Quotes About Leibniz

Interestingly, Spinoza's philosophy is both mystical, rational and theistic. Yet he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his views, denounced as an atheist by Christians and declared so wicked that at one time his books were publicly burnt. Leibniz, who owes a great deal to him, rarely acknowledges the debt. Despite the rigour and integrity of his work, Spinoza remains one of the lesser studied and least regarded of all the rationalist philosophers.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712: "Music is the occulted arithmetic exercise of a soul that does not know it is counting.

G. W. Leibniz, codiscoverer of calculus and a towering intellect of eighteenth-century Europe, wrote: "The first question which should rightly be asked is: Why is there something rather than nothing?"[1] In other words, why does anything at all exist? This, for Leibniz, is the most basic question that anyone can ask. Like me, Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found, not in the universe of created things, but in God. God

Leibniz's reasoning: 1. Everything that exists has an explanation of its existence. 2. If the universe has an explanation of its existence, that explanation is God. 3. The universe exists.

The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz's influence was suppressed.

It is God who is the ultimate reason things, and the Knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of things.

It appears that the solution of the problem of time and space is reserved to philosophers who, like Leibniz, are mathematicians, or to mathematicians who, like Einstein, are philosophers.

It is worth noting that the notation facilitates discovery. This, in a most wonderful way, reduces the mind's labour.

The letters between the two philosophers were cordial, although Spinoza at first distrusted Leibniz, who in turn referred to him privately as 'a Jew expelled from the synagogue for his monstrous opinions'. Since the fundamental assumptions behind their two systems are profoundly similar, it is perhaps not surprising that the two philosophers – whose conclusions are wholly opposed – should have treated each other with a certain caution.

Leibniz had a vision of a world in which everything lives not in space but immersed in a network of relationships.

He would point to some spot or other near the latrines. "There," he would say, pushing a bit of bread about inside his mouth, "on the sixth of February at five o'clock in the afternoon I began my memorable discussion with Professor K. on the ramifications of Leibniz's doctrine of monads in the thought of our day.

Leibniz dedicated his life to efforts to educate people to understand that true happiness is found by locating their identity in benefitting mankind and their posterity.

In the century of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, and Newton," one historian wrote, "the most versatile genius of all was Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

Even supremely able and ambitious men quailed at the thought of Leibniz's powers. "When one ... compares one's own small talents with those of a Leibniz," wrote Denis Diderot, the philosopher/poet who had compiled an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, "one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die peacefully in the depths of some dark corner.

Leibniz invented the term "theodicy" (in its French and Latin forms) to mean the justification of God's ways to man—or, as an unbeliever might put it, the art of making excuses on behalf of God. Among

Leibniz thought that if we had a sufficiently logical notation, dispute and confusion would cease, and men would sit together and resolve their disputes by calculation.

Leibniz's machine was designed to automate the dreary task of solving moral problems

There was a German called Leibniz. "The philosopher? Never heard of him." Entities that cannot be distinguished by any means whatsoever, even in principle, at any time in the past, present, and future have to be considered identical. This is called the Identity of Indiscernibles.

It can have its effect only through the intervention of God, inasmuch as in the ideas of God a monad rightly demands that God, in regulating the rest from the beginning of things, should have regard to itself.

La idea del principio en Leibniz ? la evolución de la teoría deductiva.

Now she was smiling. "And while you're at it," she said, "here's another one for you. Theodicy. That's another word Leibniz used. As long as you have the dictionary out, you might as well look 'em both up." She sipped her tea. "He wrote a whole book about it, as a matter of fact.

Leibniz was somewhat mean about money. When any young lady at the court of Hanover married, he used to give her what he called a wedding present, consisting of useful maxims, ending up with the advice not to give up washing now that she had secured a husband. History does not record whether the brides were grateful.

Leibniz used to discourse to Queen Sophia Charlotte of Prussia concerning the infinitely little, and how she would reply that on that subject she needed no instruction—the behaviour of courtiers had made her thoroughly familiar with it.

there is nothing real except minds and their ideas. Such philosophers are called 'idealists'. When they come to explaining matter, they either say, like Berkeley, that matter is really nothing but a collection of ideas, or they say, like Leibniz (1646-1716), that what appears as matter is really a collection of more or less rudimentary minds.