Controversies on Nature as Universal Legality (1680–1710)

Abstract

The article Controversies on as Legality (1680-1710) is a first complement to the article Les lois de la nature : le probleme terminologique, for in it I examine the texts of which what I called the physico-mathematical and the metaphysical usages of the word meet. These texts can be divided into two constellations. The first corresponds to the polemic between Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas Malebranche, in which intervened Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, Pierre Bayle, Jacques-Benigne Bossuet and Francois de Salignac de la Motte-Fenelon (1685-1715). The second constellation is made up of the exchanges between Leibniz, Bayle, Jean Christophe Sturm and Gunther Christoph Schelhammer (1695-1707). If the notion of of is omnipresent in these texts, it is because it allows us to question the relations between three terms -- the things of our world, a defined in terms of universal legality, and God, creator, lawgiver and guarantor of a particular providence. I deal successively with three general questions, the second and third are themselves divided into two sub-questions. The first question is that of the modality of the laws of nature: are they necessary, arbitrary or contingent? The second question is that of the universality of the laws of nature: is the Malebranchist principle of the simplicity of the ways 1) metaphysically satisfying? 2) reconcilable with the notion of particular Providence? The third question is that of the efficacy of the laws of Nature: 1) what is the relation, a parte Dei, between law, will and power? 2) what must be expected from creatures so that they can be able to respect the laws of Nature? The existence of different responses to these questions at the end of the 17th century demonstrates that the generalization of the expression law of Nature in the sciences was not accompanied by a consensus on what characterized a of Nature. One can on the contrary make the hypothesis that one of the reasons for the historic success of this expression comes from its latitude -- from its capacity to cover varying ontological commitments. These philosophical questions are crucial. Moreover, this paper shows that the generalisation of the expression law of Nature in the sciences has not been followed by a consensus on what characterized a of Nature. On the contrary, it is suggested that one of the reason of the historical success of this expression is its capacity to mask different metaphysical and scientific commitments.