Thursday, October 5, 2017

Tanner on Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716)  (Tanner Luffman)


Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/07/Leibniz_Hannover.jpg
            
Note: This bibliography barely scratches the surface of what Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz did throughout his life, and is exclusively focused on significant works directly or indirectly related to his notion of monads.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is considered to be one of the great philosophical thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, among many other accolades he achieved throughout his life. Throughout his life, Leibniz contributed to an astonishing amount of fields of study such as metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of religion, logic, mathematics, physics, geology, jurisprudence (philosophy of law), and history. Rightfully so, the Stafford Encyclopedia of Philosophy names him as the last “universal genius”.
            Born on July 1, 1646 to Catharina Schmuck and Friedrich Leibniz in Leipzig, Germany, Gottfried was born into a Lutheran family of educated elites on both sides of his family. Leibniz’s father died in 1652, when Gottfried was 6, so the majority of his upbringing and education was facilitated by both his mother, his uncle, and himself. Leibniz’s father left an extensive library behind, filled with ancient history that he studied on his own until going off to the University of Leipzig.
            Germany was not incredibly influenced by modern philosophy during the time, so Leibniz’s philosophic education was primarily scholastic in its nature. It’s also important to know that Leibniz was practically isolated from the intellectual circle, and only had limited contact with other great minds during the time, with most exchanges happening through letters. During his stay at the university, he began to form his notion of what a “monad” is. In the summer term of 1663, he went to Jena to study. There, he learned the importance of numbers and their relationship with philosophy, which he then used for his dissertation for his Master’s Degree in philosophy.
            In 1666 Leibniz made one of his major philosophical publications, Dissertatio de arte combinatorial (Dissertation on the combinatorial art). The premise Leibniz aimed for was to reduce all reasoning and discovery to a combination of basic elements such as numbers, letters, sounds and colors.
            Later on in 1675, Gottfried laid the foundation for differential and integral calculus, which supported his idea of monadology because he didn’t consider time and space of substance anymore. In 1679 he continued to work on the groundwork for his theory of metaphysics, which attempted to reduce reasoning to an algebra of thoughts, with him eventually publicizing Discours de métaphysique (Discourse on Metaphysics) in February 1686.
            Much later in life, in 1714 Leibniz synthesized his notion of monads and published Monadologia. This was one of the last works published before his death on November 14, 1716.





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