WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.459 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are attempting 00:00:03.459 --> 00:00:06.080 something a little ambitious, maybe even a little 00:00:06.080 --> 00:00:08.140 reckless. I think reckless is the right word. 00:00:08.199 --> 00:00:10.279 Usually we tackle a subject, we can kind of map 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:13.279 out the boundaries. Yeah. With this one, the 00:00:13.279 --> 00:00:15.839 map just keeps unfolding. There's no edge. We 00:00:15.839 --> 00:00:18.699 are talking about... Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. 00:00:18.839 --> 00:00:20.820 And I want to set the stakes right at the top. 00:00:20.980 --> 00:00:23.800 If you've ever used a computer, you are in a 00:00:23.800 --> 00:00:27.399 very real way running Leibniz's logic. If you've 00:00:27.399 --> 00:00:29.660 ever taken a calculus class, you were speaking 00:00:29.660 --> 00:00:32.179 his language. And if you've ever found yourself 00:00:32.179 --> 00:00:35.460 late at night wondering why a good, all -powerful 00:00:35.460 --> 00:00:38.119 God would allow bad things to happen, you are 00:00:38.119 --> 00:00:40.079 wrestling with a problem that Leibniz dedicated 00:00:40.079 --> 00:00:42.719 years of his life to solving. He's been called 00:00:42.719 --> 00:00:45.460 the last universal genius. And you hear a title 00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:47.359 like that and you think, OK, it's a bit of hyperbole, 00:00:47.420 --> 00:00:49.159 right? It's a nice poetic label. Yeah. Sounds 00:00:49.159 --> 00:00:51.859 good on a book cover. Exactly. But then you actually 00:00:51.859 --> 00:00:54.280 get into the sources. You look at the sheer volume 00:00:54.280 --> 00:00:56.460 of his work. And it's not just in one field. 00:00:56.579 --> 00:00:59.340 That's the key. We have his biographies detailing 00:00:59.340 --> 00:01:02.579 his life in what was then the Holy Roman Empire, 00:01:02.740 --> 00:01:05.319 Saxony, Hanover. And it's not like he just wrote 00:01:05.319 --> 00:01:08.939 a few big definitive books. A lot of his genius 00:01:08.939 --> 00:01:12.129 is scattered. It's completely fragmented. We're 00:01:12.129 --> 00:01:14.250 working from something like 15 ,000 letters. 00:01:14.450 --> 00:01:17.230 15 ,000. And who is he writing to? Everyone. 00:01:18.230 --> 00:01:20.730 Literally everyone. He's writing to queens, to 00:01:20.730 --> 00:01:24.150 dukes, to philosophers like Spinoza, to Jesuit 00:01:24.150 --> 00:01:27.209 missionaries deep in China. And in these letters, 00:01:27.329 --> 00:01:29.629 he's dropping bombshell ideas about physics, 00:01:29.709 --> 00:01:31.870 about logic, about theology. So it's a treasure 00:01:31.870 --> 00:01:34.390 hunt. It's a massive treasure hunt. Alongside 00:01:34.390 --> 00:01:37.329 his formal philosophical works, like the Theodicy 00:01:37.329 --> 00:01:40.109 or the Monadology, you have these thousands of 00:01:40.109 --> 00:01:42.280 scraps of paper. Mathematical notes, diplomatic 00:01:42.280 --> 00:01:45.019 memos. It's terrifying, really, the scope of 00:01:45.019 --> 00:01:47.219 it. Terrifying how? Because we live in an age 00:01:47.219 --> 00:01:49.120 of specialization. You're a physicist or you're 00:01:49.120 --> 00:01:51.180 a historian or you're a coder. You can't be all 00:01:51.180 --> 00:01:53.879 three. The body of knowledge is just too vast. 00:01:54.099 --> 00:01:56.980 Right. But Leibniz lived just before that explosion. 00:01:57.260 --> 00:01:59.819 He was a master of mathematics, philosophy, law, 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:02.439 history, engineering, geology, library, science. 00:02:02.599 --> 00:02:05.040 And he was doing it all at a world -class level, 00:02:05.140 --> 00:02:08.060 all at the same time. And that's our mission 00:02:08.060 --> 00:02:12.139 for this deep dive. How did one human brain manage 00:02:12.139 --> 00:02:14.860 all of that? How did he anticipate computers 00:02:14.860 --> 00:02:18.180 three centuries early, invent calculus, try to 00:02:18.180 --> 00:02:20.520 scheme his way to European peace and explain 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:23.719 the very fabric of the universe, while also holding 00:02:23.719 --> 00:02:25.860 down a day job as a librarian and a courtier? 00:02:26.039 --> 00:02:29.979 And maybe the biggest question, why does a man 00:02:29.979 --> 00:02:32.800 who contributed so much die almost completely 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:36.710 alone, unmourned? and buried in an unmarked grave 00:02:36.710 --> 00:02:38.909 it's a paradox so let's start at the beginning 00:02:38.909 --> 00:02:40.810 we have to understand the world that made him 00:02:40.810 --> 00:02:43.069 before we can understand the worlds he made section 00:02:43.069 --> 00:02:46.449 one The child prodigy and the chip on his shoulder. 00:02:46.789 --> 00:02:48.229 Okay, so you have to picture the time and place. 00:02:48.569 --> 00:02:51.830 He's born in Leipzig in 1646. And this is not 00:02:51.830 --> 00:02:53.449 a good time to be born in the German -speaking 00:02:53.449 --> 00:02:56.389 lands. It's maybe the worst possible time. The 00:02:56.389 --> 00:02:58.330 Thirty Years' War is just sputtering to an end. 00:02:58.430 --> 00:03:00.669 This was a conflict that, it wasn't just a war, 00:03:00.750 --> 00:03:02.789 it was a cataclysm. It completely devastated 00:03:02.789 --> 00:03:04.750 Central Europe. We're talking about massive population 00:03:04.750 --> 00:03:08.469 loss, right? Colossal. In some German states... 00:03:08.669 --> 00:03:11.930 the population dropped by over 50%. The economy 00:03:11.930 --> 00:03:14.610 was in ruins. Entire cities were burned to the 00:03:14.610 --> 00:03:18.210 ground. There was famine, plague. It was a landscape 00:03:18.210 --> 00:03:21.289 of trauma. And Leibniz is born right into the 00:03:21.289 --> 00:03:23.710 rubble of that world. So his world is one of 00:03:23.710 --> 00:03:26.949 chaos, but his family life is academic. His father 00:03:26.949 --> 00:03:29.169 was a professor of moral philosophy at the University 00:03:29.169 --> 00:03:31.849 of Leipzig. He was. So there's this intellectual 00:03:31.849 --> 00:03:34.780 foundation there. But then tragedy strikes. His 00:03:34.780 --> 00:03:37.180 father dies when Leibniz is only six years old. 00:03:37.300 --> 00:03:40.139 Which is a huge blow for any child. A huge blow. 00:03:40.439 --> 00:03:43.240 But it leads directly to the defining event of 00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:46.099 his entire life. Because with his father gone, 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:49.180 Leibniz inherits access to his private library. 00:03:49.460 --> 00:03:51.639 And a library in the 17th century wasn't like 00:03:51.639 --> 00:03:53.740 a public library today. This was a treasure chest. 00:03:53.939 --> 00:03:55.759 It was everything. And the formal schooling at 00:03:55.759 --> 00:03:57.719 the time was incredibly rigid. It was what they 00:03:57.719 --> 00:03:59.639 called a small canon. You learned some Latin 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:01.599 grammar, read a few approved classical authors, 00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:04.560 and that was it. It was very narrow, very controlled. 00:04:04.719 --> 00:04:06.979 But the library, the library was uncontrolled. 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:10.479 It was the wild west of ideas. Precisely. After 00:04:10.479 --> 00:04:14.550 some initial hesitation, his family just Let 00:04:14.550 --> 00:04:16.329 him loose in there. And you have to picture this. 00:04:16.430 --> 00:04:19.250 A seven, eight -year -old boy surrounded by these 00:04:19.250 --> 00:04:22.430 massive leather -bound tomes. He's pulling down 00:04:22.430 --> 00:04:25.649 advanced Latin philosophy, Greek histories, books 00:04:25.649 --> 00:04:28.149 on theology that university students would struggle 00:04:28.149 --> 00:04:30.110 with. And he's teaching himself. He's teaching 00:04:30.110 --> 00:04:32.949 himself Latin. This is incredible. By looking 00:04:32.949 --> 00:04:36.250 at the woodcut illustrations in a history book 00:04:36.250 --> 00:04:39.170 by the Roman author Livy and matching the pictures 00:04:39.170 --> 00:04:42.339 to the captions. He's reverse engineering the 00:04:42.339 --> 00:04:45.060 language from context. That's not normal. It's 00:04:45.060 --> 00:04:47.379 profoundly not normal. By the time he's 12 years 00:04:47.379 --> 00:04:49.879 old, he's not just proficient in Latin. He's 00:04:49.879 --> 00:04:51.939 composing poetry in it. There's that story about 00:04:51.939 --> 00:04:54.439 the school event, isn't there? The famous one. 00:04:54.540 --> 00:04:57.100 He's 13. A student was supposed to deliver a 00:04:57.100 --> 00:05:00.079 poem in Latin for some school festival and couldn't 00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:02.860 do it. Leibniz's teacher asks if he can maybe 00:05:02.860 --> 00:05:05.519 whip something up. Leibniz goes away and in a 00:05:05.519 --> 00:05:08.540 single morning composes 300 hexameters of flawless 00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:10.740 classical Latin verse. Okay, that's just showing 00:05:10.740 --> 00:05:13.459 off. Oh, absolutely. There's a confidence there, 00:05:13.639 --> 00:05:16.980 an intellectual swagger that never leaves him. 00:05:17.060 --> 00:05:19.420 He knows he's the smartest guy in any room he 00:05:19.420 --> 00:05:21.740 walks into. And this just accelerates, right? 00:05:21.839 --> 00:05:24.300 He goes to university at an absurdly young age. 00:05:24.459 --> 00:05:27.040 He enrolls at his father's university, the University 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:29.750 of Leipzig, when he's just 14 years old. 14. 00:05:29.750 --> 00:05:31.529 I think I was trying to figure out how to ride 00:05:31.529 --> 00:05:33.910 a bike without training wheels at 14. And he's 00:05:33.910 --> 00:05:36.930 not just there to take up space. He burns through 00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:39.610 the curriculum. He gets his bachelor's in philosophy 00:05:39.610 --> 00:05:43.230 by 1662, his master's a year later, and then 00:05:43.230 --> 00:05:46.449 finishes his law degree by 1665. He's not even 00:05:46.449 --> 00:05:48.709 20 years old yet. So he's on the fast track. 00:05:49.050 --> 00:05:51.750 Everything's going perfectly. But then he hits 00:05:51.750 --> 00:05:54.529 a wall. The first major rejection of his life, 00:05:54.649 --> 00:05:57.649 and I think it shapes him profoundly. In 1666, 00:05:57.829 --> 00:06:01.470 he's 19, maybe 20, and he applies for his doctorate 00:06:01.470 --> 00:06:04.209 in law. He's written his dissertation. He's ready. 00:06:04.589 --> 00:06:07.750 And the faculty at Leipzig turn him down. Why? 00:06:07.949 --> 00:06:10.149 Was the work not good enough? The work was brilliant. 00:06:10.230 --> 00:06:11.970 The official reason they gave was his relative 00:06:11.970 --> 00:06:14.730 youth. So you're too young. Which was basically 00:06:14.730 --> 00:06:18.189 academic code for, we don't like you, kid. It 00:06:18.189 --> 00:06:21.459 was pure professional jealousy. The dean's wife 00:06:21.459 --> 00:06:23.459 was apparently feuding with Leibniz's family, 00:06:23.639 --> 00:06:26.620 and the older professors just couldn't stomach 00:06:26.620 --> 00:06:28.920 the idea of this teenager becoming their equal. 00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:31.899 It was petty university politics. And for a mind 00:06:31.899 --> 00:06:34.860 like Leibniz, who operates on pure logic and 00:06:34.860 --> 00:06:37.939 merit, that must have been infuriating. Infuriating 00:06:37.939 --> 00:06:40.139 is an understatement. And this is where you see 00:06:40.139 --> 00:06:42.899 that chip on his shoulder form. He could have 00:06:42.899 --> 00:06:44.740 waited. He could have hung around for another 00:06:44.740 --> 00:06:48.620 year. But he didn't. He was so disgusted that 00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:51.120 he packed his bags and left Leipzig, his hometown, 00:06:51.459 --> 00:06:54.420 forever. He never went back. He holds a grudge. 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:57.220 A serious grudge. And he immediately proves them 00:06:57.220 --> 00:06:59.839 wrong. He takes his thesis down the road to the 00:06:59.839 --> 00:07:02.100 University of Altdorf, submits it, and they're 00:07:02.100 --> 00:07:04.120 so blown away they award him his doctorate in 00:07:04.120 --> 00:07:06.300 a matter of months. Vindication. Total vindication. 00:07:06.540 --> 00:07:08.220 Right. And here's the fork in the road. The University 00:07:08.220 --> 00:07:10.920 of Altdorf immediately offers him a job, a professorship. 00:07:11.079 --> 00:07:13.379 Stay here, they say. You're brilliant. Join the 00:07:13.379 --> 00:07:16.220 faculty. Have a safe, stable academic career. 00:07:16.500 --> 00:07:19.160 The ivory tower. The dream for most scholars. 00:07:19.480 --> 00:07:22.600 And Leibniz says no. He turns them down flat. 00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:24.879 He later wrote that his thoughts were turned 00:07:24.879 --> 00:07:28.019 in an entirely different direction. This rejection 00:07:28.019 --> 00:07:31.779 from Leipzig soured him on pure academia. He 00:07:31.779 --> 00:07:33.459 decided he didn't just want to study the world 00:07:33.459 --> 00:07:36.000 from a distance. He wanted to be in it. He wanted 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:38.740 to shape events. He wanted power. Or at least... 00:07:39.390 --> 00:07:42.769 You wanted to be a man of affairs, which leads 00:07:42.769 --> 00:07:46.069 to this absolutely hilarious first attempt to 00:07:46.069 --> 00:07:49.470 get a job. The alchemist hustle. I love this 00:07:49.470 --> 00:07:51.689 story. So he needs a job. He's got his new doctorate 00:07:51.689 --> 00:07:54.050 and he ends up in Nuremberg. Right. And he finds 00:07:54.050 --> 00:07:56.269 out there's a secretive society of alchemists 00:07:56.269 --> 00:07:59.089 operating there. You know. Wealthy patrons trying 00:07:59.089 --> 00:08:01.250 to discover the philosopher's stone, turn lead 00:08:01.250 --> 00:08:03.850 into gold, all that stuff. A combination of mystical 00:08:03.850 --> 00:08:06.930 belief and early chemistry. Exactly. And they 00:08:06.930 --> 00:08:09.069 needed a secretary, a paid position to manage 00:08:09.069 --> 00:08:11.709 their affairs and research. Now, does Leibniz 00:08:11.709 --> 00:08:14.170 know anything about alchemy? I'm guessing zero. 00:08:14.430 --> 00:08:16.430 Less than zero. He thinks it's complete nonsense. 00:08:16.990 --> 00:08:19.689 But thanks to his father's library, he's read 00:08:19.689 --> 00:08:22.470 all the old alchemical texts. He knows the jargon. 00:08:22.529 --> 00:08:24.910 He knows the buzzwords. So he can talk the talk. 00:08:28.029 --> 00:08:30.850 impressive sounding, completely meaningless cover 00:08:30.850 --> 00:08:33.690 letter in history. It's just a word salad of 00:08:33.690 --> 00:08:36.830 the most obscure, convoluted, alchemical terms 00:08:36.830 --> 00:08:39.250 he can find. He's basically bluffing his way 00:08:39.250 --> 00:08:41.610 in. It's the ultimate fake it till you make it. 00:08:41.769 --> 00:08:44.990 He presents himself as this deeply learned master 00:08:44.990 --> 00:08:49.049 of the secret arts. And the alchemists, who are 00:08:49.049 --> 00:08:51.409 probably just as confused as anyone, they read 00:08:51.409 --> 00:08:53.210 this letter and they're floored. They think, 00:08:53.230 --> 00:08:55.350 my God, this man must be a genius. We don't understand 00:08:55.350 --> 00:08:57.309 a word of it. So they hire? They hire him on 00:08:57.309 --> 00:09:00.240 the spot. And it's just this perfect little story 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:02.940 that shows his incredible confidence and his 00:09:02.940 --> 00:09:04.960 ability to master the language of any system, 00:09:05.019 --> 00:09:07.159 whether it's real or not. And that confidence 00:09:07.159 --> 00:09:10.740 lands him his first real serious job in the service 00:09:10.740 --> 00:09:12.639 of the elector of Mainz. And this is where he 00:09:12.639 --> 00:09:14.860 goes from being a brilliant academic to a player 00:09:14.860 --> 00:09:17.899 on the world stage. Section two, the diplomat 00:09:17.899 --> 00:09:20.379 and the Egyptian plan. Right. So he's now working 00:09:20.379 --> 00:09:23.100 for a major political figure. And you have to 00:09:23.100 --> 00:09:25.980 remember the geopolitical context. The Holy Roman 00:09:25.980 --> 00:09:29.679 Empire, these German states, are weak and fragmented 00:09:29.679 --> 00:09:32.580 after the war. And their neighbor is not weak. 00:09:32.799 --> 00:09:36.039 Their neighbor is the global superpower. France, 00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:39.200 under King Louis XIV, the Sun King. Louis has 00:09:39.200 --> 00:09:41.879 the biggest, best -funded army in Europe, and 00:09:41.879 --> 00:09:45.220 he has ambitions. He's looking east at the German 00:09:45.220 --> 00:09:47.759 lands and the wealthy Dutch Republic, and he's 00:09:47.759 --> 00:09:49.919 thinking of expansion. So everyone in Germany 00:09:49.919 --> 00:09:51.960 is terrified of a French invasion. They are. 00:09:52.399 --> 00:09:54.700 And Leibniz, who is still in his 20s, mind you, 00:09:54.799 --> 00:09:57.620 decides he's going to solve this problem. He 00:09:57.620 --> 00:09:59.620 comes up with one of the most audacious foreign 00:09:59.620 --> 00:10:02.100 policy proposals in history. He's not going to 00:10:02.100 --> 00:10:04.059 suggest a treaty, is he? That's too simple for 00:10:04.059 --> 00:10:06.860 him. No, no. He proposes a grand distraction, 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:11.159 a geopolitical bank shot. He writes a detailed 00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:13.299 memorandum that becomes known as the Egyptian 00:10:13.299 --> 00:10:16.000 Plan. He wants to get France interested in Egypt. 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:18.960 Why Egypt? Because he frames it as the key to 00:10:18.960 --> 00:10:21.360 world power. He essentially writes to the French 00:10:21.360 --> 00:10:23.399 court and says, look, your majesty, why are you 00:10:23.399 --> 00:10:25.159 getting bogged down fighting these pointless 00:10:25.159 --> 00:10:28.139 wars in the muddy fields of Holland? It's expensive. 00:10:28.399 --> 00:10:30.940 It's a slog. The real prize isn't in Europe. 00:10:30.980 --> 00:10:33.120 It's in the East. The trade with the Indies. 00:10:33.299 --> 00:10:37.320 Exactly. The Dutch control the incredibly lucrative 00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:39.980 spice trade, and that's the source of their wealth. 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:43.419 Leibniz argues that if France were to conquer 00:10:43.419 --> 00:10:47.279 Egypt, they could build a canal at Suez. proposed 00:10:47.279 --> 00:10:51.100 a Suez Canal in the 1670s? He did. He said, if 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:53.139 you do that, you cut out the long, dangerous 00:10:53.139 --> 00:10:55.940 trip around Africa, you bankrupt the Dutch, you 00:10:55.940 --> 00:10:58.200 control the flow of wealth from Asia to Europe, 00:10:58.259 --> 00:11:00.700 and you become the undisputed master of the world. 00:11:00.899 --> 00:11:03.360 And as a bonus, it's a holy war against the Ottoman 00:11:03.360 --> 00:11:05.490 Empire, so the Pope will love it. It's a brilliant 00:11:05.490 --> 00:11:07.409 pitch, but of course he doesn't actually care 00:11:07.409 --> 00:11:09.629 about any of that. Not in the slightest. The 00:11:09.629 --> 00:11:11.789 real goal is to get the giant French army out 00:11:11.789 --> 00:11:14.110 of his backyard. If they're off fighting in the 00:11:14.110 --> 00:11:16.370 deserts of North Africa, they can't be burning 00:11:16.370 --> 00:11:18.590 German cities. It's a strategy of containment 00:11:18.590 --> 00:11:22.049 dressed up as a glorious crusade. It's incredibly 00:11:22.049 --> 00:11:24.529 clever, so what happens? The Elector of Mainz 00:11:24.529 --> 00:11:26.330 thinks it's brilliant and sends Leibniz himself 00:11:26.330 --> 00:11:29.750 to Paris in 1672 to try and pitch the plan to 00:11:29.750 --> 00:11:31.629 the French king. Does he get a meeting with Louis 00:11:31.629 --> 00:11:34.720 IV VIII? He doesn't get that far. The plan gets 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:37.120 kicked around the French foreign ministry, but 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:39.960 before it can gain any real traction, the political 00:11:39.960 --> 00:11:42.860 situation changes. Louis decides to invade the 00:11:42.860 --> 00:11:45.399 Netherlands anyway. The Franco -Dutch war breaks 00:11:45.399 --> 00:11:48.220 out, and the Egyptian plan is shelved. So it 00:11:48.220 --> 00:11:50.480 was a failure. As a diplomatic mission, yes, 00:11:50.500 --> 00:11:53.460 it failed. But there is this incredible, almost 00:11:53.460 --> 00:11:56.019 absurd historical footnote. Oh, I know this one. 00:11:56.120 --> 00:11:59.000 Napoleon. Napoleon. Over a century later, in 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:02.600 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte launches his invasion 00:12:02.600 --> 00:12:05.179 of Egypt. And when historians were going through 00:12:05.179 --> 00:12:07.320 the archives, they discovered that Napoleon's 00:12:07.320 --> 00:12:09.980 foreign minister had found and read a summary 00:12:09.980 --> 00:12:13.230 of Lagnis' old plan. So Napoleon actually implemented 00:12:13.230 --> 00:12:16.389 Leibniz's grand strategy. He did, unwittingly. 00:12:16.710 --> 00:12:19.090 Leibniz's idea was sound. He was just 100 years 00:12:19.090 --> 00:12:21.169 too early. It's a recurring theme in his life. 00:12:21.309 --> 00:12:23.509 He's operating on a timeline that nobody else 00:12:23.509 --> 00:12:25.590 is on. But the trip to Paris wasn't a waste, 00:12:25.649 --> 00:12:27.509 was it? In fact, it might be the most important 00:12:27.509 --> 00:12:30.750 failure of his career. Absolutely. Because while 00:12:30.750 --> 00:12:32.789 the political mission failed, the intellectual 00:12:32.789 --> 00:12:44.500 mission was a staggering success. And Leibniz 00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:46.620 was about to get a serious upgrade. Which brings 00:12:46.620 --> 00:12:49.980 us to Section 3. Paris, physics, and the invention 00:12:49.980 --> 00:12:53.360 of calculus. So Leibniz is in Paris, and he manages 00:12:53.360 --> 00:12:55.080 to get an introduction to the most celebrated 00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:57.899 scientist in the city, the Dutch physicist Christian 00:12:57.899 --> 00:13:00.519 Huygens. And Huygens is a giant. He's famous 00:13:00.519 --> 00:13:02.899 for his work on optics. He invented the pendulum 00:13:02.899 --> 00:13:05.659 clock. He discovered Saturn's rings and its moon, 00:13:05.740 --> 00:13:08.139 Titan. He's the real deal. He is. And Leibniz, 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:10.059 