The work of Leibniz anticipated modern logic and still influences contemporary analytic philosophy, such as its adopted use of the term " possible world" to define modal notions. His philosophy also assimilates elements of the scholastic tradition, notably the assumption that some substantive knowledge of reality can be achieved by reasoning from first principles or prior definitions. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three influential early modern rationalists. his conclusion that our world is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world that God could have created, a view sometimes lampooned by other thinkers, such as Voltaire in his satirical novella Candide. In philosophy and theology, Leibniz is most noted for his optimism, i.e. While working on adding automatic multiplication and division to Pascal's calculator, he was the first to describe a pinwheel calculator in 1685 and invented the Leibniz wheel, later used in the arithmometer, the first mass-produced mechanical calculator. He was also a pioneer in the field of mechanical calculators. In the 20th century, Leibniz's notions of the law of continuity and transcendental law of homogeneity found a consistent mathematical formulation by means of non-standard analysis. Mathematicians have consistently favored Leibniz's notation as the conventional and more exact expression of calculus. As a mathematician, his major achievement was the development of the main ideas of differential and integral calculus, independently of Isaac Newton's contemporaneous developments. Problem of why there is anything at allĪs a philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism.Ars combinatoria ( alphabet of human thought).Vis viva (principle of conservation of energy).He wrote in several languages, primarily in Latin, French and German. Leibniz's contributions to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts. In addition, he contributed to the field of library science by devising a cataloguing system whilst working at Wolfenbüttel library in Germany that would have served as a guide for many of Europe's largest libraries. Leibniz also made major contributions to physics and technology, and anticipated notions that surfaced much later in probability theory, biology, medicine, geology, psychology, linguistics and computer science. He wrote works on philosophy, theology, ethics, politics, law, history, philology, games, music, and other studies. Even though his philosophy stated that G-d chose the best of all possible worlds, he also meant that G-d, being the perfection he is, chose the best world. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. Leibniz has been called the "last universal genius" due to his knowledge and skills in different fields and because such people became less common during the Industrial Revolution and spread of specialized labor after his lifetime. See also apathy, tender- and tough-minded.Gottfried Wilhelm ( von) Leibniz ( 1 July 1646 – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Other elements in a philosophy may be affected by the optimistic or pessimistic temperament, such as susceptibility to scepticism (pessimistic) or realism (optimistic). This attitude is again expressed by Schopenhauer, and becomes common in the 20th century. The Eastern religion that is most closely identified with pessimism is Buddhism, where the eightfold path is a training in the renunciation of desire and complete withdrawal from the world. However, Christianity also offers a pessimistic version, with the stress falling on sin, the Fall, the likelihood of predetermined damnation, and the propriety of anguish and guilt. The most famous result of this exercise (theodicy) was the panglossian vision of Leibniz, satirized by Voltaire in Candide. Christianity can come in either flavour: philosophers have mostly been concerned with the optimistic project of reconciling divine excellence with apparent evil. Optimistic philosophies include Platonism, with the ruling place assigned to the form of the good, Aristotelianism, with its sense of the harmony of nature and the attainability of ends, Epicureanism, which denies the evil of death, and Stoicism, which denies the evil of pain as well. The best-known and certainly the starkest expression of pessimism is from the Greek dramatist Sophocles: ‘Not to be born is best, but having seen the light, the next best is to go whence one came as soon as may be’ (Oedipus at Colonus). The term ‘pessimism’ is recorded as first used by Coleridge in 1795. The term ‘optimism’ is first used in English in 1759, in reference to the work of Leibniz.
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