Conceptual building and historical development of a general notion of morphology: from the Leibnizian origins to the physical monadology of Maupertuis

• Grant number: 11/19638-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: March 28, 2012
• End date: June 27, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Mauricio de Carvalho Ramos
• Grantee: Mauricio de Carvalho Ramos
• Host Investigator: Francois Duchesneau
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université de Montréal, Canada

Abstract

This project consists of two integrated studies around the notion of morphology in the modern period. At first, I propose the elaboration of an idea of general morphology taking as the initial basis certain components of the Leibnizian conceptions of living things and organism, especially the notions of bodily substance, expression and natural machine, and then I apply this minimum definition in the interpretation of particular historical episodes in order to transform it, determine it and enlarge it. With this strategy, I intend to develop the idea of a morphology that integrates historical and epistemological functions, able to organize, in an ongoing, significant part of the history of modern investigations of organic phenomena. The historical episodes that I chose for this study are in addition to the philosophy of Leibniz, the notion of palingenesis, as conceived by Kenelm Digby, the notion of chemical affinity of Geoffroy along with the production of metal trees in the chemistry of the eighteenth century and the construction, in that century, of a kind of physical monadology that Maupertuis uses in developing his theory of organic generation by seminal psychophysical particles. The second study that I propose consists in the interpretation of the morphology from the general notion of symbolic forms of Ernst Cassirer. The core of this interpretation involves the definition and identification of functions mythic-expressive and cognitive-scientific of thought, that I believe that acts together to develop the conceptual and historical continuum morphology that I propose. I will focus here on two points: in terms of their participation in the mythic and scientific rationality, I will compare the explanations of Leibniz and Digby for the phenomenon of resuscitation of organisms and examine, in accordance with the same parameters, the morphology as an organic and mythical space located between the geometric and the phenomenal. (AU)