feeling very pleased with himself, goes to meet 00:13:10.059 --> 00:13:12.559 him. They start talking, and Huygens very quickly 00:13:12.559 --> 00:13:15.740 realizes that while this... young German diplomat 00:13:15.740 --> 00:13:18.620 is clearly a genius, his mathematics is. Well, 00:13:18.820 --> 00:13:21.200 it's a bit old -fashioned. He's not up to date 00:13:21.200 --> 00:13:23.299 on the latest research. Exactly. He hasn't studied 00:13:23.299 --> 00:13:25.860 the work of Descartes or Pascal on geometry and 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:29.259 probability in any real depth. So Huygens, sort 00:13:29.259 --> 00:13:31.980 of as a test, gives him a problem to solve. It's 00:13:31.980 --> 00:13:34.080 a challenge involving the summation of an infinite 00:13:34.080 --> 00:13:36.759 series. And Leibniz can't do it. He can't. He's 00:13:36.759 --> 00:13:39.620 humbled. But this is the thing about Leibniz. 00:13:39.720 --> 00:13:42.460 A failure or a challenge doesn't make him quit. 00:13:42.600 --> 00:13:45.879 It makes him obsess. He realizes there's a huge 00:13:45.879 --> 00:13:48.360 gap in his knowledge, and he launches himself 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:50.559 into what he called a program of self -study. 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:53.340 He basically gives himself a PhD in advanced 00:13:53.340 --> 00:13:55.879 mathematics in a few months. In his spare time, 00:13:56.059 --> 00:13:57.940 while he's still supposed to be doing diplomacy, 00:13:58.240 --> 00:14:01.379 he devours all the latest mathematical texts. 00:14:01.779 --> 00:14:05.000 And as he's doing this, he starts to see a problem 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:07.139 that's looking at the very edge of what's known. 00:14:07.549 --> 00:14:09.830 A problem that everyone is struggling with. The 00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:11.990 problem of change. The problem of continuous 00:14:11.990 --> 00:14:14.190 change. Let's break this down because the word 00:14:14.190 --> 00:14:17.009 calculus makes everyone's eyes glaze over. Yeah, 00:14:17.049 --> 00:14:19.269 I'm having flashbacks to high school. Okay, so 00:14:19.269 --> 00:14:21.269 think about it this way. For thousands of years, 00:14:21.429 --> 00:14:24.129 math was great at dealing with static things. 00:14:24.769 --> 00:14:27.470 Things that stayed still. You could calculate 00:14:27.470 --> 00:14:31.029 the area of a square, the volume of a cube. Easy. 00:14:31.289 --> 00:14:33.970 Length times width. Simple. But what about things 00:14:33.970 --> 00:14:36.789 that are in motion? What is the exact speed of 00:14:36.789 --> 00:14:39.870 a cannonball at one specific instant in its flight? 00:14:40.070 --> 00:14:42.710 Its speed is constantly changing because of gravity 00:14:42.710 --> 00:14:44.570 and air resistance. Right, it's not a single 00:14:44.570 --> 00:14:46.450 number. And what about the area of an irregular 00:14:46.450 --> 00:14:49.350 shape, like the area under a parabolic curve 00:14:49.350 --> 00:14:52.309 on a graph? You can't just use length times width 00:14:52.309 --> 00:14:54.429 because the height is constantly changing. These 00:14:54.429 --> 00:14:57.070 were the two great unsolved problems of 17th 00:14:57.070 --> 00:14:59.470 century math. Finding the instantaneous rate 00:14:59.470 --> 00:15:02.370 of change, the slope of a curve at a single point, 00:15:02.509 --> 00:15:06.080 and finding the area... Under a curve? And everyone 00:15:06.080 --> 00:15:08.600 knew they were important problems, but they were 00:15:08.600 --> 00:15:11.200 treating them as separate. Leibniz, in a flash 00:15:11.200 --> 00:15:13.639 of insight, realized they were connected. And 00:15:13.639 --> 00:15:15.899 we actually have the date in his notebooks. On 00:15:15.899 --> 00:15:19.779 November 11, 1675, he has his breakthrough. He 00:15:19.779 --> 00:15:22.279 figures it out. He realizes that these two operations, 00:15:22.580 --> 00:15:25.019 finding the slope, which he called differentiation, 00:15:25.259 --> 00:15:28.120 and finding the area, which he called integration, 00:15:28.519 --> 00:15:31.620 are inverses of each other. They undo one another. 00:15:31.720 --> 00:15:34.519 It's like multiplication and division. The fundamental 00:15:34.519 --> 00:15:37.539 theorem of calculus. That's it. It's the key 00:15:37.539 --> 00:15:40.299 that unlocks the entire system. But here's where 00:15:40.299 --> 00:15:42.860 Leibniz's genius goes in a different direction. 00:15:43.059 --> 00:15:46.059 From his great rival, Isaac Newton, who was working 00:15:46.059 --> 00:15:48.600 on the same problem over in England. The Great 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:51.320 Showdown. Newton thought about the problem like 00:15:51.320 --> 00:15:54.559 a physicist. He thought in terms of motion, what 00:15:54.559 --> 00:15:57.240 he called fluxions and fluence, the rates of 00:15:57.240 --> 00:16:01.279 flow. It was powerful. But his notation, the 00:16:01.279 --> 00:16:03.279 way he wrote it down, was messy and confusing. 00:16:03.840 --> 00:16:06.299 And Leibniz was a philosopher and a logician. 00:16:06.519 --> 00:16:08.539 He was obsessed with creating a perfect language. 00:16:08.759 --> 00:16:11.139 He wanted to create symbols that would make the 00:16:11.139 --> 00:16:14.659 thinking process almost automatic. So he developed 00:16:14.659 --> 00:16:17.460 a notation that was incredibly elegant and intuitive. 00:16:17.740 --> 00:16:19.460 This is where we get the symbols we use today. 00:16:19.700 --> 00:16:22.639 The very same. For integration, finding the area, 00:16:22.759 --> 00:16:26.220 he used an elongated letter S -A -F -S for summa, 00:16:26.220 --> 00:16:28.220 the Latin word for sum, because you're summing 00:16:28.220 --> 00:16:30.399 up an infinite number of tiny rectangles under 00:16:30.399 --> 00:16:32.659 the curve. Okay, that makes sense. And for differentiation, 00:16:33.059 --> 00:16:36.019 finding the slope, he used the letter DS, as 00:16:36.019 --> 00:16:39.240 in DX for differentia, the Latin word for difference. 00:16:39.480 --> 00:16:41.639 It was a perfect symbolic language. It was a 00:16:41.639 --> 00:16:43.980 better user interface. Newton built the engine, 00:16:44.139 --> 00:16:46.639 but Leibniz designed the dashboard and the steering 00:16:46.639 --> 00:16:49.580 wheel. That is a perfect analogy. And because 00:16:49.580 --> 00:16:52.360 Leibniz's system was so much easier to use, it's 00:16:52.360 --> 00:16:53.919 the one that eventually took over the world. 00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:59.440 But he published it first in 1684. And Newton, 00:16:59.639 --> 00:17:01.679 who had developed his own version years earlier 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:04.940 but had kept it secret, was not happy. And this 00:17:04.940 --> 00:17:07.140 kicks off the dark cloud you mentioned, the priority 00:17:07.140 --> 00:17:09.779 dispute. The nastiest, most vicious intellectual 00:17:09.779 --> 00:17:12.640 property dispute in the history of science. It 00:17:12.640 --> 00:17:15.740 gets ugly fast. So Newton's allies start accusing 00:17:15.740 --> 00:17:19.039 Leibniz of plagiarism. Yes. A man named John 00:17:19.039 --> 00:17:21.200 Keel, a follower of Newton, publishes an article 00:17:21.200 --> 00:17:23.900 in 1708 flat out accusing Leibniz of stealing 00:17:23.900 --> 00:17:26.730 the idea. Is there any basis for this? The only 00:17:26.730 --> 00:17:28.990 thin reed they had to hang on to was that Leibniz 00:17:28.990 --> 00:17:32.829 had visited London briefly in 1676 and had seen 00:17:32.829 --> 00:17:35.569 some of Newton's unpublished manuscripts. But 00:17:35.569 --> 00:17:37.390 modern historians who have studied the notebooks 00:17:37.390 --> 00:17:40.609 of both men are almost unanimous. They were independent 00:17:40.609 --> 00:17:42.710 discoveries. Their methods, their thinking, their 00:17:42.710 --> 00:17:44.769 notation, they're completely different. But Newton 00:17:44.769 --> 00:17:47.089 wasn't interested in the truth. He wanted credit. 00:17:47.230 --> 00:17:49.809 And he was in a position of power. Immense power. 00:17:50.609 --> 00:17:54.059 By this time, he's Sir Isaac Newton. the revered 00:17:54.059 --> 00:17:56.440 national hero. And he's the president of the 00:17:56.440 --> 00:17:58.660 Royal Society, the most prestigious scientific 00:17:58.660 --> 00:18:01.980 body in the world. He decides the society will 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:05.420 form a committee to impartially investigate the 00:18:05.420 --> 00:18:08.140 charge of plagiarism. Let me guess, the committee 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:10.660 was not impartial. The committee was stacked 00:18:10.660 --> 00:18:14.099 with Newton's staunchest allies. And the kicker 00:18:14.099 --> 00:18:16.700 is, we now know from historical analysis that 00:18:16.700 --> 00:18:19.000 Newton himself secretly wrote the committee's 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:21.369 final report. He was the judge in his own case. 00:18:21.490 --> 00:18:24.210 He was the judge, jury, and executioner. The 00:18:24.210 --> 00:18:26.849 report, the Commercium Apostolicum, came out 00:18:26.849 --> 00:18:29.109 and officially declared Leibniz a thief and a 00:18:29.109 --> 00:18:31.650 fraud. It was a character assassination on an 00:18:31.650 --> 00:18:34.460 international scale. That is just... unbelievably 00:18:34.460 --> 00:18:36.759 petty from a mind like Newton's. Newton was a 00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:39.859 brilliant, but also a deeply insecure and vindictive 00:18:39.859 --> 00:18:42.839 man. And this feud completely poisoned the rest 00:18:42.839 --> 00:18:45.220 of Leibniz's life. It tarnished his reputation, 00:18:45.480 --> 00:18:47.740 especially in the English -speaking world. And 00:18:47.740 --> 00:18:49.660 it had real consequences for science, didn't 00:18:49.660 --> 00:18:52.920 it? It did. It created a huge rift between British 00:18:52.920 --> 00:18:55.099 mathematicians and mathematicians on the continent. 00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:57.950 For nearly a century, British mathematicians, 00:18:57.950 --> 00:19:00.670 out of pure nationalistic loyalty, stuck with 00:19:00.670 --> 00:19:03.809 Newton's clunky inferior notation while the rest 00:19:03.809 --> 00:19:06.450 of Europe forged ahead using Leibniz's elegant 00:19:06.450 --> 00:19:09.210 system. They basically cut themselves off from 00:19:09.210 --> 00:19:11.750 major mathematical progress. So Leibniz won the 00:19:11.750 --> 00:19:13.990 war in the long run, but he paid a heavy personal 00:19:13.990 --> 00:19:17.309 price. A very heavy price. But even while this 00:19:17.309 --> 00:19:20.109 intellectual war is raging, his mind is already 00:19:20.109 --> 00:19:22.089 leaping ahead to the next century, to something 00:19:22.089 --> 00:19:25.470 else entirely. Section four, the ancestor of 00:19:25.470 --> 00:19:27.799 the computer. This is the part that just genuinely 00:19:27.799 --> 00:19:30.319 blows my mind, because we are still in the late 00:19:30.319 --> 00:19:33.640 1600s, and this man is thinking about binary 00:19:33.640 --> 00:19:36.279 code. It's astonishing. He became fascinated 00:19:36.279 --> 00:19:39.460 with the binary numeral system, base 2. The idea 00:19:39.460 --> 00:19:41.420 that you could represent any number at all using 00:19:41.420 --> 00:19:44.220 only two symbols, 1 and 0. Which is the fundamental 00:19:44.220 --> 00:19:46.480 language of all digital computing today. Every 00:19:46.480 --> 00:19:48.740 single thing your phone or computer does is, 00:19:48.779 --> 00:19:51.259 at its core, a manipulation of ones and zeros. 