Construction of an alternative world picture in the seventeenth century
There is no doubt that"force"has replaced the old metaphysical concepts such as"soul"and"cause"and has become a key concept of the modern doctrine of motion.However,modern mechanics treats"force"as the mutual"action"of bodies due to collisions,which in fact avoids the question of the cause of motion and limits itself to mathematically describing and predicting the process.In this regard,Leibniz also accepted this"force"in the physical sense,but focused more on the metaphysical foundation of dynamics,which is the doctrine of substance that he constructed.Thus,Leibniz defined"force"by virtue of the"representation"of the perception of substance.In this way,Leibniz gave a new metaphysical meaning to the concept of"force"and was able to reunite it with the"phenomenal world"and the"ontological world"that had been severed by mechanism.It can be said that Leibniz's"force"has an ontological status and is therefore a hidden path to his metaphysical system.