Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz free essay sample

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646- 1716) Born: 1-Jul-1646 Birthplace: Leipzig, Germany Died: 14-Nov-1716 Location of death: Hannover, Hanover, Germany Cause of death: unspecified Remains: Buried, Die Neustadter Kirche, Hanover, Germany Gender: Male Religion: Lutheran Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: Mathematician, Philosopher Nationality: Germany Executive summary: Co-Inventor of calculus Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (sometimes von Leibniz) (July 1, 1646 November 14, 1716) was a German mathematician and philosopher. He wrote primarily in Latin and French Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1, 1646 in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catherina Schmuck. Leibnizs father, who was of Sorbian ancestry, died when he was six years old, and from that point on, he was raised by his mother. Her teachings influenced Leibnizs philosophical thoughts in his later life. Philosopher Leibnizs philosophical thinking appears fragmented, because his philosophical writings consist mainly of a multitude of short pieces: journal articles, manuscripts published long after his death, and many letters to many correspondents. We will write a custom essay sample on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page He wrote only two philosophical treatises, of which only the Theodicee of 1710 was published in his lifetime. Leibniz dated his beginning as a philosopher to his Discourse on Metaphysics, which he composed in 1686 as a commentary on a running dispute between Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Arnauld. This led to an extensive and valuable correspondence with Arnauld; it and the Discourse were not published until the 19th century. In 1695, Leibniz made his public entree into European philosophy with a journal article titled New System of the Nature and Communication of Substances. Between 1695 and 1705, he composed his New Essays on Human Understanding, a lengthy commentary on John Lockes 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but upon learning of Lockes 1704 death, lost the desire to publish it, so that the New Essays were not published until 1765. The Monadologie, composed in 1714 and published posthumously, consists of 90 aphorisms. The Principles Leibniz variously invoked one or another of seven fundamental philosophical Principles: * Identity/contradiction. If a proposition is true, then its negation is false and vice versa. Identity of indiscernibles. Two things are identical if and only if they share the same and only the same properties. Frequently invoked in modern logic and philosophy. The identity of indiscernibles is often referred to as Leibnizs Law. It has attracted the most controversy and criticism, especially from corpuscular philosophy and quantum mechanics. * Sufficient reason. There must be a sufficient reason [often known only to Go d] for anything to exist, for any event to occur, for any truth to obtain. * Pre-established harmony. [T]he appropriate nature of each substance brings it about that what happens to one corresponds to what happens to all the others, without, however, their acting upon one another directly. (Discourse on Metaphysics, XIV) A dropped glass shatters because it knows it has hit the ground, and not because the impact with the ground compels the glass to split. * Continuity. Natura non saltum facit. A mathematical analog to this principle would proceed as follows: if a function describes a transformation of something to which continuity applies, then its domain and range are both dense sets. * Optimism. God assuredly always chooses the best. * Plenitude. Leibniz believed that the best of all possible worlds would actualize every genuine possibility, and argued in Theodicee that this best of all possible worlds will contain all possibilities, with our finite experience of eternity giving no reason to dispute natures perfection. Leibnizs 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. . , 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.