Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German
polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
active as a
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
,
philosopher,
scientist
A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences.
In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosoph ...
and
diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the
history of philosophy and the
history of mathematics
The history of mathematics deals with the origin of discoveries in mathematics and the mathematical methods and notation of the past. Before the modern age and the worldwide spread of knowledge, written examples of new mathematical developments ...
. He wrote works on
philosophy,
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
,
ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
,
politics
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...
,
law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vario ...
,
history
History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...
and
philology
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
. Leibniz also made major contributions to
physics
Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...
and
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...
, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in
probability theory
Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set ...
,
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
,
medicine
Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pr ...
,
geology
Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other Ea ...
,
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
and
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...
. In addition, he contributed to the field of
library science
Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, an ...
: while serving as overseer of the Wolfenbüttel library in Germany, he devised a cataloging system that would have served as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz's contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various
learned journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...
s, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German, but also in English, Italian and Dutch.
As a philosopher, he was one of the greatest representatives of 17th-century
rationalism
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
and
idealism
In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely connected t ...
. As a mathematician, his greatest achievement was the development of the main ideas of
differential and integral calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
,
independently of
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
's contemporaneous developments, and mathematicians have consistently favored
Leibniz's notation
In calculus, Leibniz's notation, named in honor of the 17th-century German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, uses the symbols and to represent infinitely small (or infinitesimal) increments of and , respectively, just a ...
as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus.
However, it was only in the 20th century that Leibniz's
law of continuity
The law of continuity is a heuristic principle introduced by Gottfried Leibniz based on earlier work by Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Kepler. It is the principle that "whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite". Kepler used ...
and
transcendental law of homogeneity
In mathematics, the transcendental law of homogeneity (TLH) is a heuristic principle enunciated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz most clearly in a 1710 text entitled ''Symbolismus memorabilis calculi algebraici et infinitesimalis in comparatione potent ...
found a consistent mathematical formulation by means of
non-standard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta ...
. He was also a pioneer in the field of
mechanical calculators
Mechanical may refer to:
Machine
* Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement
* Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations of ...
. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to
Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a
pinwheel calculator
A pinwheel calculator is a class of mechanical calculator described as early as 1685, and popular in the 19th and 20th century, calculating via wheels whose number of teeth were adjustable. These wheels, also called pinwheels, could be set by usin ...
in 1685 and invented the
Leibniz wheel
A Leibniz wheel or stepped drum is a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths which, when coupled to a counting wheel, can be used in the calculating engine of a class of mechanical calculators. Invented by Leibniz in 1673, it was used ...
, used in the
arithmometer
The arithmometer (french: arithmomètre) was the first digital mechanical calculator strong enough and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and could perform long ...
, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He also refined the
binary number system, which is the foundation of nearly all digital (
electronic
Electronic may refer to:
*Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor
* ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal
*Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device
*Electronic co ...
,
solid-state
Solid state, or solid matter, is one of the four fundamental states of matter.
Solid state may also refer to:
Electronics
* Solid-state electronics, circuits built of solid materials
* Solid state ionics, study of ionic conductors and their use ...
,
discrete logic
A logic gate is an idealized or physical device implementing a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate ...
)
computers, including the
Von Neumann architecture
The von Neumann architecture — also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture — is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by John von Neumann, and by others, in the '' First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC''. T ...
, which is the standard design paradigm, or "
computer architecture
In computer engineering, computer architecture is a description of the structure of a computer system made from component parts. It can sometimes be a high-level description that ignores details of the implementation. At a more detailed level, the ...
", followed from the second half of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Leibniz has been called the "founder of computer science".
In
philosophy and
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
, Leibniz is most noted for his
optimism
Optimism is an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled w ...
, i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the
best possible world that
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
could have
created, a view sometimes lampooned by other thinkers, such as
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
in his
satirical novella ''
Candide''. Leibniz, along with
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
and
Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great early modern
rationalists
In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy ...
. His philosophy also assimilates elements of the
scholastic tradition, notably the assumption that some substantive knowledge of reality can be achieved by reasoning from first principles or prior definitions. The work of Leibniz anticipated modern
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
and still influences contemporary
analytic philosophy, such as its adopted use of the term "
possible world
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their me ...
" to define
modal notions.
Biography
Early life
Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1 1646, toward the end of the
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle ...
, in
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
,
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
, to
Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his family journal:
In English:
Leibniz was baptized on 3 July of that year at
St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig; his godfather was the
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
theologian . His father died when he was six years old, and from that point on, Leibniz was raised by his mother.
Leibniz's father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the
University of Leipzig
Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...
, and the boy later inherited his father's personal library. He was given free access to it from the age of seven. While Leibniz's schoolwork was largely confined to the study of a small
canon
Canon or Canons may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base
* Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture
** Western ca ...
of authorities, his father's library enabled him to study a wide variety of advanced philosophical and theological works—ones that he would not have otherwise been able to read until his college years. Access to his father's library, largely written in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language, which he achieved by the age of 12. At the age of 13 he composed 300
hexameters
Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...
of
Latin verse in a single morning for a special event at school.
In April 1661 he enrolled in his father's former university at age 14,
and completed his
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Middle Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six ...
in Philosophy in December 1662. He defended his ''Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui'' (''Metaphysical Disputation on the Principle of Individuation''),
[Arthur 2014, p. x.] which addressed the
principle of individuation The principle of individuation is a criterion that individuates or numerically distinguishes the members of the kind for which it is given, that is by which we can supposedly determine, regarding any kind of thing, when we have more than one of them ...
, on 9 June 1663. Leibniz earned his
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. in Philosophy on 7 February 1664. In December 1664 he published and defended a
dissertation ''Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum ex Jure collectarum'' (''An Essay of Collected Philosophical Problems of Right''),
arguing for both a theoretical and a pedagogical relationship between philosophy and law. After one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelor's degree in Law on 28 September 1665. His dissertation was titled ''De conditionibus'' (''On Conditions'').
In early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, ''
De Arte Combinatoria
The ''Dissertatio de arte combinatoria'' ("Dissertation on the Art of Combinations" or "On the Combinatorial Art") is an early work by Gottfried Leibniz published in 1666 in Leipzig. It is an extended version of his first doctoral dissertation, wr ...
'' (''On the Combinatorial Art''), the first part of which was also his
habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666.
''De Arte Combinatoria'' was inspired by
Ramon Llull's ''
Ars Magna'' and contained a
proof of the existence of God
The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorized ...
, cast in geometrical form, and based on the
argument from motion
A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe o ...
.
His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, which normally required three years of study. In 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibniz's doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz subsequently left Leipzig.
Leibniz then enrolled in the
University of Altdorf
The University of Altdorf () was a university in Altdorf bei Nürnberg, a small town outside the Free Imperial City of Nuremberg. It was founded in 1578 and received university privileges in 1622 and was closed in 1809 by Maximilian I Joseph of ...
and quickly submitted a thesis, which he had probably been working on earlier in Leipzig. The title of his thesis was ''Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure'' (''Inaugural Disputation on Ambiguous Legal Cases'').
Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666. He next declined the offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that "my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction".
As an adult, Leibniz often introduced himself as "Gottfried
von
The term ''von'' () is used in German language surnames either as a nobiliary particle indicating a noble patrilineality, or as a simple preposition used by commoners that means ''of'' or ''from''.
Nobility directories like the ''Almanach de ...
Leibniz". Many posthumously published editions of his writings presented his name on the title page as "
Freiherr
(; male, abbreviated as ), (; his wife, abbreviated as , literally "free lord" or "free lady") and (, his unmarried daughters and maiden aunts) are designations used as titles of nobility in the German-speaking areas of the Holy Roman Empire ...
G. W. von Leibniz." However, no document has ever been found from any contemporary government that stated his appointment to any form of
nobility
Nobility is a social class found in many societies that have an aristocracy. It is normally ranked immediately below royalty. Nobility has often been an estate of the realm with many exclusive functions and characteristics. The character ...
.
1666–1676
Leibniz's first position was as a salaried secretary to an
alchemical
Alchemy (from Arabic: ''al-kīmiyā''; from Ancient Greek: χυμεία, ''khumeía'') is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practiced in China, India, the Muslim world, ...
society in
Nuremberg
Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...
. He knew fairly little about the subject at that time but presented himself as deeply learned. He soon met
Johann Christian von Boyneburg (1622–1672), the dismissed chief minister of the
Elector
Elector may refer to:
* Prince-elector or elector, a member of the electoral college of the Holy Roman Empire, having the function of electing the Holy Roman Emperors
* Elector, a member of an electoral college
** Confederate elector, a member of ...
of
Mainz
Mainz () is the capital and largest city of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
Mainz is on the left bank of the Rhine, opposite to the place that the Main joins the Rhine. Downstream of the confluence, the Rhine flows to the north-west, with Ma ...
,
Johann Philipp von Schönborn
Johann Philipp von Schönborn (6 August 1605 – 12 February 1673) was the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz (1647–1673), the Bishop of Würzburg (1642–1673), and the Bishop of Worms (1663–1673).
Life
Johann Philipp was born in ...
. Von Boyneburg hired Leibniz as an assistant, and shortly thereafter reconciled with the Elector and introduced Leibniz to him. Leibniz then dedicated an essay on law to the Elector in the hope of obtaining employment. The stratagem worked; the Elector asked Leibniz to assist with the redrafting of the legal code for the Electorate. In 1669, Leibniz was appointed assessor in the Court of Appeal. Although von Boyneburg died late in 1672, Leibniz remained under the employment of his widow until she dismissed him in 1674.
Von Boyneburg did much to promote Leibniz's reputation, and the latter's memoranda and letters began to attract favorable notice. After Leibniz's service to the Elector there soon followed a diplomatic role. He published an essay, under the pseudonym of a fictitious Polish nobleman, arguing (unsuccessfully) for the German candidate for the Polish crown. The main force in European geopolitics during Leibniz's adult life was the ambition of
Louis XIV of France
, house = Bourbon
, father = Louis XIII
, mother = Anne of Austria
, birth_date =
, birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
, death_date =
, death_place = Palace of ...
, backed by French military and economic might. Meanwhile, the
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, lasting from 1618 to 1648. Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle ...
had left
German-speaking Europe
This article details the geographical distribution of speakers of the German language, regardless of the legislative status within the countries where it is spoken. In addition to the German-speaking area (german: Deutscher Sprachraum) in Europe ...
exhausted, fragmented, and economically backward. Leibniz proposed to protect German-speaking Europe by distracting Louis as follows. France would be invited to take
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
as a stepping stone towards an eventual conquest of the
Dutch East Indies. In return, France would agree to leave Germany and the Netherlands undisturbed. This plan obtained the Elector's cautious support. In 1672, the French government invited Leibniz to Paris for discussion, but the plan was soon overtaken by the outbreak of the
Franco-Dutch War and became irrelevant. Napoleon's
failed invasion of Egypt in 1798 can be seen as an unwitting, late implementation of Leibniz's plan, after the Eastern hemisphere colonial supremacy in Europe had already passed from the Dutch to the British.
Thus Leibniz went to Paris in 1672. Soon after arriving, he met Dutch physicist and mathematician
Christiaan Huygens and realised that his own knowledge of mathematics and physics was patchy. With Huygens as his mentor, he began a program of
self-study that soon pushed him to making major contributions to both subjects, including discovering his version of the differential and integral
calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
. He met
Nicolas Malebranche and
Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld (6 February 16128 August 1694) was a French Catholic theologian, philosopher and mathematician. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the Jansenist group of Port-Royal and had a very thorough knowledge of patristics. Cont ...
