Gottfried Leibniz: biography of this philosopher and mathematician

Gottfried Leibniz (1646 - 1716) was a philosopher, physicist, and mathematician who significantly influenced the development of modern science. In addition, he is recognized as one of the representatives of the rationalist tradition of modernity, since he used importantly, his knowledge of mathematics and physics to explain both natural and physical phenomena. humans.

We'll see now a biography of Gottfried Leibniz, as well as his main contributions in the mathematical, logical and philosophical area.

• Related article: "How are Psychology and Philosophy alike?"

Gottfried Leibniz: biography of this philosopher and mathematician

Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1, 1646 in Leipzig, Germany. The son of Friedrich Leibnütz and Catherina Schmuck, Leibniz grew up in a devoted Lutheran family towards the end of the Thirty Years' War, which had left the country in ruins.

During childhood he was educated at the Nicolai school, always accompanied by a self-taught learning in the his father's personal library, which in turn had been inherited from a professor of moral philosophy at the university from Leipzig. In fact, by the age of 12 Leibniz

he had learned Latin by himself, and at the same time was studying Greek.

In the year 1661 he began to train in law at the University of Leipzig, where he was especially interested by the men who had led the first scientific and philosophical revolutions of modern Europe. The latter were Galileo, Thomas Hobbes, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes, and even recovered the thought of the scholastics and Aristotle.

After completing his law studies, Leibniz spent several years in Paris, where he was trained in mathematics and physics. There he met the leading French philosophers of the time and studied in greater detail those who previously interested him. He eventually trained with Christiaan Huygens, who turned out to be instrumental in the further development of Leibniz's theories on differential and integral calculus.

After making several trips to different parts of Europe, and having met the most representative philosophers of the time, Leibniz he establishes an Academy of Sciences in Berlin, where he had a constant activity. He spent his last years trying to compile the greatest expressions of his philosophy. And without the latter being successful, he died in Hanover in November 1716.

Some Leibniz Contributions to Philosophy and Science

Like other philosophers and scientists of the time, Leibniz specialized in various areas. This allowed him to formulate different theories and lay the foundations for the modern development of science. To give some examples we will see below three of Leibniz's main contributions, both in mathematics and logic and in philosophy.

1. Mathematics: the infinitesimal calculus

Along with Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz is recognized as one of the creators of the calculus. In Leibniz's notebooks the first use of integral calculus is reported in the year 1675. He had used it to find the area under the function y = x. He also introduced notations such as the integral sign ("S" elongated from the Latin "sum"), and the d (from the Latin word "difference") that is used for differential calculations. This gave rise to the Rule of Leibniz, which is precisely the rule of the differential calculus product.

In the same way, he contributed to the definition of the mathematical entities that we call "infinitesimals" and to define their algebraic properties, although with many paradoxes for the moment. The latter was revised and reformulated starting in the 19th century, with the development of modern calculus.

2. Logic: foundations for epistemology and modal logic

True to his mathematical training, Gottfried Leibniz he argued that the complexity of human reasoning could be translated into the language of calculations, and that, once understanding them, they could be the solution to resolve differences of opinion and arguments.

For this reason he is recognized as the most significant logician of his time, at least since Aristotle. Among other things he described the properties and method of linguistic resources such as conjunction, disjunction, negation, the set, inclusion, identity, and the empty set. All of them useful to understand and carry out valid reasoning and differentiate them from other invalid ones. This constitutes one of the main bases for the development of epistemic logic and also modal logic.

3. Philosophy: the principle of individuation

In his thesis "On the principle of individuation", which he carried out in the 1660s, Leibniz defends the existence of an individual value that constitutes a whole in itself, but that is possible differential of the set. This was the first approximation to the german theory of monads.

In analogy with physics, Leibniz held that monads are on the mental level what atoms are on the physical level. It is about the ultimate elements of the universe and what gives substantial shape to being, through properties such as the following: they are eternal, they do not decompose into others Simpler particles, they are dividual, active and subject to their own laws, as well as independent from each other and function as an individual representation of the universe in itself.

Bibliographic references:

• Belaval, Y. and Look, B. (2018). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved October 22, 2018. Available in https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz.
• Leibniz, G. (2017). New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 22, 2018. Available in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Gottfried_Leibniz.