Leibniz on Artificial and Natural Machines: Or What It Means to Remain a Machine to the Least of Its Parts

Ohad Nachtomy notes that Leibniz’s distinction between an artificial and a natural machine coincides with his distinction between living and non-living things. Nachtomy argues that this distinction has considerable consequences for Leibniz’s metaphysics. Leibniz insists that natural machines have something substantial – soul or form – that makes them one and the same thing in the least of their parts. This characterization constitutes the main difference between two different types of machine. Furthermore, this characterization applies both to the internal structure of a natural machine (all its parts are machines) and to its development (it remains the same machine through its various states). After a brief presentation of the context, Nachtomy considers the suggestion that the distinction depends on the difference between finite and infinite number of organs or parts. He rejects this suggestion, arguing that the distinction turns on the infinite structure of a natural machine