Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

"Leibniz" redirects here. For other uses, see Leibniz (disambiguation).

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Portrait, 1695
Born1 July 1646
Leipzig, Electorate of Saxony, Holy Roman Empire
Died14 November 1716(1716-11-14) (aged 70)
Hanover, Electorate of Hanover, Holy Roman Empire
Education
Era17th-/18th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
School
Theses
Doctoral advisorBartholomäus Leonhard von Schwendendörffer [de] (Dr. jur. thesis advisor)[6][7]
Other academic advisors
Notable students
Main interests
Mathematics, physics, geology, medicine, biology, embryology, epidemiology, veterinary medicine, paleontology, psychology, engineering, librarianship, linguistics, philology, sociology, metaphysics, ethics, economics, diplomacy, history, politics, music theory, poetry, logic, theodicy, universal language, universal science
Notable ideas
 
Signature
Part of a series on
Theodicy
Key concepts
Notable figures

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Leibnitz[a] (1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the invention of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic, and statistics. Leibniz has been called the "last universal genius" due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became much less common after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labor.[15] He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science.

Leibniz contributed to the field of library science by developing a cataloguing system while working at the Herzog August Library in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, that served as a model for many of Europe's largest libraries.[16][17] 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to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts.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.[18][b]

As a philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. As a mathematician, his major achievement was the development of the main ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments.[20] Mathematicians have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus.[21][22][23]

In the 20th century, Leibniz's notions of the law of continuity and 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[24] 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 anticipated modern logic and still influences contemporary analytic philosophy, such as its adopted use of the term "possible world" to define modal notions.

  1. ^ Michael Blamauer (ed.), The Mental as Fundamental: New Perspectives on Panpsychism, Walter de Gruyter, 2013, p. 111.
  2. ^ Fumerton, Richard (21 February 2000). "Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 19 August 2018.
  3. ^ Stefano Di Bella, Tad M. Schmaltz (eds.), The Problem of Universals in Early Modern Philosophy, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 207 n. 25: "Leibniz's conceptualism [is related to] the Ockhamist tradition..."
  4. ^ A. B. Dickerson, Kant on Representation and Objectivity, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 85.
  5. ^ David, Marian (10 July 2022). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.[permanent dead link‍]
  6. ^ Kurt Huber, Leibniz: Der Philosoph der universalen Harmonie, Severus Verlag, 2014, p. 29.
  7. ^ Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  8. ^ a b Arthur 2014, p. 16.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Arthur p. 13 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Leibniz" entry in Collins English Dictionary.
  11. ^ Mangold, Max, ed. (2005). Duden-Aussprachewörterbuch (Duden Pronunciation Dictionary) (in German) (7th ed.). Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut GmbH. ISBN 978-3-411-04066-7.
  12. ^ Wells, John C. (2008), Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.), Longman, ISBN 9781405881180
  13. ^ Eva-Maria Krech; et al., eds. (2010). Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch (German Pronunciation Dictionary) (in German) (1st ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. ISBN 978-3-11-018203-3.
  14. ^ See inscription of the engraving depicted in the "1666–1676" section.
  15. ^ Dunne, Luke (21 December 2022). "Gottfried W. Leibniz: The Last True Genius". TheCollector. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  16. ^ Murray, Stuart A.P. (2009). The library : an illustrated history. New York, NY: Skyhorse Pub. ISBN 978-1-60239-706-4.
  17. ^ Palumbo, Margherita, 'Leibniz as Librarian', in Maria Rosa Antognazza (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Leibniz, Oxford Handbooks (2018; online edn, Oxford Academic, 28 Jan. 2013), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199744725.013.008, accessed 25 Aug. 2024.
  18. ^ Roughly 40%, 35% and 25%, respectively.www.gwlb.de Archived 7 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine. Leibniz-Nachlass (i.e. Legacy of Leibniz), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Bibliothek (one of the three Official Libraries of the German state Lower Saxony).
  19. ^ Baird, Forrest E.; Kaufmann, Walter (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-158591-1.
  20. ^ Russell, Bertrand (15 April 2013). History of Western Philosophy: Collectors Edition (revised ed.). Routledge. p. 469. ISBN 978-1-135-69284-1. Extract of page 469.
  21. ^ Handley, Lindsey D.; Foster, Stephen R. (2020). Don't Teach Coding: Until You Read This Book. John Wiley & Sons. p. 29. ISBN 9781119602620. Extract of page 29
  22. ^ Apostol, Tom M. (1991). Calculus, Volume 1 (illustrated ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 172. ISBN 9780471000051. Extract of page 172
  23. ^ Maor, Eli (2003). The Facts on File Calculus Handbook. The Facts on File Calculus Handbook. p. 58. ISBN 9781438109541. Extract of page 58
  24. ^ David Smith, pp. 173–181 (1929)


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