Abstract

From the early 18th century on, new knowledge domains that focus on organic order develop within natural history. The problem of organic order is also one of the major themes that characterize the transition from early modern philosophy and its scholastic traditions to the Enlightenment. In this article, both transitions are part of a single historic change that is related to the notion of organismic unity. Charles Bonnet, Spinoza and Leibniz are part of this historic change.They refer to the order of natural individuals that exist as organized or organismic bodies. The notion of organismic unity becomes thus the connecting thread to reconsider the structure of the epistemic shift that Michel Foucault has described at the turn of the 19th century.