Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (b. 1646, d. 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician who is probably most well known for having invented the differential and integral calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton). In his correspondence with the leading intellectual and political figures of his era, he discussed mathematics, logic, science, history, law, and theology.

Principal Works:

• De Arte Combinatoria (`On the Art of Combination'), 1666
• Hypothesis Physica Nova (`New Physical Hypothesis'), 1671
• Discours de m�taphysique (`Discourse on Metphysics'), 1686
• unpublished manuscripts on the calculus of concepts, c. 1690
• Nouveaux Essais sur L'entendement humaine (`New Essays on Human Understanding'), 1705
• Th�odic�e (`Theodicy'), 1710
• Monadologia (`The Monadology'), 1714

Leibniz's Life:

• Born July 1, 1646, in Leipzig
• 1661, entered University of Leipzig (as a law student)
• 1663, baccalaureate thesis, De Principio Individui (`On the Principle of the Individual')
• 1667, entered the service of the Baron of Boineburg
• 1672 - 1676, lived in Paris (met Malebranche, Arnauld, Huygens)
• 1675, laid the foundation of the differential/integral calculus
• 1676, entered the service of the Duke of Hannover; worked on hydraulic presses, windmills, lamps, submarines, clocks, carriages, water pumps, the binary number system
• published Nova Methodus Pro Maximus et Minimus (`New Method for the Greatest and the Least'), an exposition of his differential calculus
• 1685, took on the duties of historian for the House of Brunswick
• 1691, named librarian at Wolfenbuettel
• 1700, named foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris
• 1711, met the Russian czar Peter the Great
• Died, November 14, 1716, in Hannover

Leibniz's Contributions To Philosophy:

Leibniz is known among philosophers for his wide range of thought about fundamental philosophical ideas and principles, including truth, necessary and contingent truths, possible worlds, the principle of sufficient reason (i.e., that nothing occurs without a reason), the principle of pre-established harmony (i.e., that God constructed the universe in such a way that corresponding mental and physical events occur simultaneously), and the principle of noncontradiction (i.e., that any proposition from which a contradiction can be derived is false). Leibniz had a lifelong interest in and pursuit of the idea that the principles of reasoning could be reduced to a formal symbolic system, an algebra or calculus of thought, in which controversy would be settled by calculations.

Further Reading:

• Wolfgang Lenzen, Das System Der Leibnizschen Logik, Berlin: W.~de Gruyter, 1990
• Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986
• Nicholas Rescher, Leibniz, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979
• Chris Swoyer, `Leibniz on Intension and Extension', Nous 29/1 (1995): 96-114
• Chris Swoyer, `Leibniz's Calculus of Real Addition', Studia Leibnitiana XXVI/1 (1994): 1-30
• R. S. Woolhouse, (ed.), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Critical Assessments, Volumes I - IV, Routledge Publishing Co., 1993
• Edward N. Zalta, `A (Leibnizian) Theory of Concepts' (draft manuscript)