, the leading French philosophers of the day, and studied the writings of
Descartes and
Pascal, unpublished as well as published. He befriended a German mathematician,
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus; they corresponded for the rest of their lives.
![Leibnitzrechenmaschine](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Leibnitzrechenmaschine.jpg)
When it became clear that France would not implement its part of Leibniz's Egyptian plan, the Elector sent his nephew, escorted by Leibniz, on a related mission to the English government in London, early in 1673. There Leibniz came into acquaintance of
Henry Oldenburg
Henry Oldenburg (also Henry Oldenbourg) FRS (c. 1618 as Heinrich Oldenburg – 5 September 1677), was a German theologian, diplomat, and natural philosopher, known as one of the creators of modern scientific peer review. He was one of the fo ...
and
John Collins. He met with the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
where he demonstrated a calculating machine that he had designed and had been building since 1670. The machine was able to execute all four basic operations (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing), and the society quickly made him an external member.
The mission ended abruptly when news of the Elector's death (12 February 1673) reached them. Leibniz promptly returned to Paris and not, as had been planned, to Mainz. The sudden deaths of his two patrons in the same winter meant that Leibniz had to find a new basis for his career.
In this regard, a 1669 invitation from Duke
John Frederick of
Brunswick to visit Hanover proved to have been fateful. Leibniz had declined the invitation, but had begun corresponding with the duke in 1671. In 1673, the duke offered Leibniz the post of counsellor. Leibniz very reluctantly accepted the position two years later, only after it became clear that no employment was forthcoming in Paris, whose intellectual stimulation he relished, or with the
Habsburg imperial court.
In 1675 he tried to get admitted to the
French Academy of Sciences as a foreign honorary member, but it was considered that there were already enough foreigners there and so no invitation came. He left Paris in October 1676.
House of Hanover, 1676–1716
Leibniz managed to delay his arrival in Hanover until the end of 1676 after making one more short journey to London, where Newton accused him of having seen his unpublished work on calculus in advance. This was alleged to be evidence supporting the accusation, made decades later, that he had stolen calculus from Newton. On the journey from London to Hanover, Leibniz stopped in
The Hague
The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...
where he met
van Leeuwenhoek, the discoverer of microorganisms. He also spent several days in intense discussion with
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
, who had just completed his masterwork, the ''
Ethics
Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
''.
In 1677, he was promoted, at his request, to Privy Counselor of Justice, a post he held for the rest of his life. Leibniz served three consecutive rulers of the House of Brunswick as historian, political adviser, and most consequentially, as librarian of the
ducal
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ran ...
library. He thenceforth employed his pen on all the various political, historical, and
theological
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the s ...
matters involving the House of Brunswick; the resulting documents form a valuable part of the historical record for the period.
Leibniz began promoting a project to use windmills to improve the mining operations in the Harz Mountains. This project did little to improve mining operations and was shut down by Duke Ernst August in 1685.
Among the few people in north Germany to accept Leibniz were the Electress
Sophia of Hanover (1630–1714), her daughter
Sophia Charlotte of Hanover
Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (30 October 1668 – 1 February 1705) was the first Queen consort in Prussia as wife of King Frederick I. She was the only daughter of Elector Ernest Augustus of Hanover and his wife Sophia of the Palatinate. Her eld ...
(1668–1705), the Queen of Prussia and his avowed disciple, and
Caroline of Ansbach, the consort of her grandson, the future
George II George II or 2 may refer to:
People
* George II of Antioch (seventh century AD)
* George II of Armenia (late ninth century)
* George II of Abkhazia (916–960)
* Patriarch George II of Alexandria (1021–1051)
* George II of Georgia (1072–1089) ...
. To each of these women he was correspondent, adviser, and friend. In turn, they all approved of Leibniz more than did their spouses and the future king
George I of Great Britain
George I (George Louis; ; 28 May 1660 – 11 June 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first ...
.
The population of Hanover was only about 10,000, and its provinciality eventually grated on Leibniz. Nevertheless, to be a major courtier to the House of
Brunswick was quite an honor, especially in light of the meteoric rise in the prestige of that House during Leibniz's association with it. In 1692, the Duke of Brunswick became a hereditary Elector of the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
From the accession of Otto I in 962 ...
. The British
Act of Settlement 1701 designated the Electress Sophia and her descent as the royal family of England, once both King
William III and his sister-in-law and successor,
Queen Anne, were dead. Leibniz played a role in the initiatives and negotiations leading up to that Act, but not always an effective one. For example, something he published anonymously in England, thinking to promote the Brunswick cause, was formally censured by the
British Parliament
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprem ...
.
The Brunswicks tolerated the enormous effort Leibniz devoted to intellectual pursuits unrelated to his duties as a courtier, pursuits such as perfecting calculus, writing about other mathematics, logic, physics, and philosophy, and keeping up a vast correspondence. He began working on calculus in 1674; the earliest evidence of its use in his surviving notebooks is 1675. By 1677 he had a coherent system in hand, but did not publish it until 1684. Leibniz's most important mathematical papers were published between 1682 and 1692, usually in a journal which he and
Otto Mencke founded in 1682, the ''
Acta Eruditorum
(from Latin: ''Acts of the Erudite'') was the first scientific journal of the German-speaking lands of Europe, published from 1682 to 1782.
History
''Acta Eruditorum'' was founded in 1682 in Leipzig by Otto Mencke, who became its first editor, ...
''. That journal played a key role in advancing his mathematical and scientific reputation, which in turn enhanced his eminence in diplomacy, history, theology, and philosophy.
![Korespondencja Gottfrieda Leibniza](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/45/Korespondencja_Gottfrieda_Leibniza.jpg)
The Elector
Ernest Augustus commissioned Leibniz to write a history of the House of Brunswick, going back to the time of
Charlemagne
Charlemagne ( , ) or Charles the Great ( la, Carolus Magnus; german: Karl der Große; 2 April 747 – 28 January 814), a member of the Carolingian dynasty, was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and the first ...
or earlier, hoping that the resulting book would advance his dynastic ambitions. From 1687 to 1690, Leibniz traveled extensively in Germany, Austria, and Italy, seeking and finding archival materials bearing on this project. Decades went by but no history appeared; the next Elector became quite annoyed at Leibniz's apparent dilatoriness. Leibniz never finished the project, in part because of his huge output on many other fronts, but also because he insisted on writing a meticulously researched and erudite book based on archival sources, when his patrons would have been quite happy with a short popular book, one perhaps little more than a
genealogy
Genealogy () is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kin ...
with commentary, to be completed in three years or less. They never knew that he had in fact carried out a fair part of his assigned task: when the material Leibniz had written and collected for his history of the House of Brunswick was finally published in the 19th century, it filled three volumes.
Leibniz was appointed Librarian of the
Herzog August Library
The Herzog August Library (german: link=no, Herzog August Bibliothek — "HAB"), in Wolfenbüttel, Lower Saxony, known also as ''Bibliotheca Augusta'', is a library of international importance for its collection from the Middle Ages and ear ...
in
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest ...
,
Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony (german: Niedersachsen ; nds, Neddersassen; stq, Läichsaksen) is a German state (') in northwestern Germany. It is the second-largest state by land area, with , and fourth-largest in population (8 million in 2021) among the 16 ...
, in 1691.
In 1708,
John Keill
John Keill FRS (1 December 1671 – 31 August 1721) was a Scottish mathematician, natural philosopher, and cryptographer who was an important defender of Isaac Newton.
Biography
Keill was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 1 December 1671. His f ...
, writing in the journal of the Royal Society and with Newton's presumed blessing, accused Leibniz of having plagiarised Newton's calculus. Thus began the
calculus priority dispute which darkened the remainder of Leibniz's life. A formal investigation by the Royal Society (in which Newton was an unacknowledged participant), undertaken in response to Leibniz's demand for a retraction, upheld Keill's charge. Historians of mathematics writing since 1900 or so have tended to acquit Leibniz, pointing to important differences between Leibniz's and Newton's versions of calculus.
In 1711, while traveling in northern Europe, the Russian
Tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East and South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" in the European medieval sense of the ter ...
Peter the Great stopped in Hanover and met Leibniz, who then took some interest in Russian matters for the rest of his life. In 1712, Leibniz began a two-year residence in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, where he was appointed Imperial Court Councillor to the
Habsburgs. On the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Elector George Louis became King
George I of Great Britain
George I (George Louis; ; 28 May 1660 – 11 June 1727) was King of Great Britain and Ireland from 1 August 1714 and ruler of the Electorate of Hanover within the Holy Roman Empire from 23 January 1698 until his death in 1727. He was the first ...
, under the terms of the 1701 Act of Settlement. Even though Leibniz had done much to bring about this happy event, it was not to be his hour of glory. Despite the intercession of the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach, George I forbade Leibniz to join him in London until he completed at least one volume of the history of the Brunswick family his father had commissioned nearly 30 years earlier. Moreover, for George I to include Leibniz in his London court would have been deemed insulting to Newton, who was seen as having won the calculus priority dispute and whose standing in British official circles could not have been higher. Finally, his dear friend and defender, the Dowager Electress Sophia, died in 1714.
Death
Leibniz died in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
in 1716. At the time, he was so out of favor that neither George I (who happened to be near Hanover at that time) nor any fellow courtier other than his personal secretary attended the funeral. Even though Leibniz was a life member of the Royal Society and the
Berlin Academy of Sciences, neither organization saw fit to honor his death. His grave went unmarked for more than 50 years. He was, however, eulogized by
Fontenelle, before the
French Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had admitted him as a foreign member in 1700. The eulogy was composed at the behest of the
Duchess of Orleans
Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they are ranked ...
, a niece of the Electress Sophia.
Personal life
Leibniz never married. He complained on occasion about money, but the fair sum he left to his sole heir, his sister's stepson, proved that the Brunswicks had, by and large, paid him well. In his diplomatic endeavors, he at times verged on the unscrupulous, as was all too often the case with professional diplomats of his day. On several occasions, Leibniz backdated and altered personal manuscripts, actions which put him in a bad light during the
calculus controversy.
He was charming, well-mannered, and not without humor and imagination. He had many friends and admirers all over Europe. He identified as a
Protestant
Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...
and a
philosophical theist. Leibniz remained committed to
Trinitarian Christianity
The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God the F ...
throughout his life.
Philosopher
Leibniz's philosophical thinking appears fragmented, because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and many letters to many correspondents. He wrote only two book-length philosophical treatises, of which only the ''Théodicée'' of 1710 was published in his lifetime.
Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his ''
Discourse on Metaphysics
The ''Discourse on Metaphysics'' (french: Discours de métaphysique, 1686) is a short treatise by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in which he develops a philosophy concerning physical substance, motion and resistance of bodies, and God's role within the ...
'', which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between
Nicolas Malebranche and
Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld (6 February 16128 August 1694) was a French Catholic theologian, philosopher and mathematician. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the Jansenist group of Port-Royal and had a very thorough knowledge of patristics. Cont ...
. This led to an extensive and valuable correspondence with Arnauld; it and the ''Discourse'' were not published until the 19th century. In 1695, Leibniz made his public entrée into European philosophy with a journal article titled "New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances". Between 1695 and 1705, he composed his ''
New Essays on Human Understanding
''New Essays on Human Understanding'' (french: Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain) is a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal by Gottfried Leibniz of John Locke's major work '' An Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. It is one of only two full-leng ...
