Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Lore & Background

Leibniz contributed to the field of library science, developing a cataloguing system (at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany) that came to serve as a model for many of Europe's largest libraries. His contributions to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German. As a philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. As a mathematician, his major achievement was the development of differential and integral calculus, independently of Newton's developments. Although Newton first developed his theory earlier in 1666, and which had been in circulation among mathematicians since 1668, Leibniz's notation has been favoured as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus. In addition to his work on calculus, he is credited with devising the modern binary number system which is the basis of modern communications and digital computing (though the English astronomer Thomas Harriot had devised the same system decades before). He envisioned the field of combinatorial topology as early as 1679, and helped initiate the field of fractional calculus. In the 20th century, Leibniz's notions of the law of continuity and the transcendental law of homogeneity found a consistent mathematical formulation by means of non-standard analysis. He was also a pioneer in the field of mechanical calculators. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, later used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. In philosophy and theology, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created, a view sometimes lampooned by other thinkers, such as Voltaire in his satirical novella Candide. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three influential early modern rationalists. 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 antici

Reader's Guide

Leibniz was born on 1 July [OS: 21 June] 1646 in Leipzig, in the Electorate of Saxony of the Holy Roman Empire, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. He was baptized two days later at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig; his godfather was the Lutheran theologian Martin Geier. His father died when he was six years old, and Leibniz was raised by his mother and his uncle. His father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, where he also served as dean of philosophy. The boy inherited his father's personal library. He was given free access to it from the age of seven, shortly after his father's death. While Leibniz's schoolwork was largely confined to the study of a small canon 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, 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 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. There he was guided, among others, by Jakob Thomasius, previously a student of Friedrich. Leibniz completed his bachelor's degree in Philosophy in December 1662. He defended his Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui, which addressed the principle of individuation, on 9 June 1663 [O.S. 30 May], presenting an early version of monadic substance theory. Leibniz earned his master's degree in Philosophy on 7 February 1664. In December 1664 he published and defended a dissertation Specimen Quaestionum Philosophicarum ex Jure collectarum, 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. In early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, De Arte Combinatoria, 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, cast in geometrical form, and based on the argument from motion. His next goal was to e

Did You Know?

• Leibniz's first book, De Arte Combinatoria, was inspired by Ramon Llull's Ars Magna and contained a proof of the existence of God, cast in geometrical form, and based on the argument from motion.
• Leibniz is credited with devising the modern binary number system, though the English astronomer Thomas Harriot had devised the same system decades before.
• Leibniz invented the Leibniz wheel, later used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1 July 1646 {21 June O.S.} – 14 November 1716) was a German philosopher and mathematician." — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz "De arte characteristica ad perficiendas scientias ratione nitentes in C. I. Gerhardt (ed.), Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (7 vols. 1875–1890) VII 200." — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz "Languages are the best mirror of the human mind [and] the most ancient monu­ments of peoples." — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz "Theologus: Amare autem?Philosophus: Felicitate alterius delectari." — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz