Baron von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646-1716 -
LeipzigPeople
Baron von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1646-1716 -
Leipzig
Encyclopedia Entries
The Intermet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Gottfried Leibniz
Questions of
Best of all possible worlds
Leibniz constructed the first mechanical calculator capable of multiplication and division. He also developed the modern form of the binary numeral system, Although there is some question of original authorship, Leibniz is credited along with Isaac Newton with inventing the infinitesimal calculus in the 1670s. He also tried to develop an alphabet of human thought, in which he tried to represent all fundamental concepts using symbols and combined these symbols to represent more complex thoughts. Leibniz never finished this. A related concept is mathesis universalis. His philosophical contribution to metaphysics is based on the Monadology, which introduces Monads as "substantial forms of being", which are akin to spiritual atoms, eternal, indecomposable, individual, following their own laws, not interacting ("windowless") but each reflecting the whole universe in pre-established harmony (a historically noteworthy expression of panpsychism). In the way sketched above the notion of a monad solves the problem of the interaction of mind and matter that arises in René Descartes' system, as well as the individuation that seems problematic in Baruch Spinoza's system, which represents individual creatures as mere accidental modifications of the one and only substance.
Reading
Monadologia (`The Monadology'), (1714)Théodicée (`Theodicy'), (1710)
Nouveaux Essais sur L'entendement humaine (`New Essays on Human Understanding'), (1705)
Discours de métaphysique (`Discourse on Metaphysics') (1686)
Hypothesis Physica Nova (`New Physical Hypothesis') (1671)
De Arte Combinatoria (`On the Art of Combination') (1666)
Writing available on the net
Commentaries
- European Graduate School - Gottfried Leibniz (http://www.egs.edu/resources/gottfriedleibniz.html)
- A Leibniz biography and bibliography (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/leibnitz.htm)
See Liebniz’s political writings, ed. and tr. by P. Riley (1972); G. H. Parkinson, Logic and Reality in Leibniz’s Metaphysics (1965); H. Ishiguro, Leibniz’s Philosophy of Logic and Language (1972); G. M. Ross Leibniz (1984); S. Brown Leibniz (1985).
Quotations