'', a lengthy commentary on
John Locke's 1690 ''
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'' is a work by John Locke concerning the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. It first appeared in 1689 (although dated 1690) with the printed title ''An Essay Concerning Humane Understan ...
'', but upon learning of Locke's 1704 death, lost the desire to publish it, so that the ''New Essays'' were not published until 1765. The ''
Monadologie
The ''Monadology'' (french: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works of his later philosophy. It is a short text which presents, in some 90 paragraphs, a metaphysics of simple substance theory, substances, or ''monad ...
'', composed in 1714 and published posthumously, consists of 90 aphorisms.
Leibniz also wrote a short paper, "Primae veritates" ("First Truths"), first published by
Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido.
Life and education
Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France. In 1887 he ...
in 1903 (pp. 518–523) summarizing his views on
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
. The paper is undated; that he wrote it while in Vienna in 1689 was determined only in 1999, when the ongoing critical edition finally published Leibniz's philosophical writings for the period 1677–90. Couturat's reading of this paper was the launching point for much 20th-century thinking about Leibniz, especially among
analytic philosophers
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
. But after a meticulous study of all of Leibniz's philosophical writings up to 1688—a study the 1999 additions to the critical edition made possible—Mercer (2001) begged to differ with Couturat's reading; the jury is still out.
Leibniz met
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
in 1676, read some of his unpublished writings, and has since been suspected of appropriating some of Spinoza's ideas. While Leibniz admired Spinoza's powerful intellect, he was also forthrightly dismayed by Spinoza's conclusions, especially when these were inconsistent with Christian orthodoxy.
Unlike Descartes and Spinoza, Leibniz had a thorough university education in philosophy. He was influenced by his
Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
professor
Jakob Thomasius, who also supervised his BA thesis in philosophy.
[Arthur 2014, p. 13.] Leibniz also eagerly read
Francisco Suárez, a Spanish
Jesuit respected even in
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
universities. Leibniz was deeply interested in the new methods and conclusions of Descartes, Huygens, Newton, and
Boyle, but viewed their work through a lens heavily tinted by scholastic notions. Yet it remains the case that Leibniz's methods and concerns often anticipate the
logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premise ...
, and
analytic and
linguistic philosophy
__notoc__
Linguistic philosophy is the view that many or all philosophical problems can be solved (or dissolved) by paying closer attention to language, either by reforming language or by better understanding our everyday language. The former po ...
of the 20th century.
Principles
Leibniz variously invoked one or another of seven fundamental philosophical Principles:
*
Identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
/
contradiction
In traditional logic, a contradiction occurs when a proposition conflicts either with itself or established fact. It is often used as a tool to detect disingenuous beliefs and bias. Illustrating a general tendency in applied logic, Aristotle's ...
. If a proposition is true, then its negation is false and vice versa.
*
Identity of indiscernibles
The identity of indiscernibles is an ontological principle that states that there cannot be separate objects or entities that have all their properties in common. That is, entities ''x'' and ''y'' are identical if every predicate possessed by ''x'' ...
. Two distinct things cannot have all their properties in common. If every predicate possessed by x is also possessed by y and vice versa, then entities x and y are identical; to suppose two things indiscernible is to suppose the same thing under two names. Frequently invoked in modern logic and philosophy, the "identity of indiscernibles" is often referred to as Leibniz's Law. It has attracted the most controversy and criticism, especially from corpuscular philosophy and quantum mechanics.
*
Sufficient reason. "There must be a sufficient reason for anything to exist, for any event to occur, for any truth to obtain."
*
Pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony (french: harmonie préétablie) is a philosophical theory about causation under which every " substance" affects only itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world never ...
. "
e appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others, without, however, their acting upon one another directly." (''Discourse on Metaphysics'', XIV) A dropped glass shatters because it "knows" it has hit the ground, and not because the impact with the ground "compels" the glass to split.
*
Law of Continuity
The law of continuity is a heuristic principle introduced by Gottfried Leibniz based on earlier work by Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Kepler. It is the principle that "whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite". Kepler used ...
. ''
Natura non facit saltus''
[Gottfried Leibniz, ''New Essays'', IV, 16: "''la nature ne fait jamais des sauts''". ''Natura non-facit saltus'' is the Latin translation of the phrase (originally put forward by ]Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
' ''Philosophia Botanica
''Philosophia Botanica'' ("Botanical Philosophy", ed. 1, Stockholm & Amsterdam, 1751.) was published by the Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) who greatly influenced the development of botanical taxonomy and systematics ...
'', 1st ed., 1751, Chapter III, § 77, p. 27; see also Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
"Continuity and Infinitesimals"
and Alexander Baumgarten
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (; ; 17 July 1714 – 27 MayJan LekschasBaumgarten Family'' 1762) was a German philosopher. He was a brother to theologian Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten (1706–1757).
Biography
Baumgarten was born in Berlin as the ...
, ''Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations'', Translated and Edited by Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, Bloomsbury, 2013, "Preface of the Third Edition (1750)"
p. 79 n.d.
" aumgartenmust also have in mind Leibniz's "''natura non-facit saltus'' ature does not make leaps ( NE IV, 16)."). A variant translation is "''natura non-saltum facit''" (literally, "Nature does not make a jump")
Extract of page 289
) (literally, "Nature does not make jumps").
*
Optimism
Optimism is an attitude reflecting a belief or hope that the outcome of some specific endeavor, or outcomes in general, will be positive, favorable, and desirable. A common idiom used to illustrate optimism versus pessimism is a glass filled w ...
. "God assuredly always chooses the best."
*
Plenitude. Leibniz believed that the best of all possible worlds would actualize every genuine possibility, and argued in ''Théodicée'' that this best of all possible worlds will contain all possibilities, with our finite experience of eternity giving no reason to dispute nature's perfection.
Leibniz would on occasion give a rational defense of a specific principle, but more often took them for granted.
Monads
![Leibniz Monadology 1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b3/Leibniz_Monadology_1.jpg)
Leibniz's best known contribution to
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
is his theory of
monads, as exposited in ''
Monadologie
The ''Monadology'' (french: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works of his later philosophy. It is a short text which presents, in some 90 paragraphs, a metaphysics of simple substance theory, substances, or ''monad ...
''. He proposes his theory that the universe is made of an infinite number of simple substances known as monads. Monads can also be compared to the corpuscles of the
mechanical philosophy
The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...
of René Descartes and others. These simple substances or monads are the "ultimate units of existence in nature". Monads have no parts but still exist by the qualities that they have. These qualities are continuously changing over time, and each monad is unique. They are also not affected by time and are subject to only creation and annihilation. Monads are centers of
force; substance is force, while
space
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...
,
matter
In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic part ...
, and
motion
In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and m ...
are merely phenomenal. It is said that he anticipated
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
by arguing, against Newton, that
space
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...
,
time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
, and motion are completely relative as he quipped,
"As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions."
[See H. G. Alexander, ed., ''The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence'', Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 25–26.] Einstein, who called himself a "Leibnizian" even wrote in the introduction to
Max Jammer's book ''Concepts of Space'' that Leibnizianism was superior to Newtonianism, and his ideas would have dominated over Newton's had it not been for the poor technological tools of the time; it has been argued that Leibniz paved the way for Einstein's
theory of relativity
The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity, proposed and published in 1905 and 1915, respectively. Special relativity applies to all physical phenomena in ...
.
Leibniz's proof of God can be summarized in the ''
Théodicée
(from French: ''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more simply known as , is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. The book, published in 1710, introduced the term ...
''.
Reason is governed by the
principle of contradiction
In logic, the law of non-contradiction (LNC) (also known as the law of contradiction, principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or the principle of contradiction) states that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the sa ...
and the
principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhau ...
. Using the principle of reasoning, Leibniz concluded that the first reason of all things is God.
All that we see and experience is subject to change, and the fact that this world is contingent can be explained by the possibility of the world being arranged differently in space and time. The contingent world must have some necessary reason for its existence. Leibniz uses a geometry book as an example to explain his reasoning. If this book was copied from an infinite chain of copies, there must be some reason for the content of the book. Leibniz concluded that there must be the "''monas monadum''" or God.
The
ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
essence of a monad is its irreducible simplicity. Unlike atoms, monads possess no material or spatial character. They also differ from atoms by their complete mutual independence, so that interactions among monads are only apparent. Instead, by virtue of the principle of
pre-established harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-established harmony (french: harmonie préétablie) is a philosophical theory about causation under which every " substance" affects only itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world never ...
, each monad follows a pre-programmed set of "instructions" peculiar to itself, so that a monad "knows" what to do at each moment. By virtue of these intrinsic instructions, each monad is like a little mirror of the universe. Monads need not be "small"; e.g., each human being constitutes a monad, in which case
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
is problematic.
Monads are purported to have gotten rid of the problematic:
* interaction between
mind and matter arising in the system of
Descartes;
* lack of
individuation
The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.
The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...
inherent to the system of
Spinoza
Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, ...
, which represents individual creatures as merely accidental.
Theodicy and optimism
The ''
Theodicy
Theodicy () means vindication of God. It is to answer the question of why a good God permits the manifestation of evil, thus resolving the issue of the problem of evil. Some theodicies also address the problem of evil "to make the existence of ...
'' tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is
optimal among all possible worlds. It must be the best possible and most balanced world, because it was created by an all powerful and all knowing God, who would not choose to create an imperfect world if a better world could be known to him or possible to exist. In effect, apparent flaws that can be identified in this world must exist in every possible world, because otherwise God would have chosen to create the world that excluded those flaws.
Leibniz asserted that the truths of theology (religion) and philosophy cannot contradict each other, since reason and faith are both "gifts of God" so that their conflict would imply God contending against himself. The ''Theodicy'' is Leibniz's attempt to reconcile his personal philosophical system with his interpretation of the tenets of Christianity. This project was motivated in part by Leibniz's belief, shared by many philosophers and theologians during the
Enlightenment, in the rational and enlightened nature of the Christian religion. It was also shaped by Leibniz's belief in the perfectibility of human nature (if humanity relied on correct philosophy and religion as a guide), and by his belief that metaphysical necessity must have a rational or logical foundation, even if this metaphysical causality seemed inexplicable in terms of physical necessity (the natural laws identified by science).
Because reason and faith must be entirely reconciled, any tenet of faith which could not be defended by reason must be rejected. Leibniz then approached one of the central criticisms of Christian theism: if God is
all good,
all wise, and
all powerful, then how did
evil come into the world? The answer (according to Leibniz) is that, while God is indeed unlimited in wisdom and power, his human creations, as creations, are limited both in their wisdom and in their will (power to act). This predisposes humans to false beliefs, wrong decisions, and ineffective actions in the exercise of their
free will
Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, culpability, sin, and other judgements which apply only to ac ...
. God does not arbitrarily inflict pain and suffering on humans; rather he permits both ''moral evil'' (sin) and ''physical evil'' (pain and suffering) as the necessary consequences of ''metaphysical evil'' (imperfection), as a means by which humans can identify and correct their erroneous decisions, and as a contrast to true good.
Further, although human actions flow from prior causes that ultimately arise in God and therefore are known to God as metaphysical certainties, an individual's free will is exercised within natural laws, where choices are merely contingently necessary and to be decided in the event by a "wonderful spontaneity" that provides individuals with an escape from rigorous predestination.
