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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz or Leibnitz [a] (1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to many other branches of mathematics, such as binary arithmetic, and statistics.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1 July 1646 [O.S. 21 June] – 14 November 1716); German polymath, philosopher logician, mathematician. [1] Developed differential and integral calculus at about the same time and independently of Isaac Newton.
The modern [1] formulation of the principle is usually ascribed to early Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz.Leibniz formulated it, but was not an originator. [2] The idea was conceived of and utilized by various philosophers who preceded him, including Anaximander, [3] Parmenides, Archimedes, [4] Plato and Aristotle, [5] Cicero, [5] Avicenna, [6] Thomas Aquinas, and Spinoza. [7]
In 1703, Jacob Bernoulli wrote to Gottfried Leibniz to discuss their shared interest in applying mathematics and probability to games of chance. Bernoulli speculated whether it would be possible to gather mortality data from gravestones and thereby calculate, by their existing practice, the probability of a man currently aged 20 years outliving a man aged 60 years.
This question has been written about by philosophers since at least the ancient Parmenides (c. 515 BC). [1] [2]"Why is there anything at all?" or "Why is there something rather than nothing?" is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, [3] Ludwig Wittgenstein, [4] and ...
Leibniz concludes that "if we could understand the order of the universe well enough, we would find that it surpasses all the wishes of the wisest people, and that it is impossible to make it better than it is—not merely in respect of the whole in general, but also in respect of ourselves in particular" (§90).
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Leibniz claims that God's choice is caused not only by its being the most reasonable, but also by God's perfect goodness, a traditional claim about God which Leibniz accepted. [2] [b] As Leibniz says in §55, God's goodness causes him to produce the best world. Hence, the best possible world, or "greatest good" as Leibniz called it in this work ...