Spatium entitativum. Leibniz’s Notes on Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld

Abstract

With striking parallels to Leibniz’s later thought, Johann Heinrich Bisterfeld (1605-1655) describes the world as united by a nexus of universal harmony – an idea ultimately motivated by epistemological premises. The young Leibniz, accordingly, is an enthusiastic reader of Bisterfeld’s texts – while at the same time critically modifying his ideas: The universal harmony that epistemology postulates is, for Leibniz, not based on physical space and the mechanical interactions taking place there, but rather on the non‑physical spatium entitativum identified with God himself. Thus nuancing the relationship between metaphysics and physics, Leibniz anticipates a key problem of his later thought.