00:19:51.559 --> 00:19:54.299 Leibniz saw a deep, almost mystical elegance 00:19:54.299 --> 00:19:56.700 in this. And he found inspiration for this in 00:19:56.700 --> 00:19:59.400 a very unexpected place. Not from European mathematics. 00:19:59.799 --> 00:20:02.140 He found it through his correspondence with Jesuit 00:20:02.140 --> 00:20:04.299 missionaries in China. They sent him material 00:20:04.299 --> 00:20:06.779 about the I Ching, the ancient Chinese book of 00:20:06.779 --> 00:20:08.960 changes. Which is a divination text, right? It 00:20:08.960 --> 00:20:11.079 uses these hexagrams made of solid and broken 00:20:11.079 --> 00:20:14.420 lines. Exactly. And for centuries, people in 00:20:14.420 --> 00:20:16.619 the West who looked at it just saw mysticism. 00:20:17.559 --> 00:20:20.500 Leibniz looked at the 64 hexagrams, and he saw 00:20:20.500 --> 00:20:23.099 mathematics. He realized that if you treat a 00:20:23.099 --> 00:20:26.460 solid line as a 1 and a broken line as a 0, the 00:20:26.460 --> 00:20:28.539 hexagrams are a perfect representation of the 00:20:28.539 --> 00:20:31.880 binary numbers from 0 to 63. He saw a binary 00:20:31.880 --> 00:20:34.619 counting system hidden in an ancient Chinese 00:20:34.619 --> 00:20:37.700 philosophical text. Yes. He was convinced that 00:20:37.700 --> 00:20:39.720 the ancient Chinese sages had understood binary. 00:20:40.099 --> 00:20:43.420 And being Leibniz, he immediately gave it a profound 00:20:43.420 --> 00:20:45.920 theological meaning. Of course he did. For him, 00:20:45.920 --> 00:20:48.380 it was a perfect image of creation. The number 00:20:48.380 --> 00:20:51.400 one represented God, the ultimate unity being. 00:20:51.579 --> 00:20:55.599 The number zero represented the void, nothingness. 00:20:55.779 --> 00:20:57.920 So God creating the universe out of nothing is 00:20:57.920 --> 00:21:00.319 symbolically represented by the way all numbers 00:21:00.319 --> 00:21:02.920 can be generated from just one and O. Ex nihilo. 00:21:03.759 --> 00:21:06.859 That's exactly how he saw it. It was a mathematical 00:21:06.859 --> 00:21:10.680 proof of a theological principle. But he didn't 00:21:10.680 --> 00:21:12.589 just stop at the philosophy. This is the key 00:21:12.589 --> 00:21:14.849 with Leibniz. He always wanted to build something. 00:21:15.049 --> 00:21:17.210 He was a theorist and a tinkerer. He wanted to 00:21:17.210 --> 00:21:19.430 make a machine. He envisioned a machine that 00:21:19.430 --> 00:21:22.529 could calculate using binary. In a manuscript 00:21:22.529 --> 00:21:26.289 from 1679, he sketched out an idea for a mechanical 00:21:26.289 --> 00:21:29.430 binary calculator that would use marbles. Marbles. 00:21:29.490 --> 00:21:31.950 Yeah, a system of gates and channels. A marble 00:21:31.950 --> 00:21:34.329 would fall, and a gate could be open or closed. 00:21:34.549 --> 00:21:37.069 If it falls through, that's a one. If it's blocked, 00:21:37.190 --> 00:21:39.730 that's a zero. He even described using a moving 00:21:39.730 --> 00:21:42.119 platform with holes in it. To control the gates. 00:21:42.339 --> 00:21:45.660 Wait, holes? Like a punch card? It's the essential 00:21:45.660 --> 00:21:48.339 logic of a punch card system. He's describing 00:21:48.339 --> 00:21:51.240 the basic mechanics of digital hardware 250 years 00:21:51.240 --> 00:21:53.279 before it became a reality. Why didn't he build 00:21:53.279 --> 00:21:55.200 it? The materials and manufacturing technology 00:21:55.200 --> 00:21:57.859 of the 17th century just weren't precise enough. 00:21:57.980 --> 00:22:00.640 It would have jammed constantly. He did, however, 00:22:00.740 --> 00:22:02.779 build a more conventional calculator that worked 00:22:02.779 --> 00:22:05.339 in base 10. The stepped reckoner. The stepped 00:22:05.339 --> 00:22:09.039 reckoner. It was a brass and steel marvel. It 00:22:09.039 --> 00:22:11.500 was the first mechanical calculator in history 00:22:11.500 --> 00:22:14.059 that could perform all four basic arithmetic 00:22:14.059 --> 00:22:17.380 functions. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, 00:22:17.839 --> 00:22:20.400 and division. It was a masterpiece of engineering. 00:22:20.759 --> 00:22:23.200 But even that was just a small part of a much 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:26.299 bigger dream he had. The Ars Combinatoria, the 00:22:26.299 --> 00:22:29.519 great art. Yes. This might be his most ambitious 00:22:29.519 --> 00:22:32.500 idea of all. He called it the Characteristica 00:22:32.500 --> 00:22:35.309 Universalis. The universal characteristic. This 00:22:35.309 --> 00:22:37.289 is the idea that you could create a kind of alphabet 00:22:37.289 --> 00:22:40.730 of human thought. Precisely. He believed that 00:22:40.730 --> 00:22:43.210 all complex human ideas were built up from a 00:22:43.210 --> 00:22:46.309 small number of simple primitive concepts. Like 00:22:46.309 --> 00:22:49.089 all words are built from 26 letters, or all numbers 00:22:49.089 --> 00:22:50.849 are built from primes. So you could assign a 00:22:50.849 --> 00:22:53.390 symbol to animal, a symbol to rational, and if 00:22:53.390 --> 00:22:55.230 you combine them, you get the symbol for human. 00:22:55.470 --> 00:22:57.690 Exactly. And if you could create this perfect 00:22:57.690 --> 00:22:59.890 logical language, it would revolutionize everything. 00:23:00.399 --> 00:23:03.740 He argued that human disputes in law, in politics, 00:23:03.779 --> 00:23:06.220 in philosophy were mostly caused by the ambiguity 00:23:06.220 --> 00:23:08.240 of our language and errors in our reasoning. 