 The clash of fundamental philosophical intuitions that surfaces in the exchange between Leibniz and Sturm is particularly interesting with regard to the complex evolution of early modern philosophy across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Sangiacomo 2020a and 2020b). In a sense, Leibniz voices the main objection that can be raised against Sturm; namely, without some active principle “mechanical forms” are just idle constructions that cannot perform any genuine explanatory role.  However, Sturm’s consistent way of maintaining that explanation does not require any reference to intrinsic causal powers points, in fact, to an alternative account of causation and causal explanations altogether, which was emerging at the time (Carraud 2002; Sangiacomo 2019, 2020c).