Gottfried Leibniz

Born: 1646

Died: 1716, at the age of 70

Country of origin: Germany

Major Books written by Gottfried Leibniz:

• "Discours de metaphysique" (1686)
  
  
• "Theodice" (1710)
  
  
• "Monadologie" (1714)

Cocktail summary of Gottfried Leibniz's main ideas:

Leibniz was the gadfly of philosophy. Unlike most philosophers, he had highly developed social skills, spending most of his time in high society, rubbing shoulders with princes, kings, and bishops and was heavily involved in affairs of state. He was one of that dying breed of philosopher who was a genius at everything he did, from inventing things to being a mathematical prodigy to being politically savvy to settling religious disputes and to meeting almost every famous person alive during his life. He wrote down more words than most philosophers ever dream of, to the extent that his full collection of writings has never been compiled in any one place. Reading Leibniz is like trying to take a shower under a fire-hose.

Due to his highly-developed attention-deficit disorder, you can choose almost any topic under the sun and study Lebniz against that theme, since he probably mastered the subject and contributed heavily towards it. His fame only increased due to controversy over discovering the Calculus, since Isaac Newton also discovered this mathematical tool. They both probably discovered it independent of each other, but since they both knew each other and Newton once showed Leibniz his personal notes, there were many accusations that Leibniz stole the idea from his fellow scientist. But this is the stuff of historical tabloids. In philosophy Leibniz is usually studied for his most unique idea, something he called the "Monad".

Most of philosophy in the 17th century was obssessed with answering the questions of Descartes. Descartes had argued that all of reality is made of 2 basic kinds of subtances: mind and matter. Human souls and minds are made of one kind of thing, and all of matter in the universe is made of some other kind of thing. This is why he is often called a "Dualist", since he viewed reality as a duality of substances.

Descartes came up with this Dualism as a result of his trying to find knowledge that is certain. Since it had become clear that the physical senses were not always reliable, and that science was showing that the world wasn't what it had long seemed to be, Descartes asked what knowledge could we be sure was solid and reliable. He decided that everything was questionable, except for the fact that he was thinking. "I think, therefore I am" is one of the most famous phrases in philosophy, and he decided that the act of thinking was beyond doubt. Something inside of his physical body was thinking, like a ghost in a machine, with his body being the machine and his mind being the ghost. The machine was questionable, but he was certain that the ghost was real.

Decartes then asked how the one substance interacts with the other substance. How does the ghost control the machine? How do mind and body interact? How do spirit-things control physical-things? This basic question kept a lot of philosophers awake at night trying to come up with an answer.

Two main answers had been offered in the 17th century: one reply said that there is really only one substance in the universe with many different "extentions", with Mind and Matter only appearing to be distinct from each other, but really being simply two different forms of the one underlying unity. The other reply said that there are an infinite number of substances in the universe, and that these collections of substances all somehow work together to create structures we call minds and structures we call matter. So the two answers to Descartes' dilemma were basically total Unity versus total Diversity.

The first answer of Unity is usually associated with the philosopher Spinoza. He had suggested that there really aren't two substances in the Universe, but only one. Mind and body are simply two forms of one underlying substance, sort of like ice and steam both being two different forms of water. Asking how steam differs from ice is meaningless, since they're both just water. They just appear to be different. Thus, terms like Mind and Body are meaningless distinctions, since they're just two different forms of the same thing. Spinoza called these two ideas "Thought" and "Extension", with the one underlying substance taking on many different forms, with Mind being the form of Thought and matter being the form of Extension. (He never really elaborated on what the other, additional forms might be). This Spinoza-ist idea is sometimes called a "Monist" answer and was very popular in the Romantic era of 19th century, about 200 years after his death.

The other answer of infinite Diversity was offered by Leibniz. He suggested that instead of Descartes' two substances, and Spinoza's one substance, there are instead an infinite number of substances in the Universe, all co-existing like countless molecules of air. These basic units of substance are smaller than atoms and are smaller than whatever building-blocks spirits are supposed to be made of. They are like atoms of atoms, and they are the basic building-blocks of physical atoms and the basic building-blocks of spirits and minds. Leibniz called these particles "Monads", from the Greek word for "Single".

The idea of the Monad is sometimes confused with Spinoza's idea of the single particle underlying all reality, but the difference is that Leibniz's hypothetical particles are all isolated from each other, never interacting. Leibniz argued for an infinite number of atom-like particles that never join together (they are "windowless" as he said, never looking "into" each other), but instead they all act in harmony, working together without touching each other to form water, or working together without touching each other to form minds. It was the exact opposite of Monism, being sort of an endless Many-ism, where the Monads all act in harmony, like line-dancers in a barn under the direction of an unseen hand.

