Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are attempting
something truly ambitious. I'd say so. We're
trying to map the mind of a man so astonishingly
comprehensive in his thinking that the world,
well, it just sort of stopped producing his type
after he was gone. We're talking about Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz. Exactly. And we're diving deep
into his life, his philosophy, his mathematics,
all of it. That's the German polymath born in
1646. And when I say polymath, I mean... It's
almost an understatement. Right. He was a top
tier mathematician, a groundbreaking philosopher,
a scientist, a diplomat, a historian, a legal
scholar. Right. All at the same time. The sheer
scale of it is what's so hard to grasp. And that's
why he gets that that unique and really imposing
title, The Last Universal Genius. And that title,
it sounds romantic, doesn't it? But it's not
just a nice phrase. No, it points to a real historical
shift. You could argue that after Leibniz, human
knowledge just it's splintered. It did. The Industrial
Revolution, the rise of specialization. It became
impossible for one person to credibly claim mastery
over all the major fields. He was kind of the
end of that Renaissance ideal. So that's what
makes this deep dive so interesting, but also,
you know, really challenging, the state of his
work. Oh, it's a mess. It's a glorious, chaotic
mess. How much are we talking about? We're dealing
with a legacy spread across an astonishing 15
,000 letters. And then 40 ,000 other items. 40
,000. 40 ,000. Most of it in Latin, French, or
German, and a huge portion of it was never even
published in his lifetime. Okay, so let's set
out our mission here. We're looking at the co
-creator of calculus. The father of the binary
code that is literally powering the device you're
listening on right now. A foundational figure
in rationalist philosophy right up there with
Descartes and Spinoza. So our job is to navigate
all of that, this incredible breadth and focus
on the connections. I mean, how did his very
abstract philosophical ideas end up influencing
the architecture of our modern digital world?
That's the key. We have to see the symmetry in
his vision. We'll get into the big breakthroughs
like the calculus feud. Oh, we have to talk about
the feud. Of course. And the monads, those strange,
tiny, fundamental units of existence that make
up his universe. And we can't avoid his most
famous or maybe infamous idea. The idea that
we live in the best of all possible worlds. Right.
So our mission is to provide you, the listener,
with a map to an entire intellectual continent.
One man's attempt to systematize, well, everything.
To understand how a mind like that even comes
into being, we have to start at the beginning.
His formative years in Leipzig. He was born in
1646, and his father was a professor of moral
philosophy at the university. So, you know, a
very academic household. But that stable world
didn't last long. No. His father died when Leibniz
was only six years old. And that loss, as tragic
as it was, became this incredible intellectual
opportunity. It really did. Because the young
boy inherited his father's extensive personal
library. And crucially, he was given free access
to it at age seven. And this wasn't, what, a
collection of children's books? Not at all. This
was a serious academic library full of advanced
philosophy, theology, history, things that were
way beyond what a seven -year -old was supposed
to be reading. So he just teaches himself. He
becomes this self -guided learner devouring scholarship
that his peers wouldn't see for another decade.
Exactly. And the results were, well, prodigious.
By age 12, he was completely fluent in Latin.
The language of all scholarship at the time.
Right. And he wasn't just reading it. He was
thinking in it. There's this fantastic story
from when he was 13. What? He composed 300 hexameters
of really complex Latin verse in a single morning
for a school event. Wow. He shows this stunning
ability not just to consume knowledge, but to
structure it, to express it really, really rapidly.
So his path seems set for academia. He enrolls
at Leipzig University at just 14. Unbelievable,
isn't it? He gets his B .A. and then his M .A.
in philosophy and his master's thesis. It actually
contained the seeds of what would later become
his famous Monad theory. The idea of these unique,
simple substances. Right. And then he moves on
to law, which in that era was the fastest track
to court service and real political influence.
But then he hits a wall. A rejection in 1666
that turns out to be a really critical moment.
It is. Leipzig University denies his application
for a doctorate in law. Why? Was his work not
good enough? No, not at all. The consensus is
it was almost certainly just his age. He was
only 20. Too young for the old guard. The faculty
probably just thought this kid is too young for
such a high degree. But Leibniz, instead of,
you know, waiting around, he pivots. Instantly.
He just leaves. He leaves. He moves to the University
of Altdorf, submits a new thesis, and gets his
doctorate that same year in November 1666. And
here's the kicker. They offer him a job, a permanent
academic post, a safe, prestigious career. And
he turns it down flat. Why? He said his thoughts
were turned in an entirely different direction.
He didn't want to just teach what was already
known. He wanted to apply his knowledge to build
new systems. And he saw that future in the world
of diplomacy and politics, not in the university.
Absolutely. Yeah. Which leads to his, let's say,
his very unusual first job. This is the Alchemical
Society, right? Yes. He gets a job as a salaried
secretary to an alchemical society in Nuremberg.
And he later admitted he knew. and I quote, fairly
little about the subject at that time. So he
basically faked it till he made it. He did. And
it shows his audacity. He used the position to
get noticed, and it worked. He quickly found
a real patron, Johann Christian von Boinberg.
And that's his entry into the big leagues. That's
it. Now he's assisting with redrafting the legal
code for the electorate of Mainz. He's operating
at a high level of statecraft. Which brings us
to this incredibly bold geopolitical plan he
cooked up, the Egyptian plan. It sounds like
something out of a thriller. It's a masterclass
in 17th century strategic thinking. The biggest
threat to the German states at the time was Louis
XIV of France. The Sun King. Exactly. Just constantly
expanding. And the German lands were fragmented,
still recovering from the Thirty Years' War.
Leibniz's idea was brilliantly simple. Created
a version. He drafted a proposal to convince
Louis XIV to invade Egypt. Seriously? Oh, yes.
The plan was framed as this noble, civilizing
Christian mission, a new crusade. It would bring
France immense wealth. And it was a stepping
stone to conquering the Dutch East Indies. But
the real goal... Was to send the massive French
army far, far away from Germany. Precisely. It
was a pure, real politic disguised as a crusade.
And did it work? Well, it got him a trip to Paris
in 1672 for high -level talks. The plan itself
eventually fizzled out because of the Franco
-Dutch War, but that trip to Paris... That changed
everything for Leibniz. This four -year period
from 72 to 76, this was the real intellectual
catalyst, wasn't it? It was a crucible. In Paris,
he meets the great Dutch physicist and mathematician
Christian Huygens. And Leibniz, for all his genius,
realized he had a major gap in his knowledge.
A huge gap. He knew his own advanced math and
physics were not up a par. So Huygens becomes
his mentor. And that period of intense study
is what leads him directly to his greatest mathematical
discovery. Calculus. Calculus. And at the same
time, he's visiting London, showing off a calculating
machine he designed to the Royal Society. And
they make him a member. But then his patrons
in Mainz die and he needs a new job. Right. So
he accepts an offer from the powerful House of
Brunswick in Hanover in 1676. And even getting
to his new post was an intellectual tour. It
really was. On his way, he stops in The Hague.
First, he meets Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, the guy
who had just discovered microorganisms. Wow.
And then, even more importantly, he spends several
intense days in conversation with the philosopher
Boruch Spinoza. Spinoza, who had just finished
his masterpiece, The Ethics. Imagine being a
fly on the wall for those conversations. The
leading empirical scientist and the most radical
rationalist philosopher of the age back to back.
So he finally settles in Hanover and he's there
for the rest of his life, serving as historian,
political advisor, Ducal librarian. And this
is where we see the universal genius start to
clash with, you know, the mundane realities of
working for a royal court. You're talking about
the History Project? The Endless History Project.
He was commissioned to write a history of the
House of Brunswick all the way back to Charlemagne.
The goal was purely political, to boost the dynasty's
prestige. He never finished it. And it became
a symbol of his famous procrastination. Why couldn't
he just get it done? Because his idea of done
was completely different from his patrons. They
wanted a quick... Popular book, maybe three years'
work, Leibniz insisted on a meticulously researched,
comprehensive scientific history based on primary
sources from archives all over Europe. So he
saw history as a systematic science, not just
storytelling? Exactly. He published three huge
volumes of source materials, but the actual narrative
history. It was still incomplete when he died
40 years later. And that gap between the perfect
systematic vision and the messy reality, we see
it in his engineering, too, right? With the windmills.
Oh, the windmill project. A perfect example.
He championed this hugely ambitious plan to use
windmills to drain water from the mines in the
Hearts Mountains. Very theoretical. Very clever.
But in practice. A total failure. The machinery
kept breaking down. The economics were all wrong.
