Monads and Points, Contiguity and Transcreation: On the Development of Leibniz’s Metaphysics of the Continuum
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In this essay I explore Leibniz’s changing views on the relation of substance to the continuum, with special attention to his calling the fundamental units of reality “metaphysical points”. I trace the development of his thought on this question, and on his notions of “physical” and “mathematical” points, from the early 1670s through to the end. I note certain enigmas on the way; namely, his notions of “transcreation” and “indistant” points, his peculiar characterization of contiguity, and the apparent violation of the Law of Continuity in texts of 1676 and 1705. I then argue that considerable light is thrown on these enigmas, and on both his earlier and later views, by manuscripts dating from the 1690s and later that have only recently been published.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.042 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".