''Discourse on Metaphysics''
For Leibniz, "God is an absolutely perfect being". He describes this perfection later in section VI as the simplest form of something with the most substantial outcome (VI). Along these lines, he declares that every type of perfection "pertains to him (God) in the highest degree" (I). Even though his types of perfections are not specifically drawn out, Leibniz highlights the one thing that, to him, does certify imperfections and proves that God is perfect: "that one acts imperfectly if he acts with less perfection than he is capable of", and since God is a perfect being, he cannot act imperfectly (III). Because God cannot act imperfectly, the decisions he makes pertaining to the world must be perfect. Leibniz also comforts readers, stating that because he has done everything to the most perfect degree; those who love him cannot be injured. However, to love God is a subject of difficulty as Leibniz believes that we are "not disposed to wish for that which God desires" because we have the ability to alter our disposition (IV). In accordance with this, many act as rebels, but Leibniz says that the only way we can truly love God is by being content "with all that comes to us according to his will" (IV).
Because God is "an absolutely perfect being" (I), Leibniz argues that God would be acting imperfectly if he acted with any less perfection than what he is able of (III). His syllogism then ends with the statement that God has made the world perfectly in all ways. This also affects how we should view God and his will. Leibniz states that, in lieu of God's will, we have to understand that God "is the best of all masters" and he will know when his good succeeds, so we, therefore, must act in conformity to his good will—or as much of it as we understand (IV). In our view of God, Leibniz declares that we cannot admire the work solely because of the maker, lest we mar the glory and love God in doing so. Instead, we must admire the maker for the work he has done (II). Effectively, Leibniz states that if we say the earth is good because of the will of God, and not good according to some standards of goodness, then how can we praise God for what he has done if contrary actions are also praiseworthy by this definition (II). Leibniz then asserts that different principles and geometry cannot simply be from the will of God, but must follow from his understanding.
Fundamental question of metaphysics
Leibniz wrote: "
Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason ... is found in a substance which ... is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...
called this question "the fundamental question of metaphysics".
Symbolic thought
Leibniz believed that much of human reasoning could be reduced to calculations of a sort, and that such calculations could resolve many differences of opinion:
Leibniz's
calculus ratiocinator
The ''calculus ratiocinator'' is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned ''characteristica universalis'', a universal conce ...
, which resembles
symbolic logic, can be viewed as a way of making such calculations feasible. Leibniz wrote memoranda that can now be read as groping attempts to get symbolic logic—and thus his ''calculus''—off the ground. These writings remained unpublished until the appearance of a selection edited by Carl Immanuel Gerhardt (1859).
Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido.
Life and education
Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France. In 1887 he ...
published a selection in 1901; by this time the main developments of modern logic had been created by
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
and by
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...
.
Leibniz thought
symbols were important for human understanding. He attached so much importance to the development of good notations that he attributed all his discoveries in mathematics to this. His notation for
calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
is an example of his skill in this regard. Leibniz's passion for symbols and notation, as well as his belief that these are essential to a well-running logic and mathematics, made him a precursor of
semiotics
Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...
.
But Leibniz took his speculations much further. Defining a
character
Character or Characters may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Literature
* ''Character'' (novel), a 1936 Dutch novel by Ferdinand Bordewijk
* ''Characters'' (Theophrastus), a classical Greek set of character sketches attributed to The ...
as any written sign, he then defined a "real" character as one that represents an idea directly and not simply as the word embodying the idea. Some real characters, such as the notation of logic, serve only to facilitate reasoning. Many characters well known in his day, including
Egyptian hieroglyphics,
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanj ...
s, and the symbols of
astronomy
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, g ...
and
chemistry, he deemed not real. Instead, he proposed the creation of a ''
characteristica universalis
The Latin term ''characteristica universalis'', commonly interpreted as ''universal characteristic'', or ''universal character'' in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scienti ...
'' or "universal characteristic", built on an
alphabet of human thought The alphabet of human thought ( la, alphabetum cogitationum humanarum) is a concept originally proposed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that provides a universal way to represent and analyze ideas and relationships by breaking down their component piec ...
in which each fundamental concept would be represented by a unique "real" character:
Complex thoughts would be represented by combining characters for simpler thoughts. Leibniz saw that the uniqueness of
prime factorization suggests a central role for
prime numbers in the universal characteristic, a striking anticipation of
Gödel numbering
In mathematical logic, a Gödel numbering is a function that assigns to each symbol and well-formed formula of some formal language a unique natural number, called its Gödel number. The concept was developed by Kurt Gödel for the proof of his ...
. Granted, there is no intuitive or
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
way to number any set of elementary concepts using the prime numbers.
Because Leibniz was a mathematical novice when he first wrote about the ''characteristic'', at first he did not conceive it as an
algebra
Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics.
Elementary ...
but rather as a
universal language
Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea of ...
or script. Only in 1676 did he conceive of a kind of "algebra of thought", modeled on and including conventional algebra and its notation. The resulting ''characteristic'' included a logical calculus, some combinatorics, algebra, his ''analysis situs'' (geometry of situation), a universal concept language, and more. What Leibniz actually intended by his ''characteristica universalis'' and calculus ratiocinator, and the extent to which modern formal logic does justice to calculus, may never be established. Leibniz's idea of reasoning through a universal language of symbols and calculations remarkably foreshadows great 20th-century developments in formal systems, such as
Turing completeness
In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any Tu ...
, where computation was used to define equivalent universal languages (see
Turing degree
In computer science and mathematical logic the Turing degree (named after Alan Turing) or degree of unsolvability of a set of natural numbers measures the level of algorithmic unsolvability of the set.
Overview
The concept of Turing degree is fund ...
).
Formal logic
Leibniz has been noted as one of the most important logicians between the times of Aristotle and
Gottlob Frege
Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (; ; 8 November 1848 – 26 July 1925) was a German philosopher, logician, and mathematician. He was a mathematics professor at the University of Jena, and is understood by many to be the father of analytic ph ...
. Leibniz enunciated the principal properties of what we now call
conjunction
Conjunction may refer to:
* Conjunction (grammar), a part of speech
* Logical conjunction, a mathematical operator
** Conjunction introduction, a rule of inference of propositional logic
* Conjunction (astronomy), in which two astronomical bodies ...
,
disjunction
In logic, disjunction is a logical connective typically notated as \lor and read aloud as "or". For instance, the English language sentence "it is raining or it is snowing" can be represented in logic using the disjunctive formula R \lor S ...
,
negation,
identity
Identity may refer to:
* Identity document
* Identity (philosophy)
* Identity (social science)
* Identity (mathematics)
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''Identity'' (1987 film), an Iranian film
* ''Identity'' (2003 film), ...
, set
inclusion
Inclusion or Include may refer to:
Sociology
* Social inclusion, aims to create an environment that supports equal opportunity for individuals and groups that form a society.
** Inclusion (disability rights), promotion of people with disabiliti ...
, and the
empty set. The principles of Leibniz's logic and, arguably, of his whole philosophy, reduce to two:
# All our ideas are compounded from a very small number of simple ideas, which form the
alphabet of human thought The alphabet of human thought ( la, alphabetum cogitationum humanarum) is a concept originally proposed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz that provides a universal way to represent and analyze ideas and relationships by breaking down their component piec ...
.
# Complex ideas proceed from these simple ideas by a uniform and symmetrical combination, analogous to arithmetical multiplication.
The formal logic that emerged early in the 20th century also requires, at minimum,
unary negation and
quantified variables ranging over some
universe of discourse
In the formal sciences, the domain of discourse, also called the universe of discourse, universal set, or simply universe, is the set of entities over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may range.
Overview
The doma ...
.
Leibniz published nothing on formal logic in his lifetime; most of what he wrote on the subject consists of working drafts. In his ''A History of Western Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy'', Bertrand Russell went so far as to claim that Leibniz had developed logic in his unpublished writings to a level which was reached only 200 years later.
Russell's principal work on Leibniz found that many of Leibniz's most startling philosophical ideas and claims (e.g., that each of the fundamental
monads mirrors the whole universe) follow logically from Leibniz's conscious choice to reject ''relations'' between things as unreal. He regarded such relations as (real) ''qualities'' of things (Leibniz admitted
unary Predicate (mathematical logic), predicates only): For him, "Mary is the mother of John" describes separate qualities of Mary and of John. This view contrasts with the relational logic of Augustus de Morgan, De Morgan, Charles S. Peirce, Peirce, Ernst Schröder (mathematician), Schröder and Russell himself, now standard in predicate logic. Notably, Leibniz also declared space and time to be inherently relational.
Leibniz's 1690 discovery of his algebra of concepts (deductively equivalent to the Boolean algebra) and the associated metaphysics, are of interest in present-day computational metaphysics.
Mathematician
Although the mathematical notion of Function (mathematics), function was implicit in trigonometric and logarithmic tables, which existed in his day, Leibniz was the first, in 1692 and 1694, to employ it explicitly, to denote any of several geometric concepts derived from a curve, such as abscissa, ordinate, tangent, chord (geometry), chord, and the Normal (geometry), perpendicular (see History of the function concept). In the 18th century, "function" lost these geometrical associations. Leibniz also believed that the sum of an infinite number of zeros would be equal to one half using the analogy of the creation of the world from nothing.
Leibniz was also one of the pioneers in actuarial science, calculating the purchase price of life annuities and the liquidation of a state's debt.
Leibniz's research into formal logic, also relevant to mathematics, is discussed in the #Formal logic, preceding section. The best overview of Leibniz's writings on calculus may be found in Bos (1974).
Leibniz, who invented one of the earliest mechanical calculators, said of calculation: "For it is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used."
Linear systems
Leibniz arranged the coefficients of a system of linear equations into an array, now called a Matrix (mathematics), matrix, in order to find a solution to the system if it existed. This method was later called Gaussian elimination. Leibniz laid down the foundations and theory of determinants, although the Japanese mathematician Seki Takakazu also discovered determinants independently of Leibniz.
His works show calculating the determinants using cofactors. Calculating the determinant using cofactors is named the Leibniz formula for determinants, Leibniz formula. Finding the determinant of a matrix using this method proves impractical with large ''n'', requiring to calculate ''n!'' products and the number of n-permutations. He also solved systems of linear equations using determinants, which is now called Cramer's rule. This method for solving systems of linear equations based on determinants was found in 1684 by Leibniz (Cramer published his findings in 1750).
Although Gaussian elimination requires
arithmetic operations, linear algebra textbooks still teach cofactor expansion before LU factorization.
Geometry
The Leibniz formula for π, Leibniz formula for states that
:
Leibniz wrote that circles "can most simply be expressed by this series, that is, the aggregate of fractions alternately added and subtracted". However this formula is only accurate with a large number of terms, using 10,000,000 terms to obtain the correct value of to 8 decimal places. Leibniz attempted to create a definition for a straight line while attempting to prove the parallel postulate. While most mathematicians defined a straight line as the shortest line between two points, Leibniz believed that this was merely a property of a straight line rather than the definition.
Calculus
Leibniz is credited, along with Sir
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the grea ...
, with the discovery of
calculus
Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape, and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithm ...
(differential and integral calculus). According to Leibniz's notebooks, a critical breakthrough occurred on 11 November 1675, when he employed integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of a function .
