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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Essay, Research Paper

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born on the July 1, 1646 in Leipzig, Germany and died on November 14, 1716 in Hanover, Germany. He was the son of Friedrich Leibnitz, a professor of moral philosophy at Leipzig. Friedrich Leibnitz was evidently a competent though not original scholar, who devoted his time to his offices and to his family as a pious, Christian father. His mother was Catharina Schmuck, the daughter of a lawyer and Friedrich’s third wife. Friedrich died when Leibnitz was only six years old and he was brought up by his mother. Certainly Leibnitz learned his moral and religious values from her, which would play an important role in his life and philosophy.

At the age of seven, Leibnitz entered the Nicolai School in Leipzig. Although he was taught Latin at school, Leibnitz had taught himself far more advanced Latin and some Greek by the age of 12. He was motivated to read his father’s books. As he progressed through school he, was taught Aristotle’s logic and theory of categorizing knowledge. Leibnitz was clearly not satisfied with Aristotle’s system and began to develop his own ideas on how to improve on it. Later in life Leibnitz recalled that at this time he was trying to find orderings on logical truths, which, although he did not know it at the time, were the ideas behind rigorous mathematical proofs. As well as his schoolwork, Leibnitz studied his father’s books. In particular he read metaphysics books and theology books from both Catholic and Protestant writers.

In 1661, at the age of fourteen, Leibnitz entered the University of Leipzig. It may sound today as if this were a truly exceptionally early age for anyone to enter university, but it is fair to say that by the standards of the time he was quite young but there would be others of a similar age. He studied philosophy, which was well taught at the University of Leipzig, and mathematics, which was very poorly taught. Among the other topics, which were included in this two year, general degree course were rhetoric, Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He graduated with a bachelors degree in 1663 with a thesis De Principio Individui (On the Principle of the Individual) which emphasized the existential value of the individual, who is not to be explained either by matter alone or by form alone but rather by his whole being. In this is the beginning of his notion of “monad”. Leibnitz then went to Jena to spend the summer term of 1663.

At Jena the professor of mathematics was Erhard Weigel, who was also a philosopher and through him Leibnitz began to understand the importance of the method of mathematical proof for subjects such as logic and philosophy. Weigel believed that number was the fundamental concept of the universe and his ideas were to have considerable influence of Leibnitz. By October 1663 Leibnitz was back in Leipzig starting his studies towards a doctorate in law. He was awarded his Master’s Degree in philosophy for a dissertation, which combined aspects of philosophy and law studying relations in these subjects with mathematical ideas that he had learned from Weigel. A few days after Leibnitz presented his dissertation, his mother died.

After being awarded a bachelor’s degree in law, Leibnitz worked on his habilitation in philosophy. His work was to be published in 1666 as Dissertatio de arte combinatoria (Dissertation on the combinatorial art). In this work Leibnitz aimed to reduce all reasoning and discovery to a combination of basic elements such as numbers, letters, sounds and colors.

Despite his growing reputation and acknowledged scholarship, Leibnitz was refused the doctorate in law at Leipzig. It is a little unclear why this happened. It is likely that, as one of the younger candidates and there only being twelve law tutorships available, he would be expected to wait another year. However, there is also a story that the Dean’s wife persuaded the Dean to argue against Leibnitz, for some unexplained reason. Leibnitz was not prepared to accept any delay and he went immediately to the University of Altdorf where he received a doctorate in law in February 1667 for his dissertation De Casibus Perplexis (On Perplexing Cases).

Leibnitz declined the promise of a chair at Altdorf because he had very different things in view. He served as secretary to the Nuremberg alchemical society for a while, after which he met Baron Johann Christian von Boineburg. By November 1667 Leibnitz was living in Frankfurt, employed by Boineburg. During the next few years Leibnitz undertook a variety of different projects, scientific, literary and political. He also continued his law career taking up residence at the courts of Mainz before 1670. One of his tasks there, undertaken for the Elector of Mainz, was to improve the Roman civil law code for Mainz but Leibnitz was also occupied by turns as Boineburg’s secretary, assistant, librarian, lawyer and advisor, while at the same time a personal friend of the Baron and his family. Boineburg was a Catholic while Leibnitz was a Lutheran but Leibnitz had as one of his lifelong aims the reunification of the Christian Churches and with Boineburg’s encouragement, he drafted a number of monographs on religious topics, mostly to do with points at issue between the churches.

Another of Leibnitz’s lifelong aims was to collate all human knowledge. Certainly he saw his work on Roman civil law as part of this scheme and as another part of this scheme, Leibnitz tried to bring the work of the learned societies together to coordinate research. Leibnitz began to study motion, and although he had in mind the problem of explaining the results of Wren and Huygens on elastic collisions, he began with abstract ideas of motion. In 1671 he published Hypothesis Physica Nova (New Physical Hypothesis). In this work he claimed, as had Kepler, that movement depends on the action

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