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. Leibniz has been called the "founder of computer science". This includes the Von Neumann architecture, which represents the standard " computer architecture" through from the second half of the 20th century to the present. He also refined the binary number system, which is the foundation of nearly all digital ( electronic, solid-state, discrete logic) computers. 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, 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. Īs a philosopher, he was a leading representative of 17th-century rationalism and idealism. 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to a wide range of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and in unpublished manuscripts.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 and philology. He is a prominent figure in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathematics. Gottfried Wilhelm ( von) Leibniz (1 July 1646 – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. Problem of why there is anything at all.Ars combinatoria ( alphabet of human thought).Vis viva (principle of conservation of energy).Subscribe to BBC Focus magazine for fascinating new Q&As every month and follow on Twitter for your daily dose of fun science facts. However, none of Leibniz and Newton’s predecessors realised the full power of what they were working on. This is a trick exploited in integral calculus to work out the total effect of a series of tiny changes. For example, Archimedes showed how to work out the area enclosed by curves by dividing it up into tiny strips. It’s now known that some basic ideas in calculus had been explored much earlier. Newton launched an unjustified campaign of character assassination against Leibniz, yet could not stop the adoption of his rival’s name for the technique (from the Latin for ‘counting stone’). Having invented it in secret in the 1660s, he was horrified when Leibniz went public with similar methods, having independently discovered them about 10 years later. As such, a better name for it would be ‘fluxions’ – a term coined by Isaac Newton, one of the two 17th-Century mathematicians regarded as its inventors, the other being the German Gottfried Leibniz. Calculus is a powerful mathematical toolbox for dealing with phenomena in a state of flux, from the flow of water to the expansion of the cosmos.
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