Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz , sometimes Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz ( 1 July 1646 , Leipzig – 14 November 1716 , Hanover ), was a German polymath, philosopher , mathematician, logician, theologian, jurist, librarian and politician .

He was the first president of the Berlin Academy of Sciences ; From 1676 until his death, he held the position of librarian to the Duke of Hanover . He is considered the founder of mathematical logic. ^[1]

Summary

[ disguise ]

• 1 Biographical summary
  • 1 Academic studies
  • 2 Diplomacy
  • 3 Research
    • 3.1 Contributions to Physics
    • 3.2 Contributions to Mathematics
  • 2 Sources

Biographical summary

His father, a professor of moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig, died when Leibniz was six years old. Able to write poems in Latin at the age of eight, at age twelve he became interested in Aristotelian logic through the study of scholastic philosophy.

Academic studies

In 1661 he entered the university of his hometown to study law, and two years later he moved to the University of Jena , where he studied mathematics with E. Weigel. In 1666 , the University of Leipzig refused, because of his youth, to grant him the title of doctor, which Leibniz nevertheless obtained in Altdorf; After rejecting the offer made to him of a professorship there, in 1667 he entered the service of the archbishop- elector of Mainz as a diplomat, and in the following years he displayed intense activity in courtly and ecclesiastical circles.

Diplomacy

In 1672 he was sent to Paris with the mission of dissuading Louis XIV from his intention to invade Germany; Although he failed in the embassy, ​​Leibniz remained five years in Paris, where he developed a fruitful intellectual work. His invention of a calculating machine capable of performing the operations of multiplication, division and extraction of square roots, as well as the elaboration of the bases of infinitesimal calculus, date back to this time.

Investigation

In 1676 he was appointed librarian to the Duke of Hanover, to whom he would later be an advisor, as well as historian of the ducal house. Upon the death of Sophia Charlotte ( 1705 ), the duke’s wife, with whom Leibniz had a friendship, his role as advisor to princes began to decline. He dedicated his last years to his work as a historian and to the writing of his most important philosophical works, which were published posthumously.

Representative par excellence of rationalism, Leibniz placed the criterion of truth of knowledge in its intrinsic necessity and not in its adaptation to reality; the model of that need is provided by the analytical truths of mathematics. Along with these truths of reason, there are truths of fact, which are contingent and do not manifest their truth by themselves.

He resolved the problem of finding a rational foundation for the latter by stating that their contingency was a consequence of the finite character of the human mind, incapable of analyzing them entirely in the infinite determinations of the concepts that intervene in them, since anything concrete, at Being related to all the others, even if it is different from them, has an infinite set of properties.

Contributions to Physics

Against the Cartesian physics of extension, Leibniz defended a physics of energy, since this is what makes movement possible. The ultimate elements that make up reality are the monads, unextended points of spiritual nature, with the capacity for perception and activity, which, although simple, have multiple attributes; Each of them receives its active and cognitive principle from God, who in the act of creation established a harmony between all the monads. This pre-established harmony is manifested in the causal relationship between phenomena, as well as in the agreement between rational thought and the laws that govern nature.

Contributions to Mathematics

Leibniz’s contributions in the field of infinitesimal calculus, made independently of Newton’s work, as well as in the field of combinatorial analysis, were of enormous value. He introduced the notation currently used in differential and integral calculus. The work that he began in his youth, the search for a perfect language that would reform all of science and allow logic to be converted into a calculation, ended up playing a decisive role in the founding of modern symbolic logic. The functionality and versatility of the symbolism contributed by Leibniz to the differential and integral calculus gave continental Europe a wide advantage to the development of the mathematics of motion, and Newton’s arrogance isolated England and marked a certain stagnation in the advancement of mathematics.