And they had to shut the whole thing down by
1685. It cost a fortune. And it was a major personal
embarrassment for him. But despite these practical
failures, his diplomatic brain was still working
at the highest level, especially when it came
to the British throne. This is where he was so
influential. He played a key role in the negotiations
for the British Act of Settlement in 1701. Which
was the law that basically said the next monarch
had to be a Protestant. Right. And it specifically
designated the Electra Sophia's line, the Brunswick's,
his employers, as the heirs to the British throne.
It was a brilliant political maneuver. And when
Queen Anne died in 1714, the elector's son, George,
sailed to England and became King George the
Third. And Leibniz, the procrastinating historian,
was one of the key architects who put a new dynasty
on the most powerful throne in Europe. Okay,
so that's the diplomat. But now we have to get
into the area where Leibniz's work is truly immortal.
Mathematics. And you can't talk about Leibniz
and math without starting with calculus. And,
of course, Isaac Newton. The Great Calculus Controversy.
One of the most famous priority disputes in the
entire history of science. It poisoned the relationship
between British and continental mathematics for
a century. The bottom line is they both invented
it independently. How close was the timing on
this? Well, Newton started his work on what he
called fluxions a bit earlier in the 1660s. But
Newton was famously secretive, very slow to publish.
And Leibniz? According to his notebooks from
his time in Paris, his big breakthrough happened
on a specific day. November 11th, 1675. That's
when he first used integral calculus to find
the area under a curve. And he published his
work in 1684, which was before Newton's Principia
came out in 87. Correct. But the real lasting
victory for Leibniz wasn't about who was first.
It was about the notation. The language he used
to write it down. His system is the one we all
learn in school today. It is. Newton used this
sort of dot notation above the letter, which
was fine for him, but less flexible. Leibniz
introduced the integral sign. That long S shape.
From the Latin word summa, for some. Exactly.
And he gave us the did for differentials, which
gives you expressions like did X. His notation
was just better. It was clearer, it showed the
relationship between the parts, and it made the
rules of calculus much easier to use. So this
superior system should have been a great thing
for science, but instead it just fuels this nasty
personal feud. It got very ugly. And it really
overshadowed the last years of Leibniz's life.
The first real shot was fired in 1708 when a
follower of Newton named John Keel publicly accused
Leibniz of plagiarism. Just flat out said he
stole it. Flat out. Suggested he'd seen some
of Newton's unpublished papers and just copied
the ideas. And the British scientific establishment
didn't exactly handle this impartially. Not even
close. The Royal Society launched a formal investigation.
The problem was Newton was the president of the
Royal Society at the time. So he's investigating
himself, basically. He essentially ran the whole
thing. Modern historians have shown he manipulated
the committee and even helped write the final
report, which, surprise, surprise, found Leibniz
guilty. It was an institutional hit job. But
today, historians are unanimous that Leibniz
is innocent, right? They were two different paths
to the same mountaintop. Absolutely. And their
approaches were fundamentally different. In fact,
Leibniz's method, using these things called infinitesimals,
was actually vindicated in the 20th century.
Plus, his other contributions are immense. We
still call the product rule Leibniz's law. He
gave us the Leibniz integral rule. He even came
up with a formula for pi. So leaving calculus
aside, we get to something even more prophetic.
Yeah. The modern binary number system. The zeros
and ones that are the absolute foundation of
all digital computing. This is probably his single
greatest claim to being a visionary. I mean,
he didn't invent the concept of binary, but he's
the one who standardized it, who saw its true
logical power. For him, zero one weren't just
numbers. They were the essence of creation itself.
And he found this incredible confirmation of
his idea from a very unexpected source. From
China. This is where his universalism is just
so cool. He was fascinated by Chinese civilization
and corresponded with Jesuit missionaries in
Beijing. And they sent him something? They sent
him a diagram of the 64 hexagrams from the ancient
Chinese text, the I Ching. And he sees a pattern.
He sees the pattern. He realizes that these hexagrams,
which are made of combinations of solid and broken
lines, correspond perfectly to the binary numbers
from 000000 to 1111. Wow. For him, this was profound
proof. It showed that his rational, logical binary
system wasn't just his idea. It was a universal
truth, a language of creation that was secretly
encoded in ancient Chinese philosophy. So he
uses this ancient Eastern wisdom to validate
his Western rationalist project. He even tried
to share this with the emperor of China. He did.