He introduced several notations used to this day, for instance the integral sign , representing an elongated S, from the Latin word ''summa'', and the used for Differential (infinitesimal), differentials, from the Latin word ''differentia''. Leibniz did not publish anything about his calculus until 1684. Leibniz expressed the inverse relation of integration and differentiation, later called the fundamental theorem of calculus, by means of a figure in his 1693 paper ''Supplementum geometriae dimensoriae...''. However, James Gregory (mathematician), James Gregory is credited for the theorem's discovery in geometric form, Isaac Barrow proved a more generalized geometric version, and Isaac Newton, Newton developed supporting theory. The concept became more transparent as developed through Leibniz's formalism and new notation. The product rule of differential calculus is still called "Leibniz's law". In addition, the theorem that tells how and when to differentiate under the integral sign is called the Leibniz integral rule.
Leibniz exploited infinitesimals in developing calculus, manipulating them in ways suggesting that they had paradoxical
algebra
Algebra () is one of the broad areas of mathematics. Roughly speaking, algebra is the study of mathematical symbols and the rules for manipulating these symbols in formulas; it is a unifying thread of almost all of mathematics.
Elementary ...
ic properties. George Berkeley, in a tract called ''The Analyst'' and also in ''De Motu'', criticized these. A recent study argues that Leibnizian calculus was free of contradictions, and was better grounded than Berkeley's empiricist criticisms.
From 1711 until his death, Leibniz was engaged in a Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy, dispute with John Keill, Newton and others, over whether Leibniz had invented calculus independently of Newton.
The use of infinitesimals in mathematics was frowned upon by followers of Karl Weierstrass, but survived in science and engineering, and even in rigorous mathematics, via the fundamental computational device known as the Differential (infinitesimal), differential. Beginning in 1960, Abraham Robinson worked out a rigorous foundation for Leibniz's infinitesimals, using model theory, in the context of a field of hyperreal numbers. The resulting
non-standard analysis
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta ...
can be seen as a belated vindication of Leibniz's mathematical reasoning. Robinson's transfer principle is a mathematical implementation of Leibniz's heuristic
law of continuity
The law of continuity is a heuristic principle introduced by Gottfried Leibniz based on earlier work by Nicholas of Cusa and Johannes Kepler. It is the principle that "whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite". Kepler used ...
, while the standard part function implements the Leibnizian
transcendental law of homogeneity
In mathematics, the transcendental law of homogeneity (TLH) is a heuristic principle enunciated by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz most clearly in a 1710 text entitled ''Symbolismus memorabilis calculi algebraici et infinitesimalis in comparatione potent ...
.
Topology
Leibniz was the first to use the term ''analysis situs'', later used in the 19th century to refer to what is now known as topology. There are two takes on this situation. On the one hand, Mates, citing a 1954 paper in German by Jacob Freudenthal, argues:
But Hideaki Hirano argues differently, quoting Benoit Mandelbrot, Mandelbrot:
Thus the fractal, fractal geometry promoted by Mandelbrot drew on Leibniz's notions of self-similarity and the principle of continuity: ''
Natura non facit saltus''.
We also see that when Leibniz wrote, in a metaphysical vein, that "the straight line is a curve, any part of which is similar to the whole", he was anticipating topology by more than two centuries. As for "packing", Leibniz told his friend and correspondent Des Bosses to imagine a circle, then to inscribe within it three congruent circles with maximum radius; the latter smaller circles could be filled with three even smaller circles by the same procedure. This process can be continued infinitely, from which arises a good idea of self-similarity. Leibniz's improvement of Euclid's axiom contains the same concept.
Scientist and engineer
Leibniz's writings are currently discussed, not only for their anticipations and possible discoveries not yet recognized, but as ways of advancing present knowledge. Much of his writing on physics is included in Gerhardt's ''Mathematical Writings''.
Physics
Leibniz contributed a fair amount to the statics and dynamics emerging around him, often disagreeing with
Descartes and Isaac Newton, Newton. He devised a new theory of
motion
In physics, motion is the phenomenon in which an object changes its position with respect to time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed and frame of reference to an observer and m ...
(Dynamics (mechanics), dynamics) based on kinetic energy and potential energy, which posited space as relative, whereas Newton was thoroughly convinced that space was absolute. An important example of Leibniz's mature physical thinking is his ''Specimen Dynamicum'' of 1695.
Until the discovery of subatomic particles and the quantum mechanics governing them, many of Leibniz's speculative ideas about aspects of nature not reducible to statics and dynamics made little sense. For instance, he anticipated
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
by arguing, against Newton, that
space
Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. In classical physics, physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually cons ...
, time and motion are relative, not absolute: "As for my own opinion, I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something merely relative, as time is, that I hold it to be an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions."
Leibniz held a Relational theory, relationist notion of space and time, against Newton's substantivalist views. According to Newton's substantivalism, space and time are entities in their own right, existing independently of things. Leibniz's relationism, in contrast, describes space and time as systems of relations that exist between objects. The rise of general relativity and subsequent work in the history of physics has put Leibniz's stance in a more favorable light.
One of Leibniz's projects was to recast Newton's theory as a Mechanical explanations of gravitation, vortex theory.
[Arthur 2014, p. 56.] However, his project went beyond vortex theory, since at its heart there was an attempt to explain one of the most difficult problems in physics, that of the origin of the Cohesion (chemistry), cohesion of matter.
The
principle of sufficient reason
The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or a cause. The principle was articulated and made prominent by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, with many antecedents, and was further used and developed by Arthur Schopenhau ...
has been invoked in recent cosmology, and his identity of indiscernibles in quantum mechanics, a field some even credit him with having anticipated in some sense. In addition to his theories about the nature of reality, Leibniz's contributions to the development of calculus have also had a major impact on physics.
The ''vis viva''
Leibniz's ''vis viva'' (Latin for "living force") is , twice the modern kinetic energy. He realized that the total energy would be conserved in certain mechanical systems, so he considered it an innate motive characteristic of matter. Here too his thinking gave rise to another regrettable nationalistic dispute. His ''vis viva'' was seen as rivaling the conservation of momentum championed by Newton in England and by
Descartes and Voltaire in France; hence academics in those countries tended to neglect Leibniz's idea. Leibniz knew of the validity of conservation of momentum. In reality, both energy and momentum are conserved, so both approaches are valid.
Other natural science
By proposing that the earth has a molten core, he anticipated modern geology. In embryology, he was a preformationist, but also proposed that organisms are the outcome of a combination of an infinite number of possible microstructures and of their powers. In the life sciences and paleontology, he revealed an amazing transformist intuition, fueled by his study of comparative anatomy and fossils. One of his principal works on this subject, ''Protogaea'', unpublished in his lifetime, has recently been published in English for the first time. He worked out a primal organismic theory. In medicine, he exhorted the physicians of his time—with some results—to ground their theories in detailed comparative observations and verified experiments, and to distinguish firmly scientific and metaphysical points of view.
Psychology
Psychology had been a central interest of Leibniz. He appears to be an "underappreciated pioneer of psychology" He wrote on topics which are now regarded as fields of psychology: attention and consciousness, memory, learning (Association (psychology), association), motivation (the act of "striving"), emergent individuality, the general dynamics of development (evolutionary psychology). His discussions in the ''New Essays'' and ''Monadology'' often rely on everyday observations such as the behaviour of a dog or the noise of the sea, and he develops intuitive analogies (the synchronous running of clocks or the balance spring of a clock). He also devised postulates and principles that apply to psychology: the continuum of the unnoticed ''petites perceptions'' to the distinct, self-aware apperception, and psychophysical parallelism from the point of view of causality and of purpose: "Souls act according to the laws of final causes, through aspirations, ends and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes, i.e. the laws of motion. And these two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, harmonize with one another." This idea refers to the mind-body problem, stating that the mind and brain do not act upon each other, but act alongside each other separately but in harmony. Leibniz, however, did not use the term ''psychologia''.
Leibniz's epistemological position—against
John Locke and English empiricism (sensualism)—was made clear: "Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi intellectu ipse." – "Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself." Principles that are not present in sensory impressions can be recognised in human perception and consciousness: logical inferences, categories of thought, the principle of causality and the principle of purpose (teleology).
Leibniz found his most important interpreter in Wilhelm Wundt, founder of psychology as a discipline. Wundt used the "… nisi intellectu ipse" quotation 1862 on the title page of his ''Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung'' (Contributions on the Theory of Sensory Perception) and published a detailed and aspiring monograph on Leibniz. Wundt shaped the term apperception, introduced by Leibniz, into an experimental psychologically based apperception psychology that included neuropsychological modelling – an excellent example of how a concept created by a great philosopher could stimulate a psychological research program. One principle in the thinking of Leibniz played a fundamental role: "the principle of equality of separate but corresponding viewpoints." Wundt characterized this style of thought (perspectivism) in a way that also applied for him—viewpoints that "supplement one another, while also being able to appear as opposites that only resolve themselves when considered more deeply."
Much of Leibniz's work went on to have a great impact on the field of psychology. Leibniz thought that there are many petites perceptions, or small perceptions of which we perceive but of which we are unaware. He believed that by the principle that phenomena found in nature were continuous by default, it was likely that the transition between conscious and unconscious states had intermediary steps. For this to be true, there must also be a portion of the mind of which we are unaware at any given time. His theory regarding consciousness in relation to the principle of continuity can be seen as an early theory regarding the stages of sleep. In this way, Leibniz's theory of perception can be viewed as one of many theories leading up to the idea of the The unconscious, unconscious. Leibniz was a direct influence on Ernst Platner, who is credited with originally coining the term Unbewußtseyn (unconscious). Additionally, the idea of subliminal stimuli can be traced back to his theory of small perceptions. Leibniz's ideas regarding music and tonal perception went on to influence the laboratory studies of Wilhelm Wundt.
Social science
In public health, he advocated establishing a medical administrative authority, with powers over epidemiology and veterinary medicine. He worked to set up a coherent medical training program, oriented towards public health and preventive measures. In economic policy, he proposed tax reforms and a national insurance program, and discussed the balance of trade. He even proposed something akin to what much later emerged as game theory. In sociology he laid the ground for communication theory.
Technology
In 1906, Garland published a volume of Leibniz's writings bearing on his many practical inventions and engineering work. To date, few of these writings have been translated into English. Nevertheless, it is well understood that Leibniz was a serious inventor, engineer, and applied scientist, with great respect for practical life. Following the motto ''theoria cum praxi'', he urged that theory be combined with practical application, and thus has been claimed as the father of applied science. He designed wind-driven propellers and water pumps, mining machines to extract ore, hydraulic presses, lamps, submarines, clocks, etc. With Denis Papin, he created a steam engine. He even proposed a method for desalinating water. From 1680 to 1685, he struggled to overcome the chronic flooding that afflicted the ducal silver mines in the Harz Mountains, but did not succeed.
Computation
Leibniz may have been the first computer scientist and information theorist. Early in life, he documented the binary numeral system (radix, base 2), then revisited that system throughout his career. While Leibniz was examining other cultures to compare his metaphysical views, he encountered an ancient Chinese book ''I Ching''. Leibniz interpreted a diagram which showed yin and yang and corresponded it to a zero and one. More information can be found in the #Sinophile, Sinophile section. Leibniz may have plagiarized Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz and Thomas Harriot, who independently developed the binary system, as he was familiar with their works on the binary system. Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz worked extensively on logarithms including logarithms with base 2. Thomas Harriot's manuscripts contained a table of binary numbers and their notation, which demonstrated that any number could be written on a base 2 system. Regardless, Leibniz simplified the binary system and articulated logical properties such as conjunction, disjunction, negation, identity, inclusion, and the empty set. He anticipated Lagrange polynomial, Lagrangian interpolation and algorithmic information theory. His
calculus ratiocinator
The ''calculus ratiocinator'' is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned ''characteristica universalis'', a universal conce ...
anticipated aspects of the universal Turing machine. In 1961, Norbert Wiener suggested that Leibniz should be considered the patron saint of cybernetics. Wiener is quoted with "Indeed, the general idea of a computing machine is nothing but a mechanization of Leibniz's Calculus Ratiocinator."
