Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (b. 1646, d. 1716) was a German philosopher, mathematician, and logician who is probably most well known for having invented the differential and integral calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton). In his correspondence with the leading intellectual and political figures of his era, he discussed mathematics, logic, science, history, law, and theology.

Principal Works:

De Arte Combinatoria (‘On the Art of Combination’), 1666
Hypothesis Physica Nova (‘New Physical Hypothesis’), 1671
Discours de métaphysique (‘Discourse on Metphysics’), 1686
unpublished manuscripts on the calculus of concepts, c. 1690
Nouveaux Essais sur L'entendement humaine (‘New Essays on Human Understanding’), 1705
Théodicée (‘Theodicy’), 1710
Monadologia (‘The Monadology’), 1714

Leibniz's Life:

Born July 1, 1646, in Leipzig
1661, entered University of Leipzig (as a law student)
1663, baccalaureate thesis, De Principio Individui (‘On the Principle of the Individual’)
1667, entered the service of the Baron of Boineburg
1672 - 1676, lived in Paris (met Malebranche, Arnauld, Huygens)
1675, laid the foundation of the differential/integral calculus
1676, entered the service of the Duke of Hannover; worked on hydraulic presses, windmills, lamps, submarines, clocks, carriages, water pumps, the binary number system
published Nova Methodus Pro Maximus et Minimus (‘New Method for the Greatest and the Least’), an exposition of his differential calculus
1685, took on the duties of historian for the House of Brunswick
1691, named librarian at Wolfenbuettel
1700, named foreign member of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris
1711, met the Russian czar Peter the Great
Died, November 14, 1716, in Hannover

Leibniz's Contributions To Philosophy:

Leibniz is known among philosophers for his wide range of thought about fundamental philosophical ideas and principles, including truth, necessary and contingent truths, possible worlds, the principle of sufficient reason (i.e., that nothing occurs without a reason), the principle of pre-established harmony (i.e., that God constructed the universe in such a way that corresponding mental and physical events occur simultaneously), and the principle of noncontradiction (i.e., that any proposition from which a contradiction can be derived is false). Leibniz had a lifelong interest in and pursuit of the idea that the principles of reasoning could be reduced to a formal symbolic system, an algebra or calculus of thought, in which controversy would be settled by calculations.

Further Reading:

Wolfgang Lenzen, Das System Der Leibnizschen Logik, Berlin: W.~de Gruyter, 1990
Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986
Nicholas Rescher, Leibniz, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979
Chris Swoyer, ‘Leibniz on Intension and Extension’, Nous 29/1 (1995): 96-114
Chris Swoyer, ‘Leibniz's Calculus of Real Addition’, Studia Leibnitiana XXVI/1 (1994): 1-30
R. S. Woolhouse, (ed.), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Critical Assessments, Volumes I - IV, Routledge Publishing Co., 1993
Edward N. Zalta, ‘A (Leibnizian) Theory of Concepts’, Philosophiegeschichte und logische Analyse / Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy), 3 (2000): 137-183