Leibniz devoted a lot of time to analyzing the nature of the Monad, suggesting that each Monad is basically a unit of perception. A collection of Monads in a specific arrangement form a spirit and thus explains how spiritis perceive things. A collection of Monads in a different arrangement form a rock or a pile of dirt. Rocks and dirt therefore have a certain limited form of perception, but is qualitatively different from a spirit's perception. He also suggested that each Monad contains a complete picture of the entire Universe within it, but from a unique angle, sort of like modern holograms which, when shattered, contain the entire original image within each shard, but from a unique angle. He pondered how Mondas work together in harmony without ever interacting with each other, and argued that this cooperation between Monads is ultimately controlled by the hand of God.

The idea of the Monad preserved the older idea sometimes called "Occasionalism", where God is the ultimate cause behind all effect. Even though monads all exist as non-interacting units, the spirit-monads cause the body monads to do things as a result of God reaching "through" the spirit-monads to move the body-monads. The spirit-monads are sort of like the glove God puts on to move the body-monads in a person's leg when walking. (If nothing else, Leibniz deserved an A+ for originality...)

The Monad is an example of Lebniz's basic approach to most issues: he saw himself as something of a mediator and reconciler between opposing ideas. In the same way as he negotiated political disputes, and tried to settle religious rifts, he negotiated differences between ideas and looked for a common ground, seeking a midle-of-the-road solution that would please all parties. He was sort of a one-man UN of philosophy.

The Monad acknowledged Descartes' perception of two distinct realities in the Universe, but avoided abandoning the hand of God in nature, since Leibniz was ultimately a supporter of the status quo in society, politics, and religion. He viewed the Church as the glue that held society together and that its role needed to be preserved, while accomodating the new discoveries of science in his Age of Reason. Fundamentally, he wasn't as interested in whether or not an idea was true but whether or not it served to settle an argument. Peace over conflict was Leibniz's ideal, and he devoted his life to this task.

Gottfried Leibniz praised & criticized:

• Much of the praise of Lebniz focuses on his many inventions and discoveries. His most famous discovery was of the Calculus in Mathematics. He also invented one of the first mechanical calculating machines, a precursor to the modern computer.
  
  When he died, Leibniz's star had faded and his funeral was a paltry affair, attended by few. His reputation had suffered as a result of being accused of stealing the idea of the Calculus from Newton, which he wouldn't be redeemed of until long after this death. He was perceived as something of an opportunist by his peers, devoting a lot of his energy to getting appointments to the courts of royal families and being inducted into upper-crust academic circles, especially in Paris. His idea of the Monad has long been seen as a curiously original idea, but one which has no possibility of verification so is seen as of little relevance.

Notable Facts about Gottfried Leibniz:

• Religious affiliation:
  Leibniz saw the role of the Church as the source of social unity and he made it a life-long priority to never support, and actively dilute, any ideas that contradicted Church doctrine. His value of all things status-quo was rooted in his religious convictions, which were as much about doctrine as they were about any personal faith. Religion was for Leibniz a set of ideas, and these served as the foundation of all other ideas. For example, his main objection to his contemporary Spinoza's ideas were that they contradicted the teachings of the Church. This was of much higher concern than whether he thought they were true or not.
  
  So strong was his desire to seek common ground everywhere, that Leibniz actively attempted to do no less than heal the rift between the Catholic and Protestant churches. He was something of a religious lobbyist and he spent a lot of time trying to write up a set of revised doctrines on such divisive issues as the Eucharist, the Papacy, and the role of Faith that would please enough Catholics and enough Protestants that everyone would kiss and make up and there would once again be only one true Church. Needless to say, he failed. But his attempt was a noble one, and was the clearest example of his approach to religious issues: doctrine was more important than faith.
  
  
• One of Leibniz's better-known efforts at trying to reunite the Catholic and Protestant churches was his attempt at rationalizing the idea of Transubstantiation. The idea that the bread and wine of the Eucharist physically becomes the body and blood of Christ was a sore point in the history of the Reformation, and Leibniz tried to smooth things over by arguing that the idea was compatible with modern science. Although his argument was quite detailed, he basically explained that all of physical matter contains a non-physical source of activity, which he called the "concurrent mind". In human bodies this mind is the one in our brains, but in all other forms of matter this mind is the mind of God, and all activity in non-living matter is ultimately controlled by God. Leibniz argued that this activity defines the "substance" of a body, and this substance can be different from its physical attributes. So bread can be flesh, but still look like bread, if God so wills it. While some people gave him an A+ for effort, his idea didn't produce any grand unification of the churches, as he had hoped.
  
  
• Leibniz was an experienced politician, and one of his most famous political maneuverings was something he called the "Egypt Plan". This was his attempt to call for a new Crusade to the Holy Land. Louis XIV of France (aka "The Sun King") was becoming a nuisance with his hobby of moving his armies around Europe and attacking neighboring countries, and he had his sights on the German states, making Germans like Leibniz more than a little nervous. Leibniz thought that Louis would have much more fun attacking Egypt instead, which would produce much more exotic plunder for the French army, with the added benefit that it would keep his armies too preoccupied to bother attacking the Germans.
  