He sent his binary system to the Kanki emperor,
basically arguing that the Christian story of
creation making everything from nothing or zero
and God. or one was mathematically proven and
was even present in their own ancient texts.
A remarkable bit of mathematical diplomacy. And
this logical insight flows directly into his
work on machines. He builds the stepped reckoner.
This was a huge leap forward for calculators.
Pascal's earlier machine could only add and subtract.
Leibniz's machine could do all four basic operations.
Adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.
And the key was this invention called the stepped
drum. That was the big innovation. a cylinder
with teeth of different lengths that could perform
multiplication through repeated addition. It
was brilliant. But the technology of the day
couldn't quite keep up with the theory. That's
the story of so much of his applied work. The
machine was mechanically finicky. It struggled
with the carry operation, which is crucial for
accuracy. Again, the mathematical theory was
perfect. But the 17th century gears and metalwork
were messy. But the truly mind -blowing leap,
the one that anticipates our entire digital age,
came a few years later in 1679. Yes, this is
when he's thinking about binary. And he has this
vision of a new kind of calculating machine.
One where the binary numbers wouldn't be gears,
but physical objects. He imagined marbles. He
imagined marbles, representing zeros and ones
dropping through channels. And the path of those
marbles would be controlled by a kind of perforated
plate. A rudimentary form of punched cards. Exactly.
It's the fundamental concept of a programmable
computer, two centuries before Charles Babbage
and Ada Lovelace. That's just, that's unbelievable.
It is. If you just replace his marbles and gravity
with electrons and voltage registers, you have
the basic architecture of a modern computer.
He's the first true computer scientist. the first
information theorist. And his mind just kept
organizing things. He was also laying the groundwork
for fields like linear algebra and topology.
He had this incredible knack for seeing structure.
He was the first person to arrange the coefficients
of linear equations into arrays, what we now
call matrices. To solve systems of equations.
Right. He developed the theory of determinants,
which is a way to check if a system has unique
solution. We still call one method the Leibniz
formula for determinants. And even in geometry,
he was hinting at really futuristic ideas like
fractals. Well, he coined the term analysis satis,
which is what we now call topology, the study
of shapes and their properties under deformation.
The fractal thing is a bit more metaphysical.
What did he say? He gave this definition of a
straight line as a curve, any part of which is
similar to the whole. Wait, a part that's similar
to the whole? That's the core concept of self
-similarity. It's the defining feature of fractal
geometry. It just shows how his brain would leap
from a practical calculation to the most abstract
philosophical definition of reality itself. Okay,
we've seen Leibniz the mathematician, which is
staggering enough, but his philosophical system
is just as ambitious, placing him in the top
tier with Descartes and Spinoza. He's a leading
figure of 17th century rationalism. The core
belief is that you can arrive at real substantive
knowledge about the world just through pure reason,
starting from first principles. His whole system
is built on seven of these principles, but let's
focus on the three big ones, the ones that really
run his universe. The first is the principle
of sufficient reason. This sounds pretty simple
on the surface, almost obvious. Everything must
have a reason. Exactly. Nothing happens by chance.
Everything that exists or happens or is true
must have a reason that is... at least in principle,
understandable. And this isn't just a general
observation for him. It's a foundational tool.
It's the engine of his metaphysics. It's how
he proves the existence of God. The world we
see, he says, is contingent. It could have been
otherwise. Therefore, there must be an ultimate
necessary reason for its existence, a reason
that is not contingent on anything else. And
that, for him, is God. So it's his way of guaranteeing
that the universe is fundamentally... intelligible,
not arbitrary. Right. If you deny it, he'd say
you're embracing chaos and reason becomes impossible.
Okay. The second pillar is the identity of indiscernible.
This one also seems to be about enforcing a kind
of strict order. It is. It's a very powerful
rule of logic. It states that two distinct things
cannot have all their properties in common. So
if you have two objects and every single thing
you can say about object A is also true of object
B. then they are not two objects. They are one
and the same object. This was super important
for him to guarantee that every single thing
in his universe was absolutely unique. But this
one ran into some trouble later on, didn't it?
Especially in physics. It did. In the quantum
world, you have particles like electrons that
are considered to be truly fundamentally indistinguishable
from one another, which seems to violate this
principle. But for Leibniz's system, it was essential.