In 1671, Leibniz began to invent a machine that could execute all four arithmetic operations, gradually improving it over a number of years. This "stepped reckoner" attracted fair attention and was the basis of his election to the
Royal Society
The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...
in 1673. A number of such machines were made during his years in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
by a craftsman working under his supervision. They were not an unambiguous success because they did not fully mechanize the Carry (arithmetic), carry operation. Couturat reported finding an unpublished note by Leibniz, dated 1674, describing a machine capable of performing some algebraic operations. Leibniz also devised a (now reproduced) cipher machine, recovered by Nicholas Rescher in 2010. In 1693, Leibniz described a design of a machine which could, in theory, integrate differential equations, which he called "integraph".
Leibniz was groping towards hardware and software concepts worked out much later by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace. In 1679, while mulling over his binary arithmetic, Leibniz imagined a machine in which binary numbers were represented by marbles, governed by a rudimentary sort of punched cards. Modern electronic digital computers replace Leibniz's marbles moving by gravity with shift registers, voltage gradients, and pulses of electrons, but otherwise they run roughly as Leibniz envisioned in 1679.
Librarian
Later in Leibniz's career (after the death of von Boyneburg), Leibniz moved to Paris and accepted a position as a librarian in the Hanoverian court of Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg. Leibniz's predecessor, Tobias Fleischer, had already created a cataloging system for the Duke's library but it was a clumsy attempt. At this library, Leibniz focused more on advancing the library than on the cataloging. For instance, within a month of taking the new position, he developed a comprehensive plan to expand the library. He was one of the first to consider developing a core collection for a library and felt "that a library for display and ostentation is a luxury and indeed superfluous, but a well-stocked and organized library is important and useful for all areas of human endeavor and is to be regarded on the same level as schools and churches".
Unfortunately, Leibniz lacked the funds to develop the library in this manner. After working at this library, by the end of 1690 Leibniz was appointed as privy-councilor and librarian of the Bibliotheca Augusta at Wolfenbüttel. It was an extensive library with at least 25,946 printed volumes.
At this library, Leibniz sought to improve the catalog. He was not allowed to make complete changes to the existing closed catalog, but was allowed to improve upon it so he started on that task immediately. He created an alphabetical author catalog and had also created other cataloging methods that were not implemented. While serving as librarian of the ducal libraries in
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
and
Wolfenbüttel
Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest ...
, Leibniz effectively became one of the founders of
library science
Library science (often termed library studies, bibliothecography, and library economy) is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, an ...
. Seemingly, Leibniz paid a good deal of attention to the classification of subject matter, favoring a well-balance library covering a host of numerous subjects and interests.
Leibniz, for example, proposed the following classification system in the Otivm Hanoveranvm Sive Miscellanea (1737).
Leibniz's Idea of Arranging a Narrower Library
* Theology
* Jurisprudence
* Medicine
* Intellectual Philosophy
* Philosophy of the Imagination or Mathematics
* Philosophy of Sensible Things or Physics
* Philology or Language
* Civil History
* Literary History and Libraries
* General and Miscellaneous
He also designed a book library classification, indexing system in ignorance of the only other such system then extant, that of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. He also called on publishers to distribute abstracts of all new titles they produced each year, in a standard form that would facilitate indexing. He hoped that this abstracting project would eventually include everything printed from his day back to Johannes Gutenberg, Gutenberg. Neither proposal met with success at the time, but something like them became standard practice among English language publishers during the 20th century, under the aegis of the Library of Congress and the British Library.
He called for the creation of an empirical database as a way to further all sciences. His ''
characteristica universalis
The Latin term ''characteristica universalis'', commonly interpreted as ''universal characteristic'', or ''universal character'' in English, is a universal and formal language imagined by Gottfried Leibniz able to express mathematical, scienti ...
'',
calculus ratiocinator
The ''calculus ratiocinator'' is a theoretical universal logical calculation framework, a concept described in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz, usually paired with his more frequently mentioned ''characteristica universalis'', a universal conce ...
, and a "community of minds"—intended, among other things, to bring political and religious unity to Europe—can be seen as distant unwitting anticipations of artificial languages (e.g., Esperanto and its rivals),
symbolic logic, even the World Wide Web.
Advocate of scientific societies
Leibniz emphasized that research was a collaborative endeavor. Hence he warmly advocated the formation of national scientific societies along the lines of the Royal Society, British Royal Society and the French Académie Royale des Sciences. More specifically, in his correspondence and travels he urged the creation of such societies in Dresden, Saint Petersburg, Vienna, and Berlin. Only one such project came to fruition; in 1700, the
Berlin Academy of Sciences was created. Leibniz drew up its first statutes, and served as its first President for the remainder of his life. That Academy evolved into the German Academy of Sciences, the publisher of the ongoing critical edition of his works.
Lawyer and moralist
Leibniz's writings on law, ethics, and politics were long overlooked by English-speaking scholars, but this has changed of late.
While Leibniz was no apologist for absolute monarchy like Hobbes, or for tyranny in any form, neither did he echo the political and constitutional views of his contemporary
John Locke, views invoked in support of liberalism, in 18th-century America and later elsewhere. The following excerpt from a 1695 letter to Baron J. C. Boyneburg's son Philipp is very revealing of Leibniz's political sentiments:
In 1677, Leibniz called for a European confederation, governed by a council or senate, whose members would represent entire nations and would be free to vote their consciences; this is sometimes considered an anticipation of the European Union. He believed that Europe would adopt a uniform religion. He reiterated these proposals in 1715.
But at the same time, he arrived to propose an interreligious and multicultural project to create a universal system of justice, which required from him a broad interdisciplinary perspective. In order to propose it, he combined linguistics (especially sinology), moral and legal philosophy, management, economics, and politics.
Law
Leibniz trained as a legal academic, but under the tutelage of Cartesian-sympathiser Erhard Weigel we already see an attempt to solve legal problems by rationalist mathematical methods (Weigel’s influence being most explicit in the Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum ex Jure collectarum (An Essay of Collected Philosophical Problems of Right)). For example, the Inaugural Disputation on Perplexing Cases uses early combinatorics to solve some legal disputes, while the 1666 Dissertation on the Combinatorial Art includes simple legal problems by way of illustration.
The use of combinatorial methods to solve legal and moral problems seems, via Athanasius Kircher and Daniel Schwenter to be of Llullist inspiration: Ramón Llull attempted to solve ecumenical disputes through recourse to a combinatorial mode of reasoning he regarded as universal (a mathesis universalis).
In the late 1660s the enlightened Prince-Bishop of Mainz
Johann Philipp von Schönborn
Johann Philipp von Schönborn (6 August 1605 – 12 February 1673) was the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz (1647–1673), the Bishop of Würzburg (1642–1673), and the Bishop of Worms (1663–1673).
Life
Johann Philipp was born in ...
announced a review of the legal system and made available a position to support his current law commissioner. Leibniz left Franconia and made for Mainz before even winning the role. On reaching Frankfurt am Main Leibniz penned The New Method of Teaching and Learning the Law, by way of application. The text proposed a reform of legal education and is characteristically syncretic, integrating aspects of Thomism, Hobbesianism, Cartesianism and traditional jurisprudence. Leibniz’s argument that the function of legal teaching was not to impress rules as one might train a dog, but to aid the student in discovering their own public reason, evidently impressed von Schönborn as he secured the job.
Leibniz’s next major attempt to find a universal rational core to law and so found a legal “science of right”, came when Leibniz worked in Mainz from 1667-72. Starting initially from Hobbes’ mechanistic doctrine of power, Leibniz reverted to logico-combinatorial methods in an attempt to define justice. As Leibniz’s so-called Elementa Juris Naturalis advanced, he built in modal notions of right (possibility) and obligation (necessity) in which we see perhaps the earliest elaboration of his possible worlds doctrine within a deontic frame. While ultimately the Elementa remained unpublished, Leibniz continued to work on his drafts and promote their ideas to correspondents up until his death.
Ecumenism
Leibniz devoted considerable intellectual and diplomatic effort to what would now be called an ecumenism, ecumenical endeavor, seeking to reconcile the Roman Catholic and
Lutheran
Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...
churches. In this respect, he followed the example of his early patrons, Baron von Boyneburg and the Duke
John Frederickboth cradle Lutherans who converted to Catholicism as adultswho did what they could to encourage the reunion of the two faiths, and who warmly welcomed such endeavors by others. (The House of
Brunswick remained Lutheran, because the Duke's children did not follow their father.) These efforts included corresponding with French bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, and involved Leibniz in some theological controversy. He evidently thought that the thoroughgoing application of reason would suffice to heal the breach caused by the Protestant Reformation, Reformation.
Philologist
Leibniz the philologist was an avid student of languages, eagerly latching on to any information about vocabulary and grammar that came his way. He refuted the belief, widely held by Christian scholars of the time, that Hebrew language, Hebrew was the primeval language of the human race. He also refuted the argument, advanced by Swedish scholars in his day, that a form of proto-Swedish language, Swedish was the ancestor of the Germanic languages. He puzzled over the origins of the Slavic languages and was fascinated by classical Chinese. Leibniz was also an expert in the Sanskrit language.
He published the ''princeps editio'' (first modern edition) of the Late Middle Ages, late medieval ''Chronicon Holtzatiae'', a Latin chronicle of the County of Holstein.
Sinophile
Leibniz was perhaps the first major European intellectual to take a close interest in Chinese civilization, which he knew by corresponding with, and reading other works by, Jesuit China missions, European Christian missionaries posted in China. He apparently read ''Philippe Couplet, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus'' in the first year of its publication.
He came to the conclusion that Europeans could learn much from the Confucianism, Confucian ethical tradition. He mulled over the possibility that the Chinese characters were an unwitting form of his Characteristica universalis, universal characteristic. He noted how the ''I Ching'' hexagrams correspond to the
binary numbers from 000000 to 111111, and concluded that this mapping was evidence of major Chinese accomplishments in the sort of philosophical mathematics he admired. Leibniz communicated his ideas of the binary system representing Christianity to the Emperor of China, hoping it would convert him.
Leibniz was the only major Western philosopher of the time who attempted to accommodate Confucian ideas to prevailing European beliefs.
Leibniz's attraction to Chinese philosophy originates from his perception that Chinese philosophy was similar to his own.
The historian E.R. Hughes suggests that Leibniz's ideas of "simple substance" and "pre-established harmony" were directly influenced by Confucianism, pointing to the fact that they were conceived during the period when he was reading ''Confucius Sinarum Philosophus''.
Polymath
While making his grand tour of European archives to research the Brunswick family history that he never completed, Leibniz stopped in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
between May 1688 and February 1689, where he did much legal and diplomatic work for the Brunswicks. He visited mines, talked with mine engineers, and tried to negotiate export contracts for lead from the ducal mines in the Harz mountains. His proposal that the streets of Vienna be lit with lamps burning rapeseed oil was implemented. During a formal audience with the Holy Roman Emperor, Austrian Emperor and in subsequent memoranda, he advocated reorganizing the Austrian economy, reforming the coinage of much of central Europe, negotiating a Concordat between the
Habsburgs and the Holy See, Vatican, and creating an imperial research library, official archive, and public insurance fund. He wrote and published an important paper on mechanics.