  However, after a lot of lobbying and hobnobbing in Paris by Leibniz, he never got Louis interested and the Sun King instead attacked Holland. So Lebniz's idea failed and Egypt was spared the French invasion (at least for the next 200 years, when Napoleon eventually did invade Egypt. So Leibniz's idea was a bit premature).
  
  
• Early in his career Lebiniz wrote a document called "The Art of Combinations", when he was 19 years old. It described an idea he called "The Universal Characteristic", in which all possible philosophical statements would be reduced to logical symbols that could be manipulated via standard mathematical calculations. Imagining a machine that today would be considered a computer, his idea was that all ideas would be represented via mathematical notation and every philosophical problem could be solved by simply plugging them into standard, logical equations to find the one possible answer. In the future, he argued, all philosophical disputes could be resolved by simply saying "Let's calculate", then push a button on this machine and out would come the answer. This machine was never built but it was an idea that later philosophers would pick up on - into the 20th century by linguists who liked to argue that there are no bad ideas just imprecise words - but the world still awaits this magic machine.
  
  Actually, this idea was a reflection of how mathematics was viewed in the 18th century - all of reality was assumed to be governed by consistent, predictable, mechanistic laws that could be described by number - but is an idea which has since been discarded. Ever since the mid 19th century, and especially since the early 20th century, the fundamental nature of reality has been seen as being defined ultimately by paradox and randomness, unable to be perfectly described by number. So the modern view is that no such machine is possible, even in theory. This is good news for philosophers, who are thereby guaranteed job-security for life.
  
  
• Leibniz would later refer to this early document as proof that he didn't steal Newton's ideas when he later discovered the Calculus. Since he wrote about this "Universal Characteristic" prior to ever meeting Newton, and since the idea contained elements that would later blossom into the Calculus, he argued that this proved that he was innocent of the charges of note-stealing from his friend. Newton was eventually given credit with having first thought of the Calculus, but it is Leibniz's mathematical notations used to describe the Calculus, that were first developed in this early paper, that is still used today by mathematicians writing out Calculus equations.
  
  
• Showing his knack for thinking up unique ideas, Leibniz once suggested that "Bubbles are the seed of everything." He argued that since water is made up of bubbles, and since many things in nature contain water they too must be fundamentally made of water, including the earth itself. Where there is water there are bubbles, and therefore bubbles deserved greater scrutiny. His idea didn't catch on.
  
  
• Leibniz was the first person to describe the modern idea of a fractal. He wrote of so-called "recursive self similarity" in mathematics, which was an idea that would later be applied to quantifying the repeating patterns found in nature, such as snow-flakes, shore-lines, or galaxies, in which a small subset of shapes are infinitely repeated throughout the overall structure.
  
  
• Like his fellow social gadflies of the time, Leibniz loved to wear enormous and elaborate wigs. The portraits of Leibniz showing him with more hair than a modern rock star show him wearing his collection of wigs. But under his manes he apparently was quite bald. Huge wigs is a fashion statement that is sorely missing from modern philosophers...
  
  
• Despite his many talents, Leibniz seems to have been a total failure at romance. There is no record of his ever entering into any intimate relationship with any women, although he claimed to have once proposed marriage to an unknown suitor in 1696, when Leibniz was 50 years old. But the recipient of his offer declined, and Leibniz never again attempted to learn the complexities of romance. Better stick to numbers and ideas, which he was good at, than flowers and dating, which mystified him.
  
  
• Leibniz was famously lampooned by the French writer Voltaire for an argument he made regarding the efficiency of God. Leibniz argued that since God is perfect, his creation reflects that perfection by being the best creation possible, given God's self-imposed restrictions that are beyond our understanding. In his work "Discours de metaphysique" he argues that "God has chosen that world which is most perfect... the best of all possible worlds." Voltaire used this idea, and this exact same phrase, in his book "Candide" with the character of Dr. Pangloss who was obviously modeled after Leibniz, making this very argument. Voltaire meant it to be sarcastic, given the obvious short-comings of the world, with a perfect God clearly having better options available to him than this world, Voltaire felt.
  
  
• Gottfried came from an academic pedigree. His father was professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig. His father was instrumental in exposing his son to as much intellectual stimulation as possible.
  
  
• Leibniz spent his later years inventing new kinds of windmills and water-pumps for clearing out flooded mines. And, unlike most philosophers, he was quite well-paid for his work.

Quotes:

• "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
  
  
• "Justice is the charity of the wise."
  
  
• "God has chosen that world which is most perfect... the best of all possible worlds."
  
  
• "Let's calculate!"
  
  
• "We must also recognize that the entire universe is involved in a perpetual and most free progress, so that it is always advancing toward greater culture."