Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.
gottfried Wilhelm Leibnizquotes
1646 - 1716
For a man who always wished to make himself useful, German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), comes with a long resume of impressive occupations and inventions. Mastering Latin and Greek by age 12, Leibniz enrolled in university at the age of 14 to study law, philosophy and mathematics.
When he applied for a doctorate of Law at 21, he was turned down for being too young. However, when he presented his thesis at the University of Altdorf, they were so impressed they offered him a doctorate on the spot as well as a position as professor. He declined the offer.
In his day and age, Leibniz was a respected scientist and anti-Cartesian philosopher who knew nearly everything there was to know about any subject, and was the founder of symbolic logic.
In this day and age, we have his advancement of the binary code and the formation of a theory, which states that everything is reducible to an ordered combination of elements, to thank for modern computers. We even have him to thank for the discovery of calculus, though Isaac Newton would beg to differ – Leibniz published his results three years before Newton did.
As an engineer, he worked on submarines, clocks, lamps, and hydraulic presses to make them more efficient, developed a water pump run by windmills, and invented a calculating machine.
A historian for the House of Brunswick through three successive princes, a jurist, librarian and political advisor, Leibniz remains one of the most important metaphysicians and logicians in history.
Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.
…it is the knowledge of necessary and eternal truths that distinguishes us from the mere animals and gives us Reason and the sciences, raising us to the knowledge of ourselves and of God…
The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order…is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible.
It is true that the more we see some connection in what happens to us, the more we are confirmed in the opinion we have about the reality of our appearances; and it is also true that the more we examine our appearances closely, the more we find them well-sequenced, as microscopes and other aids in making experiments have shown us.
For I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.
Nothing is necessitated whose opposite is possible.
There is nothing without a reason.
It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labour of calculation which could safely be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.
The present is big with the future.
