Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (also Leibnitz or von Leibniz (
July 1 (
June 21 Old Style) 1646 –
November 14 1716) was a
German polymath of
Sorbian origin who wrote primarily in
Latin and
French.Educated in
law and
philosophy, and serving as
factotum to two major German noble houses (one becoming the British royal family while he served it), Leibniz played a major role in the European politics and diplomacy of his day. He occupies an equally large place in both the
history of philosophy and the
history of mathematics. He discovered
calculus independently of
Newton, and his notation is the one in general use since. He also discovered the
binary system, foundation of virtually all modern computer architectures. In philosophy, he is most remembered for
optimism, i.e., his conclusion that our universe is, in a restricted sense, the best possible one
God could have made. He was, along with
René Descartes and
Baruch Spinoza, one of the three great 17th century
rationalists, but his philosophy also looks back to the
Scholastic tradition and anticipates modern
logic and
analysis. Leibniz also made major contributions to
physics and
technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in
biology,
medicine,
geology,
probability theory,
psychology,
linguistics, and
information science. He also wrote on
politics,
law,
ethics,
theology,
history, and
philology, even occasional verse. His contributions to this vast array of subjects are scattered in journals and in tens of thousands of letters and unpublished manuscripts. To date, there is no complete edition of Leibniz's writings, and a complete account of his accomplishments is not yet possible.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
Free Download Now!