Posthumous reputation
![Leibnizstrasse street sign Berlin](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Leibnizstrasse_street_sign_Berlin.jpg)
When Leibniz died, his reputation was in decline. He was remembered for only one book, the ''
Théodicée
(from French: ''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more simply known as , is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. The book, published in 1710, introduced the term ...
'', whose supposed central argument
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
lampooned in his popular book ''
Candide'', which concludes with the character Candide saying, "''Non liquet''" (it is not clear), a term that was applied during the Roman Republic to a legal verdict of "not proven". Voltaire's depiction of Leibniz's ideas was so influential that many believed it to be an accurate description. Thus Voltaire and his ''Candide'' bear some of the blame for the lingering failure to appreciate and understand Leibniz's ideas. Leibniz had an ardent disciple, Christian Wolff (philosopher), Christian Wolff, whose dogmatic and facile outlook did Leibniz's reputation much harm. He also influenced David Hume, who read his ''
Théodicée
(from French: ''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more simply known as , is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. The book, published in 1710, introduced the term ...
'' and used some of his ideas. In any event, philosophical fashion was moving away from the rationalism and system building of the 17th century, of which Leibniz had been such an ardent proponent. His work on law, diplomacy, and history was seen as of ephemeral interest. The vastness and richness of his correspondence went unrecognized.
Much of Europe came to doubt that Leibniz had discovered calculus independently of Newton, and hence his whole work in mathematics and physics was neglected. Voltaire, an admirer of Newton, also wrote ''Candide'' at least in part to discredit Leibniz's claim to having discovered calculus and Leibniz's charge that Newton's theory of universal gravitation was incorrect.
Leibniz's long march to his present glory began with the 1765 publication of the ''Nouveaux Essais'', which Immanuel Kant, Kant read closely. In 1768, Louis Dutens edited the first multi-volume edition of Leibniz's writings, followed in the 19th century by a number of editions, including those edited by Erdmann, Foucher de Careil, Gerhardt, Gerland, Klopp, and Mollat. Publication of Leibniz's correspondence with notables such as
Antoine Arnauld
Antoine Arnauld (6 February 16128 August 1694) was a French Catholic theologian, philosopher and mathematician. He was one of the leading intellectuals of the Jansenist group of Port-Royal and had a very thorough knowledge of patristics. Cont ...
, Samuel Clarke,
Sophia of Hanover, and her daughter
Sophia Charlotte of Hanover
Sophia Charlotte of Hanover (30 October 1668 – 1 February 1705) was the first Queen consort in Prussia as wife of King Frederick I. She was the only daughter of Elector Ernest Augustus of Hanover and his wife Sophia of the Palatinate. Her eld ...
, began.
In 1900, Bertrand Russell published a critical study of Leibniz's
metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
. Shortly thereafter,
Louis Couturat
Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido.
Life and education
Born in Ris-Orangis, Essonne, France. In 1887 he ...
published an important study of Leibniz, and edited a volume of Leibniz's heretofore unpublished writings, mainly on logic. They made Leibniz somewhat respectable among 20th-century analytic philosophy, analytical and linguistic philosophy, linguistic philosophers in the English-speaking world (Leibniz had already been of great influence to many Germans such as Bernhard Riemann). For example, Leibniz's phrase ''salva veritate'', meaning interchangeability without loss of or compromising the truth, recurs in Willard Quine's writings. Nevertheless, the secondary literature on Leibniz did not really blossom until after World War II. This is especially true of English speaking countries; in Gregory Brown's bibliography fewer than 30 of the English language entries were published before 1946. American Leibniz studies owe much to Leroy Loemker (1904–1985) through his translations and his interpretive essays in LeClerc (1973).
Nicholas Jolley has surmised that Leibniz's reputation as a philosopher is now perhaps higher than at any time since he was alive. Analytic and contemporary philosophy continue to invoke his notions of Identity (philosophy), identity,
individuation
The principle of individuation, or ', describes the manner in which a thing is identified as distinct from other things.
The concept appears in numerous fields and is encountered in works of Leibniz, Carl Gustav Jung, Gunther Anders, Gilbert Sim ...
, and possible worlds. Work in the history of 17th- and 18th-century history of ideas, ideas has revealed more clearly the 17th-century "Intellectual Revolution" that preceded the better-known industrial revolution, Industrial and commercial revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1985, the German government created the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Leibniz Prize, offering an annual award of 1.55 million euros for experimental results and 770,000 euros for theoretical ones. It was the world's largest prize for scientific achievement prior to the Fundamental Physics Prize.
The collection of manuscript papers of Leibniz at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek – Niedersächische Landesbibliothek was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2007.
Cultural references
Leibniz still receives popular attention. The Google Doodle for 1 July 2018 celebrated Leibniz's 372nd birthday. Using a quill, his hand is shown writing "Google" in binary ASCII code.
One of the earliest popular but indirect expositions of Leibniz was
Voltaire
François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—es ...
's satire ''
Candide'', published in 1759. Leibniz was lampooned as Professor Pangloss, described as "the greatest philosopher of the
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a political entity in Western, Central, and Southern Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806 during the Napoleonic Wars.
From the accession of Otto I in 962 ...
".
Leibniz also appears as one of the main historical figures in Neal Stephenson's series of novels ''The Baroque Cycle''. Stephenson credits readings and discussions concerning Leibniz for inspiring him to write the series.
[Stephenson, Neal. "How the Baroque Cycle Began" in P.S. of ''Quicksilver (novel), Quicksilver'' Perennial ed. 2004.]
Leibniz also stars in Adam Ehrlich Sachs's novel ''The Organs of Sense''.
Writings and publication
Leibniz mainly wrote in three languages: scholastic
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, French and German. During his lifetime, he published many pamphlets and scholarly articles, but only two "philosophical" books, the ''Combinatorial Art'' and the ''
Théodicée
(from French: ''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more simply known as , is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. The book, published in 1710, introduced the term ...
''. (He published numerous pamphlets, often anonymous, on behalf of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg, most notably the "De jure suprematum" a major consideration of the nature of sovereignty.) One substantial book appeared posthumously, his ''Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain'', which Leibniz had withheld from publication after the death of
John Locke. Only in 1895, when Bodemann completed his catalogue of Leibniz's manuscripts and correspondence, did the enormous extent of Leibniz's ''Nachlass'' become clear: about 15,000 letters to more than 1000 recipients plus more than 40,000 other items. Moreover, quite a few of these letters are of essay length. Much of his vast correspondence, especially the letters dated after 1700, remains unpublished, and much of what is published has appeared only in recent decades. The more than 67,000 records of th
Leibniz Edition's Cataloguecover almost all of his known writings and the letters from him and to him. The amount, variety, and disorder of Leibniz's writings are a predictable result of a situation he described in a letter as follows:
The extant parts of the critical edition
of Leibniz's writings are organized as follows:
* Series 1. ''Political, Historical, and General Correspondence''. 25 vols., 1666–1706.
* Series 2. ''Philosophical Correspondence''. 3 vols., 1663–1700.
* Series 3. ''Mathematical, Scientific, and Technical Correspondence''. 8 vols., 1672–1698.
* Series 4.
Political Writings'. 9 vols., 1667–1702.
* Series 5.
Historical and Linguistic Writings'. In preparation.
* Series 6. ''Philosophical Writings''. 7 vols., 1663–90, and ''Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain''.
* Series 7. ''Mathematical Writings''. 6 vols., 1672–76.
* Series 8. ''Scientific, Medical, and Technical Writings''. 1 vol., 1668–76.
The systematic cataloguing of all of Leibniz's ''Nachlass'' began in 1901. It was hampered by two world wars and then by decades of German division into two states with the Cold War's "iron curtain" in between, separating scholars, and also scattering portions of his literary estates. The ambitious project has had to deal with writings in seven languages, contained in some 200,000 written and printed pages. In 1985 it was reorganized and included in a joint program of German federal and state (''Länder'') academies. Since then the branches in Potsdam, Münster,
Hanover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...
and Berlin have jointly published 57 volumes of the critical edition, with an average of 870 pages, and prepared index and Concordance (publishing), concordance works.
Selected works
The year given is usually that in which the work was completed, not of its eventual publication.
* 1666 (publ. 1690). ''
De Arte Combinatoria
The ''Dissertatio de arte combinatoria'' ("Dissertation on the Art of Combinations" or "On the Combinatorial Art") is an early work by Gottfried Leibniz published in 1666 in Leipzig. It is an extended version of his first doctoral dissertation, wr ...
'' (''On the Art of Combination''); partially translated in Loemker §1 and Parkinson (1966)
* 1667. ''Nova Methodus Discendae Docendaeque Iurisprudentiae'' (''A New Method for Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence'')
* 1667. "Dialogus de connexione inter res et verba"
* 1671. ''Hypothesis Physica Nova'' (''New Physical Hypothesis''); Loemker §8.I (part)
* 1673 ''Confessio philosophi'' (''A Philosopher's Creed''); an English translation i
availableonline.
* Oct. 1684. "Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis" ("Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas")
* Nov. 1684. "Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis" ("New method for maximums and minimums"); translated in Struik, D. J., 1969. ''A Source Book in Mathematics, 1200–1800''. Harvard University Press: 271–81.
* 1686. ''Discourse on Metaphysics (book), Discours de métaphysique''; Martin and Brown (1988), Ariew and Garber 35, Loemker §35, Wiener III.3, Woolhouse and Francks 1
* 1686. ''Generales inquisitiones de analysi notionum et veritatum'' (''General Inquiries About the Analysis of Concepts and of Truths'')
* 1694. "De primae philosophiae Emendatione, et de Notione Substantiae" ("On the Correction of First Philosophy and the Notion of Substance")
* 1695. ''Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances'' (''New System of Nature'')
* 1700. ''Accessiones historicae''
[.]
* 1703. "Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire" ("Explanation of Binary Arithmetic"); Carl Immanuel Gerhardt, ''Mathematical Writings'' VII.223. An English translation by Lloyd Strickland i
availableonline.
* 1704 (publ. 1765). ''Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain''. Translated in: Remnant, Peter, and Bennett, Jonathan, trans., 1996. ''New Essays on Human Understanding'' Langley translation 1896. Cambridge University Press. Wiener III.6 (part)
* 1707–1710. ''Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium''
(3 Vols.)
* 1710. ''
Théodicée
(from French: ''Essays of Theodicy on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil''), more simply known as , is a book of philosophy by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz. The book, published in 1710, introduced the term ...
''; Farrer, A. M., and Huggard, E. M., trans., 1985 (1952). Wiener III.11 (part). An English translation i
availableonline at Project Gutenberg.
* 1714. "Principes de la nature et de la Grâce fondés en raison"
* 1714. ''Monadologie''; translated by Nicholas Rescher, 1991. ''The Monadology: An Edition for Students''. University of Pittsburgh Press. Ariew and Garber 213, Loemker §67, Wiener III.13, Woolhouse and Francks 19. An English translation by Robert Latta i
availableonline.
