Leibniz against Hobbes and Nominalism

Very worthwhile reading here. Some quotes from Leibniz follow:

"Hobbes seems to me to be a super nominalist, for not content like the nominalists, to reduce universals to names, he says that the truth of things itself consists in names and what is more, that it
depends on the human will, because truth allegedly depends on the definitions on terms, and definitions depend on the human will. This is the opinion of a man recognized as among the most profound of our century, and as I said, nothing can be more nominalistic than it. Yet it cannot stand. In arithmetic, and in other disciplines as well, truths remain the same even if notations are changed, and it does not matter whether a decimal or a duodecimal number system is used."

" One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him."

For Leibniz truth was the doing of the good not some mere nominalist definition of terms. The British East Indies Company needed to navigate in order to loot and plunder. Therefore, for them, the naming of the positions of the points on the globe were highly relevant to get to their next victim. For Leibniz, knowledge of how to perform beneficial work as he demonstrated in his law of force: akin to today's mission to achieve the next higher plateau of energy density throughput of nuclear fusion. For Leibniz, in his day, it was the unleashing of a steam engine for the purpose of transportation in collaboration with Denis Papin. This is the alternative to the rank absurdity and quite frankly evil use of nominalism by the super nominalist Hobbesians of today: the geopolitical looting and reducing the population potential of the planet by enforcing backwardness and hindering progress with their anti scientific quackery. 

Economics: Magic or Science

There is a widely held and prevalent belief that money, whether it be paper or electronic, in itself has value. This magical belief is proven to the holder of such due to the empirical proof that a quantum of money can be exchanged for "x." Where x may any good or service available to be sold on the "marketplace." We hear many voices today during the current pandemic promoting a universal guaranteed income. Whether a true believer in money as value be conservative or liberal only changes the complexion of whose interests are considered paramount. The rugged self made individual heroically navigating the free market or the downtrodden and exploited "people."

The flip side of the coin to these worldviews, however can be just as wrong. The belief not in money per se, but in some source of static physical commodities. The populist will often maintain that gold is real money because it is a physical good. Again one can substitute any physical good, whether relatively perishable or not, in this particular equation.

What is missing here is that in this algebraic mentality that there is economic "stuff" as a given. Instead of locating the process of physical production itself as the primary "stuff" of an economy. Now this correct and scientific standpoint is found throughout history in either explicit terms or in practice. The outstanding modern references appear most distinctly in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey and Lyndon LaRouche.

The axiomatic presumptions of all but a very few in this regard are indeed akin to the blind leading the blind. And the current course of Wall Street bailouts of untold trillions, or rather, quadrillions in putative monetary values if not reversed will soon prove that such presumptions have been grossly in error all along...

The Revolution of Biophysical Energy Throughput

Several years ago in this space I had occasion to highlight the role of the marvelous machinery of the ATPase protein as the basis for both aerobic and anaerobic metabolism. The revolutionary succession in the history of the biosphere to ever more efficient capture and utilization of energy is a quality of negative entropy.

This centers upon higher life forms' symbiotic adoption of the mitochondrion as the source for this function. Consider what sort of power inheres in the subsumption of this relatively more simple organelle to perform work for whole new classes of living entities. It is very much analogous to a breakthrough invention that humanity makes when it undergoes a revolution in the type of energy throughput characterizing its production. (Such as for instance the passage from burning wood to burning coal.)

The larger question here is how the motive force that carries on such problem solving exists in the ongoing development of universal lawfulness. This is in stark contrast to the childish assumption that the universe is "running down" like some enormous wind up clock. Thus it was in Raphael's brilliant cartoon of Aristotle and Plato. And as it was in Leibniz refutation of the outlook of rank empiricism of Newton and company.