DINAMISMO. – From δύναμις (force, energy), d. is the name given to every philosophical system which, denying the dualistic antithesis between matter and force, reduces material reality to a complex of unextended entities, essentially active, conceived either as substantial realities or as simple points of force, elements of energy. Historically, d. stands in opposition to mechanism, according to which the material world is a pure aggregate of extended atoms.
Leaving aside the hints that may be found in Pythagorean and Stoic doctrines, the principal representative of d. in modern philosophy is Leibniz. Leibnizian d. is substantialistic: the world would be constituted by an infinite quantity of force-substances, simple units, “metaphysical points” (Syst. nouv., 11), monads (from the Greek μονάς, unity). Bodies are aggregates of monads; their extension is phenomenal, so that the monads composing them are not truly distant from one another. In the monads the nature of the entire cosmos is repeated, although in a different manner and degree. The monads admit no extrinsic relations of action and reaction or mutual influence; they are autonomous, closed systems, “impenetrable” (Monadol., 7); but by reason of the radical spirituality immanent in them, they are all endowed, each in its own way, with a force of appetition and a power of representing, more or less consciously, the entire universe (Monadol., 15, 19). It is through this power of representation that the nature of the whole is found in every unit of which the world is constituted. The degrees of difference in the clarity and distinctness of the monads’ representations are innumerable: from the lower monads, which stand almost at the base of the universe and are endowed with an obscure and unconscious representation, from which matter results, one gradually ascends to the supreme monad, God, pure spirituality which represents the universe perfectly and is therefore infinitely active. Pre-established harmony, that is, the intrinsic conformity of each monad, dependent upon the supreme monad, explains the appearance of their coordination and mutual influence. The principles of Leibnizian d. were accepted by C. Wolff and H. Lotze.
The pre-critical Kant accepts a realistic d.: bodies are constituted by monads, which are simple but fill real space with a sphere of activity, “sphæa actionis, qua externas utrinque sibi praesentes arce ab ulteriori ad se invicem appropinquatione” (Monadologia physica, prop. VI). After the Critique of Pure Reason, having posited the unknowability of the thing in itself, Kant explains the phenomenal appearance of corporeal substance in time and space, without monads, as the result of two mutually balancing forces: attraction and repulsion (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft).
The d. of R. Boscovich is realistic: bodies are composed of simple and unextended elements, locally individuated and separated in space; attractive and repulsive forces, mutually coordinated according to special relations, explain all the specific activities of nature.
P. Carbonelle and D. Palmieri essentially followed Boscovich’s d.
The latest and current form of d., which arose in modern physics as a reaction to classical mechanism, is energetics, defended by W. Ostwald, E. Mach and numerous students of physics. In its absolute form, energetics suppresses matter as a positive reality beyond the energies and forces manifested in the world. Indeed, Ostwald asserts that what are called the essential attributes of matter—extension, weight, and mass—are nothing but factors of energy (L'énergie, Paris 1910, p. 163), and that physics finds nothing else in matter but forces and relations of forces; it is therefore at least superfluous to posit matter as substance beyond the coordinated system of energies. Energetics has found support in current electronic theories of matter. These theories, however, as hypotheses of purely physical interpretation, in no way authorize the extreme philosophical claims sometimes reached by energetics, to the point of its becoming a universal metaphysical phenomenalism.
It is evident that d., as a philosophical system for interpreting matter (the reference here is not to d. as a scientific theory: V. MATERA), in its various historical formulations, conflicts with the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of the hylomorphic composition of bodies (v. ILEMORFISMO). But, as such, d. is merely a metaphysical hypothesis not demonstrated by theoretical principles, nor required by the facts. The denial of the objectivity of extension and space, which d. entails, represents its most serious negative aspect, in antithesis to the requirements of realism. Moreover, the essential presupposition from which d. proceeds—that is, the insolubility of the aporias inherent in the notion of the real continuum—is inconsistent: V. CONTINUO.