Posthumous works
![Leibniz - Opere](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Leibniz_-_Opere._Lettere_e_carteggi%2C_1745_-_1359735_F.jpeg)
* 1717. ''Collectanea Etymologica'', edited by the secretary of Leibniz Johann Georg von Eckhart
* 1749. ''Protogaea''
* 1750. ''Origines Guelficae''
Collections
Six important collections of English translations are Wiener (1951), Parkinson (1966), Loemker (1969), Ariew and Garber (1989), Woolhouse and Francks (1998), and Strickland (2006). The ongoing critical edition of all of Leibniz's writings is ''Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe''.
See also
* General Leibniz rule
* Leibniz Association
* Leibniz operator
* List of German inventors and discoverers
* List of pioneers in computer science
* List of things named after Gottfried Leibniz
* ''Mathesis universalis''
* Scientific revolution
* Leibniz University Hannover
* Bartholomew Des Bosses
* Joachim Bouvet
* Outline of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
* Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz bibliography
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Bibliographies
* Bodemann, Eduard, ''Die Leibniz-Handschriften der Königlichen öffentlichen Bibliothek zu Hannover'', 1895, (anastatic reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1966).
* Bodemann, Eduard, ''Der Briefwechsel des Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in der Königlichen öffentliche Bibliothek zu Hannover'', 1895, (anastatic reprint: Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1966).
* Ravier, Émile, ''Bibliographie des œuvres de Leibniz'', Paris: Alcan, 1937 (anastatic reprint Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1966).
* Heinekamp, Albert and Mertens, Marlen. ''Leibniz-Bibliographie. Die Literatur über Leibniz bis 1980'', Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1984.
* Heinekamp, Albert and Mertens, Marlen. ''Leibniz-Bibliographie. Die Literatur über Leibniz. Band II: 1981–1990'', Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996.
An updated bibliography of more than 25.000 titles is available a
Leibniz Bibliographie
Primary literature (chronologically)
* Wiener, Philip, (ed.), 1951. ''Leibniz: Selections''. Scribner.
* Schrecker, Paul & Schrecker, Anne Martin, (eds.), 1965. ''Monadology and other Philosophical Essays''. Prentice-Hall.
* George Henry Radcliffe Parkinson, Parkinson, G. H. R. (ed.), 1966. ''Logical Papers''. Clarendon Press.
* Mason, H. T. & Parkinson, G. H. R. (eds.), 1967. ''The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence''. Manchester University Press.
* Loemker, Leroy, (ed.), 1969 [1956]. ''Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters''. Reidel.
* Morris, Mary & Parkinson, G. H. R. (eds.), 1973. ''Philosophical Writings''. Everyman's University Library.
* Riley, Patrick, (ed.), 1988. ''Leibniz: Political Writings''. Cambridge University Press.
* Niall, R. Martin, D. & Brown, Stuart (eds.), 1988. ''Discourse on Metaphysics and Related Writings''. Manchester University Press.
* Ariew, Roger and Garber, Daniel. (eds.), 1989. ''Leibniz: Philosophical Essays''. Hackett.
* Rescher, Nicholas (ed.), 1991. ''G. W. Leibniz's Monadology. An Edition for Students'', University of Pittsburgh Press.
* Rescher, Nicholas, ''On Leibniz'', (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013).
* Parkinson, G. H. R. (ed.) 1992. ''De Summa Rerum. Metaphysical Papers, 1675–1676''. Yale University Press.
* Cook, Daniel, & Rosemont, Henry Jr., (eds.), 1994. ''Leibniz: Writings on China''. Open Court.
* Farrer, Austin (ed.), 1995. ''Theodicy'', Open Court.
* Remnant, Peter, & Bennett, Jonathan, (eds.), 1996 (1981). ''Leibniz: New Essays on Human Understanding''. Cambridge University Press.
* Roger Woolhouse, Woolhouse, R. S., and Francks, R., (eds.), 1997. ''Leibniz's 'New System' and Associated Contemporary Texts''. Oxford University Press.
* Woolhouse, R. S., and Francks, R., (eds.), 1998. ''Leibniz: Philosophical Texts''. Oxford University Press.
* Ariew, Roger, (ed.), 2000. ''G. W. Leibniz and Samuel Clarke: Correspondence''. Hackett.
* Richard T. W. Arthur, (ed.), 2001. ''The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672–1686''. Yale University Press.
* Richard T. W. Arthur, 2014. ''Leibniz''. John Wiley & Sons.
* Robert C. Sleigh Jr., (ed.), 2005. ''Confessio Philosophi: Papers Concerning the Problem of Evil, 1671–1678''. Yale University Press.
* Dascal, Marcelo (ed.), 2006. "G. W. Leibniz. The Art of Controversies'', Springer.
* Strickland, Lloyd, 2006 (ed.). ''The Shorter Leibniz Texts: A Collection of New Translations''. Continuum.
* Look, Brandon and Rutherford, Donald (eds.), 2007. ''The Leibniz-Des Bosses Correspondence'', Yale University Press.
* Cohen, Claudine and Wakefield, Andre, (eds.), 2008. ''Protogaea''. University of Chicago Press.
* Murray, Michael, (ed.) 2011. ''Dissertation on Predestination and Grace'', Yale University Press.
* Strickand, Lloyd (ed.), 2011. ''Leibniz and the two Sophies. The Philosophical Correspondence'', Toronto.
* Lodge, Paul (ed.), 2013. ''The Leibniz-De Volder Correspondence: With Selections from the Correspondence Between Leibniz and Johann Bernoulli'', Yale University Press.
* Artosi, Alberto, Pieri, Bernardo, Sartor, Giovanni (eds.), 2014. ''Leibniz: Logico-Philosophical Puzzles in the Law'', Springer.
* De Iuliis, Carmelo Massimo, (ed.), 2017. ''Leibniz: The New Method of Learning and Teaching Jurisprudence'', Talbot, Clark NJ.
Secondary literature up to 1950
* Emil du Bois-Reymond, Du Bois-Reymond, Emil, 1912. ''Leibnizsche Gedanken in der neueren Naturwissenschaft'', Berlin: Dummler, 1871 (reprinted in ''Reden'', Leipzig: Veit, vol. 1).
* Louis Couturat, Couturat, Louis, 1901. ''La Logique de Leibniz''. Paris: Felix Alcan.
* Martin Heidegger, Heidegger, Martin, 1983. ''The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic''. Indiana University Press (lecture course, 1928).
* Lovejoy, Arthur O., 1957 (1936). "Plenitude and Sufficient Reason in Leibniz and Spinoza" in his ''The Great Chain of Being''. Harvard University Press: 144–182. Reprinted in Frankfurt, H. G., (ed.), 1972. ''Leibniz: A Collection of Critical Essays''. Anchor Books 1972.
* John Milton Mackie, Mackie, John Milton; Gottschalk Eduard Guhrauer, Guhrauer, Gottschalk Eduard, 1845. ''Life of Godfrey William von ''. Gould, Kendall and Lincoln.
* Bertrand Russell, Russell, Bertrand, 1900, ''A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leibniz'', Cambridge: The University Press.
*
* Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg, Trendelenburg, F. A., 1857, "Über Leibnizens Entwurf einer allgemeinen Charakteristik," ''Philosophische Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Aus dem Jahr 1856'', Berlin: Commission Dümmler, pp. 36–69.
* (lecture)
Secondary literature post-1950
* Adams, Robert Merrihew. 1994. ''Leibniz: Determinist, Theist, Idealist''. New York: Oxford, Oxford University Press.
* Aiton, Eric J., 1985. ''Leibniz: A Biography''. Hilger (UK).
* Maria Rosa Antognazza, 2008. ''Leibniz: An Intellectual Biography''. Cambridge Univ. Press.
*
*
* Brown, Stuart (ed.), 1999. ''The Young Leibniz and His Philosophy (1646–76)'', Dordrecht, Kluwer.
* Connelly, Stephen, 2021. ‘’Leibniz: A Contribution to the Archaeology of Power’’, Edinburgh University Press .
* Martin Davis (mathematician), Davis, Martin, 2000. ''The Universal Computer: The Road from Leibniz to Turing''. WW Norton.
* Gilles Deleuze, Deleuze, Gilles, 1993. ''The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque''. University of Minnesota Press.
* Jochen Fahrenberg, Fahrenberg, Jochen, 2017. PsyDok ZPI
The influence of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on the Psychology, Philosophy, and Ethics of Wilhelm Wundt.
* Jochen Fahrenberg, Fahrenberg, Jochen, 2020. ''Wilhelm Wundt (1832 – 1920). Introduction, Quotations, Reception, Commentaries, Attempts at Reconstruction''. Pabst Science Publishers, Lengerich 2020, .
* Finster, Reinhard & van den Heuvel, Gerd 2000. ''Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz''. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. 4. Auflage. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlts Monographien, 50481), .
* Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Grattan-Guinness, Ivor, 1997. ''The Norton History of the Mathematical Sciences''. W W Norton.
* Hall, A. R., 1980. ''Philosophers at War: The Quarrel between Newton and Leibniz''. Cambridge University Press.
* Hamza, Gabor, 2005. "Le développement du droit privé européen". ELTE Eotvos Kiado Budapest.
*
* Hostler, John, 1975. ''Leibniz's Moral Philosophy''. UK: Duckworth.
* Ishiguro, Hidé 1990. ''Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language''. Cambridge University Press.
* Jolley, Nicholas, (ed.), 1995. ''The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz''. Cambridge University Press.
* Kaldis, Byron, 2011. ''Leibniz' Argument for Innate Ideas'' in Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy edited by M Bruce & S Barbone. Blackwell.
*
* LeClerc, Ivor (ed.), 1973. ''The Philosophy of Leibniz and the Modern World''. Vanderbilt University Press.
*
* Benson Mates, Mates, Benson, 1986. ''The Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language''. Oxford University Press.
* Mercer, Christia, 2001. ''Leibniz's Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development''. Cambridge University Press.
* Perkins, Franklin, 2004. ''Leibniz and China: A Commerce of Light''. Cambridge University Press.
* Patrick T. Riley, Riley, Patrick, 1996. ''Leibniz's Universal Jurisprudence: Justice as the Charity of the Wise''. Harvard University Press.
* Donald Rutherford (philosopher), Rutherford, Donald, 1998. ''Leibniz and the Rational Order of Nature''. Cambridge University Press.
* Schulte-Albert, H. G. (1971). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Library Classification. ''The Journal of Library History'' (1966–1972), (2). 133–152.
* Smith, Justin E. H., 2011. ''Divine Machines. Leibniz and the Sciences of Life'', Princeton University Press.
* Wilson, Catherine, 1989. ''Leibniz's Metaphysics: A Historical and Comparative Study''. Princeton University Press.
*
External links
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Translationsby Jonathan Bennett (philosopher), Jonathan Bennett, of the ''New Essays'', the exchanges with Bayle, Arnauld and Clarke, and about 15 shorter works.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Texts and Translations compiled by Donald Rutherford, UCSD
Leibnitiana links and resources edited by Gregory Brown, University of Houston
Philosophical Works of Leibniz translated by G.M. Duncan (1890)The Best of All Possible Worlds: Nicholas Rescher Talks About Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz's "Versatility and Creativity""Protogæa"(1693, Latin, in ''Acta eruditorum'') – Linda Hall Library
''Protogaea''(1749, German) – full digital facsimile from Linda Hall Library
* Leibniz's (1768, 6-volume
''Opera omnia''– digital facsimile
* Leibniz's arithmetical machine, 1710, online and analyzed on
BibNum'
[click 'à télécharger' for English analysis]
* Leibniz's binary numeral system, 'De progressione dyadica', 1679, online and analyzed on
BibNum'
[click 'à télécharger' for English analysis]
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