Which brings us to the third and maybe most famous
and complex idea. Pre -established harmony. This
was his answer to the mind -body problem from
Descartes. Right. Descartes couldn't figure out
how the non -physical mind could interact with
the physical body. Leibniz's solution is radical.
He just gets rid of interaction altogether. So
substances don't act on each other at all? Not
directly, no. In his view, every substance, your
mind, your body, a rock, a planet, is completely
independent and self -contained. Then how does
anything happen? I mean, how does the world seem
so coherent? If I decide to lift my arm, it lifts.
Because, he argues, God is like a divine clockmaker.
At the moment of creation, he pre -programmed
the intrinsic nature of every single substance,
every monad. So they're all running on their
own internal program. Perfectly synchronized.
He uses the analogy of two perfectly built clocks.
They both chime at the exact same moment. Not
because one caused the other to chime, but because
they were built in perfect harmony from the beginning.
So to use the example of a dropping glass, the
impact of the floor doesn't cause the glass to
shatter. No. The glass was pre -programmed with
an internal instruction. At this exact moment,
shatter. and the floor was programmed with the
instruction, at this exact moment, feel an impact.
Their actions are synchronous, but not causal.
That is a wild idea, and it leads us straight
to the fundamental building blocks of his universe,
the monads. The monads, which he describes in
his monadology, they are the ultimate simple
substances of reality, the final irreducible
units. But if they're the building blocks, what
are they made of? Are they physical? This is
the key. They are not physical at all. They have
no material properties, no spatial extension,
no parts. If they had parts, they could be divided,
and he needed them to be the ultimate indivisible
reality. So what are they? They're best thought
of as non -physical centers of force, or maybe
even better, as metaphysical points of perception,
packets of information and potential. Okay, wait.
If these monads aren't physical, how do they
combine to create the very physical world we
live in? Tables, chairs, planets. Is he just
saying the physical world isn't real? In a way,
yes. For Leibniz, all space, matter, and motion
are what he calls phenomena. They are appearances
that arise from the collective perceptions of
these underlying non -material monads. Matter
is just what a collection of monads looks like
from the outside. And since they don't interact,
each one is completely independent. And yet,
you said earlier, he calls them little mirrors
of the universe. That's his beautiful phrase
for it. Each monad reflects the entire cosmos
from his own unique point of view. It's a universe
of infinite independent perspectives, all held
together in perfect pre -established harmony
by God, the monas monadum. The monad of monads.
And this perfect harmonious creation brings us
to the idea that got him into the most trouble.
His theodicy. His philosophical optimism. In
1710, he publishes the Theodosiae, and it's his
attempt to solve the ancient problem of evil.
Right. How can an all -powerful, all -knowing,
all -good God allow evil and suffering to exist?
And his answer is that this world we live in
is, in a qualified sense, the best possible world
that God could have created. That just sounds
so hard to swallow. It sounds incredibly naive,
especially to modern ears. But his argument is
purely logical. God, being perfect, has perfect
knowledge, power, and will. He knows every possible
world that could exist. He has the power to create
any of them. And being perfectly good, he would
only choose to create the best one. Therefore,
this one must be the best one, flaws and all.
The flaws must be necessary. Exactly. He says
God permits what he calls moral evil sin and
physical evil pain and suffering because they
are unavoidable consequences of something more
fundamental, metaphysical evil. And what's metaphysical
evil? It's just imperfection. The simple fact
that anything created cannot be as perfect as
its creator. Only God is perfect. So any created
world must, by definition, be limited and contain
some degree of imperfection, which then manifests
as the suffering we see. But this very logical,
very abstract defense of God ran into a very
real, very brutal wall. It did. In 1755, there
was the Great Lisbon Earthquake, a massive catastrophe
that destroyed a major European city and killed
tens of thousands of people on a holy day. And
that event was the perfect ammunition for Voltaire.
Perfect. Voltaire published his satirical masterpiece,
Candide, in 1759, and it just mercilessly mocks
Leibnizian optimism. Through the character of
Professor Pangloss. Who, in the middle of the
most horrific disasters, keeps repeating the
mantra, all is for the best and the best of all
possible worlds. And Voltaire's book was so witty
and so popular that it completely shaped the
public perception of likeness for centuries.
