Back Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Afrikaans Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ALS ሌብኒትዝ Amharic Gottfried Leibniz AN غوتفريد لايبنتس Arabic لايبنيتس ARZ গটফ্ৰিড উইলহেল্ম লেইবনিজ Assamese Gottfried Leibniz AST Qotfrid Leybnits Azerbaijani قوتفرید لایبنیتس AZB

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

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

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Bildnis des Philosophen Leibniz (1695), by Christoph Francke
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 advisorB. L. von Schwendendörffer (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
 
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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 creation 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 vast expertise across fields, which became a rarity after his lifetime with the coming of the Industrial Revolution and the spread of specialized labor.[16] 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, 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.[17][18] 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.[19][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 differential and integral calculus, independently of Newton's contemporaneous developments.[21] Leibniz's notation has been favored as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus.[22][23][24] 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,[25] however, Thomas Harriot had devised the same system decades before.[26] He envisioned the field of combinatorial topology as early as 1679,[27] and helped initiate the field of fractional calculus.[28][29]

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[30] 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. ^ Hasan, Ali; Fumerton, Richard (5 August 2022). "Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2022 ed.).
  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 (28 May 2015). "The Correspondence Theory of Truth". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 ed.).
  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. ^ Christia Mercer, Leibniz's Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 37.
  11. ^ "Leibniz" entry in Collins English Dictionary.
  12. ^ Mangold, Max, ed. (2005). Duden-Aussprachewörterbuch (Duden Pronunciation Dictionary) (in German) (7th ed.). Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut GmbH. ISBN 978-3-411-04066-7.
  13. ^ Wells, John C. (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Longman. ISBN 9781405881180.
  14. ^ 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.
  15. ^ See inscription of the engraving depicted in the "1666–1676" section.
  16. ^ Dunne, Luke (21 December 2022). "Gottfried W. Leibniz: The Last True Genius". TheCollector. Retrieved 1 October 2023.
  17. ^ Murray, Stuart A.P. (2009). The Library: An Illustrated History. New York, NY: Skyhorse Pub. p. 122. ISBN 978-1-60239-706-4.
  18. ^ 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.
  19. ^ 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).
  20. ^ Baird, Forrest E.; Kaufmann, Walter (2008). From Plato to Derrida. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-158591-1.
  21. ^ 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.
  22. ^ 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.
  23. ^ Apostol, Tom M. (1991). Calculus, Volume 1 (illustrated ed.). John Wiley & Sons. p. 172. ISBN 9780471000051. Extract of page 172.
  24. ^ Maor, Eli (2003). The Facts on File Calculus Handbook. The Facts on File Calculus Handbook. p. 58. ISBN 9781438109541. Extract of page 58.
  25. ^ Sriraman, Bharath, ed. (2024). Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice. Vol. IV. Cham: Springer. p. 168. ISBN 978-3-031-40845-8.
  26. ^ Strickland, Lloyd (2023). "Why Did Thomas Harriot Invent Binary?". The Mathematical Intelligencer. 46: 57–62. doi:10.1007/s00283-023-10271-9.
  27. ^ Przytycki, Józef H.; Bakshi, Rhea Palak; Ibarra, Dionne; Montoya-Vega, Gabriel; Weeks, Deborah (2024). Lectures in Knot Theory: An Exploration of Contemporary Topics. Springer Nature. p. 5. ISBN 978-3-031-40044-5.
  28. ^ Cite error: The named reference :12 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference Derivative was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ David Smith, pp. 173–181 (1929).


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