COSMOLOGICAL SYNTHESIS
Anna Teresa Tymieniecka
Royal Van Gorcum, Ltd., Netherlands MCMLXIV
5 March 1976
INTRO
Section 1 - Historical retrospective of Leibnizlan Research;
method
Section 2 - Method
abandoning historical molding, accepting unity of branches
method unacknowledged by L. explicitly yet will be developed
and it's beyond strictly essentialist approach. Essential facts coupled
implicit laws
accept fundamental as present in Discourse on Metaphysics
conjectural way of thinking will be followed along y+
axis. Essentialist analysis will be followed along x axis
Section 3 - Metaphysical (MP) concept individual in center
of multispherical universe
PART 1 - The Constitutive Scheme of the Universe
"Why is there Something rather than Nothing?"
=? ? is L's reduction of metaphysics but it is not "self determining,"
i.e., does not postulate single answer or system
Identified system name "rationalism." But means
to take knowledge seriously and hence hold phenomena somehow interrelated.
DFN - Telos : final aim
origin, telos, modes of operation
existence is predicated on the self-asserting mode of
being. This becomes individual substance which together with a pre-established
harmony make reality. Individual substance factor of centralization and
distribution
CHAP. 1 - Basic Constitutive Scheme
Looking for a science of sciences initially attempted
to model after algebraic characteristics but mathematical science provides
magnitude, figure, situation, and their variations but metaphysics provides
existence, duration, action & passion, force of acting, and end of
action, or the perception of the agent.
Thus metaphysics (MP) is conceived of as a science of
characters, individual substances, as the least divisible entities. The
entire scheme is hierarchially arranged with MP points the only real
unities.
But enigmatic since grand lines of the universal unity
are hidden and MP cannot show its own source.
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