He became synonymous with this naive, out -of
-touch philosopher. What's so amazing about Leibniz
is that these huge abstract philosophical systems
weren't just intellectual exercises for him.
They were the foundation for his ultimate practical
goal. The universal mechanical calculation of
truth. Exactly. He genuinely believed that most
human arguments could be settled not by debate,
but by calculation, which leads to his famous
quote. Let us calculate without further ado to
see who is right. That quote captures his entire
ambition. And to achieve it, he dreamed up two
tools, the Caracteristica Universalis and the
Calculus Raciolusinator. Okay, let's break those
down. The Caracteristica Universalis, the universal
characteristic. What was this supposed to be?
It was a plan for a perfectly logical, universal,
symbolic language. His idea was that all complex
thoughts are just combinations of a small number
of simple, fundamental concepts. The goal was
to create an alphabet of human thought by assigning
a unique symbol to each of these fundamental
concepts. So instead of the fuzzy word love,
you'd have a precise symbol built from the combination
of symbols for, I don't know, desire, benevolence,
commitment. Precisely. And he even had a mathematical
idea for how to do it, using prime numbers. You
could assign a prime number to each core concept.
Then any complex idea would be the product of
those primes, giving it a unique numerical signature.
That's an incredible anticipation of Godel numbering.
Reducing language to unique numbers. So if the
characteristica is the language, the calculus
raciocinator is the engine. It's the calculus
of reasoning. It was meant to be a formal set
of rules, an algebra of thought that would allow
you to manipulate these symbols mechanically.
So two people in a dispute would translate their
arguments into this universal language. And then
just run the calculation. The argument that was
logically consistent and free of contradiction
would be proven true mechanically. It's the dream
of ending all conflict through pure logic. It's
really the theoretical basis for modern symbolic
logic and even the concept of computation itself.
A system that would just... Abolish ambiguity.
It's the ultimate rationalist dream. And this
drive to systematize everything also led him
to challenge the biggest scientific figure of
his day, Isaac Newton, on an even more fundamental
level than calculus. Oh, their rivalry went deep.
It was about the very nature of space and time.
Newton believed that space and time were absolute.
They were like a fixed, empty container that
things exist inside of. The substantivalist view.
Right. Leibniz argued for a completely relational
view. He said space and time aren't things in
themselves. Space is just the system of relations
between objects, and time is just the order of
events. And in the long run, who came out on
top in that debate? Well, for centuries, Newton's
view dominated. But then Einstein came along.
General relativity, with its idea of spacetime
being warped by mass and energy, is much, much
closer to Leibniz's relational view. He also
had a different idea about force, something he
called vis viva. Vis viva, or living force. He
defined it as mass times velocity squared, which
is basically twice the modern definition of kinetic
energy. And Newton focused on momentum, which
is mass times velocity. Exactly. And this wasn't
just a technical detail. Leibniz was arguing
that his vis viva was the quantity that was truly
conserved in the universe, which was a pioneering
step toward the modern concept of the conservation
of energy. So in the end, they were both right
in a way. Momentum is conserved and so is energy.
Yes. But Leibniz deserves huge credit for being
the first to really champion the idea of energy
conservation as a fundamental principle of physics.
And he applied the same systematic thinking.
the human mind. He's now seen as a kind of underappreciated
pioneer of psychology. His work here comes straight
from another of his core principles. Natura non
facet saltus. Nature does not make leaps. There
are no sudden jumps. Everything is a continuum.
Right. So he couldn't accept a sudden leap from
unfeeling matter to a fully conscious mind. There
had to be a gradient. So he proposed the idea
of Petit's perceptions, little perceptions. Small,
unnoticed perceptions. His analogy was the sound
of the ocean. You hear the roar of the surf,
but you don't consciously perceive the sound
of each individual tiny wave hitting the shore.
But your mind is still processing all of them.
And these tiny, unnoticed perceptions add up
until they cross a threshold into awareness.
Exactly. They transition into what he called
apperception, which is full, self -aware consciousness.
And this idea, this continuum of perception,
is a direct precursor to the concept of the unconscious
mind. He basically argued that for consciousness
to work the way it does, there has to be a vast
amount of mental activity happening below the
surface of our awareness. And this drive to organize
wasn't just for science and philosophy. He was
constantly trying to create applied systems for
society. In everything. In law, he wanted to
create a rational science of right. In religion,
he spent enormous energy trying to reconcile
the Catholic and Lutheran churches, believing
logic could heal the schism of the Reformation.
