On internal relations in Leibniz, British neo-realism and Whitehead (Q2910355)

The author (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon) has published an outstanding study on Leibniz's philosophy of nature [Sur le second labyrinthe de Leibniz. Mécanisme et continuité au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Éditions L'Harmattan (2003)] and now specializes in Whiteheadian process ontology and philosophy of nature. His study argues that the late Whitehead's understanding of relations constitutes a significant improvement of the dialogue that his former pupil \textit{B. Russell} [A critical exposition of the philosophy of Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1900)] had attempted between \textit{G. W. Leibniz} [Die philosophischen Schriften (1875)], \textit{G. E. Moore} [``External and internal relations'', Proc. Aristot. Soc. 20, 40--63 (1919--20) (1919; JFM 47.0870.10)] and \textit{F. H. Bradley} [Appearance and reality. London: S. Sonnenschein; New York: Macmillan (1893)].NEWLINENEWLINEIt is well known that both Leibniz and Whitehead hold that ``connectedness is of the essence of all things of all types'' [\textit{A. N. Whitehead}, Modes of thought. New York: Macmillan (1938)] -- but this does not imply that both hold the same thesis with regard to internal relations. Informed by the sharp discussions of fellow scientists on the philosophical relevance of special relativity, Whitehead sees the ontological necessity to understand the togetherness of internal and external relations. To begin with, spatio-temporal relations cannot be seen as purely external anymore. On the other hand, events are also sharply distinguished and involve external relations.NEWLINENEWLINEEven though Whitehead has claimed that his ``knowledge of Leibniz's investigation was entirely based on L. Couturat's book'', from the perspective of the development of Whitehead's philosophy, Russell's 1900 study is obviously instrumental. How far can one follow Russell's Leibnizian reductionism when reading Leibniz himself and when assessing the conditions of possibility of scientific knowledge? Can we, in other words, definitively dispose of internal relations? What does the Leibnizian ``reduction'' attempts? Besides, Russell condemned Leibniz's reductionism. The rewriting of all polyadic sentences under the form of monadic sentences or the acknowledgement that some predicates are relational? Russell claims that, in so far as Leibniz was a first-rate mathematician, he was aware of the relevance of relational propositions.NEWLINENEWLINEWhitehead claims that epistemological and logical problems alike necessitate an incursion in the field of ontology to find a solution that is both coherent and applicable. The first move is to put relations at the root of ontology. One should not understand the world from the perspective of substances endowed with qualities, but from the perspective of processes momentarily uniting the past world. The second move is to exploit the complementarity between internal and external relations. Here the concept of vector is instrumental of Whitehead's late ontology: the togetherness of past and contemporary occasions of experience is vector-like: if past occasions are, by definition, unaffected by the prehensive relationship with contemporary occasions, concrescing actualities are properly made of these prehensions. From the object perspective, the relationship is external; from the subject perspective, it is internal, constitutive.