to conserve its motion

and transition to rest by the longest possible path (Fourier) is a conservative law of form that is

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determined by the dictates of the Second Law itself. The sequence of intermediary states of

maximal disorder together form a highly ordered progression - the overtone series.

What can be understood from the thermodynamic origins of harmonics is the underlying

ordering power of the law of disorder. Another way to interpret this thermodynamic activity is

through the lens of Aristotelian causality. The telos or equi-potential end of the thermodynamic

process is the state of maximum entropy. All thermodynamic systems move towards such ends,

conditioned solely by the thermodynamic boundary conditions [i.e.: temperature, pressure,

volume]. Such systems radically depart from the reversible conditions of material or efficient

causality and their final states are fully autonomous of any such initial constraints. They are

truly end-driven.

The final state parameters of the Second Law are that the system will eventually attain

maximal disorder regardless of initial state constraints. There are, however, equally formal state

parameters that govern the way in which such systems transition to their final states. These

formal state parameters, while driven by the boundary state constraints of the attractor, the final

state, are however, jointly determined by the initial and final state conditions. Harmonics, in

fact, is a most powerful illustration of how final state dynamic determination can in fact preserve

some "memory" of the initial state conditions. The overtone series continuously reflects its

originally struck chord through all its harmonic derivations.

Conclusion

It should perhaps not surprise us that our Divided Line turns out to be a ‘cutting of a

cannon’, an harmonic division. Our avowed purpose in transposing Leibniz’ spectrum of norms

onto a line was to make sense of the dimensions of conditionality within his complex ontology.

Harmonic theory offers us just such a spectrum of necessities.

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 Aquinas claimed that there were three kinds of necessity, absolute, relative and coercive.

Harmonic theory equally offers three levels of normativity, the absolutely objective (octave, 2:1),

the optimum (fifth/fourth, 3:2/4:3), and the fitting (individual note, variable).

Science, since the enlightenment, has pushed for the absolute disjoining of nature from

value in explaining the world. Neuro-philosophers have attempted to go even further in

eliminating the place of the non-mechanical in human affairs. An accurate study of the great

Leibniz should serve as a healthy prophylactic to these incursions.

For Leibniz there are two principles of necessity, one negative, the Principle of

Contradiction, and one positive, the Principle of Sufficient Reason. While the negative principle

is stronger, it can never be violated under any circumstances, the Principle of Sufficient Reason

is the determinant cause of all of nature and all of reason. God’s good will does not overrule his

reason, so much as it frames the continuing and progressive context within which it has authority

to legislate. The good is the final, absolute necessity within which reason manages the

possibilities of expression.

Possibility is a diminishing hypothetical within the progressive determination of Leibniz’

two necessities. But like Scotus, true contingency for Leibniz is a gift of God. But wherein lies

such a possibility within the dual reigns of reason and the good?

The good determines the providence and forces of historical development. Physics

marshals the movements of the particulate conditions. The interplay of compossible,

mathematical forces will determine the development of that world which evolves towards

perfection: It is the awakening of the sleeping god, in its progressively conscious choice of its

self determination. Plato and Leibniz have looked upon that face, and it is us.

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