And his political ideas. were centuries ahead
of their time. Absolutely. He proposed a kind
of European confederation governed by a council
or senate. It's a remarkable anticipation of
the European Union. And in social science. He
advocated for a public health authority, tax
reforms, a national insurance program. Everywhere
he looked, he saw chaos that could be fixed with
a rational system. Which brings us to his day
job for 40 years. His work as a librarian. He's
considered one of the founders of modern library
science. When he took over the Ducal Library
in Hanover, it was a mess. He immediately set
out to systematize it. Wow. He created a proper
alphabetical author catalog, which was a big
step. But more importantly, he developed a subject
classification system. Broad categories like
theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, history,
imposing a rational order on the physical collection
of books. And he even had an idea for a kind
of proto -internet for information sharing. So
visionary. He called on publishers across Europe
to start distributing standardized abstracts
of all their new books. The idea was to create
a central searchable index of all new knowledge
being produced. That proposal failed then, but
the concept. Is the foundation of every modern
library cataloging system, like the Library of
Congress system. For him, the library wasn't
just a warehouse for books. It was the database
for his universal science. It's just incredible
then that when Leibniz died in Hanover in 1716,
his end was marked by such. Neglect. It's a real
historical irony. Despite everything he'd done,
especially for the House of Brunswick. Neither
the newly crowned King George III, the man Leibniz
had helped put on the British throne, nor anyone
from the Royal Society in London, where he was
a member for life, even bothered to show up for
his funeral. That's just astonishing. The man
who co -invented calculus, whose notation we
all use, who designed the political architecture
for the British crown, who founded the Berlin
Academy of Sciences, he was just... buried in
obscurity. It's worse than that. His grave went
completely unmarked for 50 years. And his public
reputation at the time was at an all -time low.
It was in the gutter. He was seen as the loser
in the calculus feud, a plagiarist. And then
his entire philosophical system was basically
reduced to a joke by Voltaire's Candide. So for
decades after his death, the greatest mind of
the 17th century was remembered as a philosophical
simpleton. After all that work, what does it
say about the scientific community of that era?
It says that at that moment, nationalism and
loyalty trumped universal truth. The fight between
Newton and Leibniz created this huge intellectual
schism between Britain and the continent. And
for a long time, the English -speaking world
just decided to collectively erase Leibniz's
contributions. So when did things start to turn
around? When did the recovery begin? It was a
very slow process. It started to bed in 1765
when his new essays on human understanding were
finally published. But the real rehabilitation
didn't happen until the 20th century. With philosophers
like Bertrand Russell. Exactly. Analytic philosophers
like Russell and Louis Couture went back and
looked at his work on logic and metaphysics and
they were blown away. They realized how deeply
he had anticipated the foundations of symbolic
logic and formal systems. They saw the genius
behind the universal characteristic and understood
that it prefigured the very logic that makes
computers work. And so today, his recognition
is finally where it should be. His manuscripts
are a UNESCO memory of the world treasure. The
biggest science prize in Germany is the Leibniz
Prize. He's finally appreciated for the entire
universal architecture of thought he tried to
build. So what does this all mean for us? For
you, the listener, who are the inheritors of
his digital and rationalist dreams, we started
this deep dive saying Leibniz was dedicated to
finding universal systems, systems that could
reduce any argument to a pure calculation. His
ultimate dream, the perfected characteristic
of universalis and the calculus ratio senator.
Right. So you could just say, let us calculate
without further ado to see who is right. The
ultimate rationalist fantasy, the end of messy
human conflict through clean mechanized logic.
So here's the final thought. Given the immense
complexities of our world modern geopolitics,
the ethical minefields of AI, the chaos of misinformation
on social media, does Leibniz's ultimate dream
still offer us a pathway to rational resolution?
Or does his ambition fundamentally ignore the
truly incalculable, the non -rational parts of
human nature, the passions, the biases, the metaphysical
evil, that maybe can't be reduced to a calculation?
That is the thought worth carrying with you.
A fitting challenge from the last man who tried
to know everything. We hope you've enjoyed this
deep dive into the extraordinary life and legacy
of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Until next time,
keep digging.