00:23:08.440 --> 00:23:10.119 So if you could translate a political argument 00:23:10.119 --> 00:23:12.480 into this symbolic language. You could solve 00:23:12.480 --> 00:23:14.640 it like a math problem. This led to his famous 00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:17.599 quote. He said if two philosophers were to disagree, 00:23:17.859 --> 00:23:21.000 they could simply say, Calculamus, let us calculate. 00:23:21.259 --> 00:23:23.220 They would just sit down, do the math, and one 00:23:23.220 --> 00:23:24.940 would be able to point out the other's logical 00:23:24.940 --> 00:23:27.619 error. You see here, in step three, you made 00:23:27.619 --> 00:23:30.769 an invalid deduction. and the argument would 00:23:30.769 --> 00:23:33.490 be over. Truth would be a matter of calculation. 00:23:34.029 --> 00:23:37.369 That is profoundly optimistic. It's hyper rational. 00:23:37.589 --> 00:23:40.009 Because it completely ignores human emotion, 00:23:40.269 --> 00:23:43.509 ideology, values, greed, all the things that 00:23:43.509 --> 00:23:45.829 actually drive conflict. You can't calculate 00:23:45.829 --> 00:23:48.490 your way out of a deeply held belief, even if 00:23:48.490 --> 00:23:50.849 it's illogical. You can't. And that's the major 00:23:50.849 --> 00:23:53.329 criticism of this part of his philosophy. He 00:23:53.329 --> 00:23:56.269 had this unwavering faith in the power of reason 00:23:56.269 --> 00:23:58.829 to solve all problems. And that same rational 00:23:58.829 --> 00:24:02.190 optimism is at the heart of his most famous and 00:24:02.190 --> 00:24:05.000 most controversial. philosophical doctrine. Which 00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:07.539 brings us to section five, the philosopher of 00:24:07.539 --> 00:24:10.259 optimism. Yeah. The best of all possible worlds. 00:24:10.400 --> 00:24:12.319 The phrase that has been attached to him and 00:24:12.319 --> 00:24:14.240 often used to mock him for centuries. Right. 00:24:14.359 --> 00:24:16.099 It comes from his major work on the subject, 00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:19.720 the theodicy. Theodicy. Which is a term he coined, 00:24:19.779 --> 00:24:21.680 right? That means literally the justice of God. 00:24:21.799 --> 00:24:23.779 Correct. And he's tackling the oldest, hardest 00:24:23.779 --> 00:24:27.099 problem in theology, the problem of evil. Which 00:24:27.099 --> 00:24:30.500 is, simply put, if God is all powerful, all knowing, 00:24:30.519 --> 00:24:34.160 and all good, why does evil exist? Why do children 00:24:34.160 --> 00:24:36.740 suffer? Why are there natural disasters? It's 00:24:36.740 --> 00:24:39.940 a logical contradiction. If he's all good, he 00:24:39.940 --> 00:24:42.480 would want to prevent evil. If he's all powerful, 00:24:42.740 --> 00:24:45.599 he would be able to prevent evil. Yet evil exists. 00:24:46.400 --> 00:24:50.160 So either God isn't all good, or he isn't all 00:24:50.160 --> 00:24:53.460 powerful, or he doesn't exist. And Leibniz says, 00:24:53.539 --> 00:24:55.200 no, there's a fourth option. Says the premise 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:57.609 is wrong. Yeah. His solution is, in a way, an 00:24:57.609 --> 00:25:00.390 engineering solution. He argues that before creating 00:25:00.390 --> 00:25:02.950 the universe, the mind of God contained an infinite 00:25:02.950 --> 00:25:05.390 number of possible worlds. Every conceivable 00:25:05.390 --> 00:25:07.390 way the universe could have been set up. Yes. 00:25:07.490 --> 00:25:09.970 A world without gravity. A world where humans 00:25:09.970 --> 00:25:13.769 have wings. A world with no free will. An infinite 00:25:13.769 --> 00:25:17.529 menu of options. But God, being supremely rational, 00:25:17.809 --> 00:25:20.509 is bound by the laws of logic. He can't create 00:25:20.509 --> 00:25:22.369 a contradiction, like a four -sided triangle. 00:25:22.569 --> 00:25:26.079 So God... in his infinite wisdom, surveyed all 00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:28.420 of these possible worlds and chose to create 00:25:28.420 --> 00:25:31.599 the one that was the best. But best doesn't mean 00:25:31.599 --> 00:25:34.019 perfect in the sense of having no suffering or 00:25:34.019 --> 00:25:36.500 evil. So what does it mean? It means the world 00:25:36.500 --> 00:25:38.460 that contains the optimal balance of simplicity 00:25:38.460 --> 00:25:41.599 in its laws and richness in its phenomena. It's 00:25:41.599 --> 00:25:43.539 the world with the most reality, the most variety, 00:25:43.700 --> 00:25:45.819 the most complexity that can exist under the 00:25:45.819 --> 00:25:48.119 simplest and most elegant set of physical laws. 00:25:48.440 --> 00:25:50.779 So suffering and evil are somehow a necessary 00:25:50.779 --> 00:25:54.039 part of this optimal balance. In his view, yes. 00:25:54.259 --> 00:25:56.859 He breaks evil down into three types. First, 00:25:56.960 --> 00:25:59.420 there's metaphysical evil, which is just the 00:25:59.420 --> 00:26:01.539 unavoidable imperfection of all created things. 00:26:02.000 --> 00:26:04.880 Only God can be perfect. Everything else, by 00:26:04.880 --> 00:26:06.740 definition, falls short. Okay, that's just a 00:26:06.740 --> 00:26:09.140 given. Then there's physical evil, pain, suffering, 00:26:09.359 --> 00:26:13.160 natural disasters, and moral evil, sin, cruelty. 00:26:14.180 --> 00:26:16.700 Leibniz argues that these are the necessary consequences 00:26:16.700 --> 00:26:19.450 of a greater good. For example, for humans to 00:26:19.450 --> 00:26:21.430 have free will, they must have the ability to 00:26:21.430 --> 00:26:24.230 choose evil. A world of robots who are programmed 00:26:24.230 --> 00:26:27.009 to always do good might have no sin, but it would 00:26:27.009 --> 00:26:29.609 also have no genuine love or courage or virtue. 00:26:29.910 --> 00:26:32.710 So this is the best possible world, not because 00:26:32.710 --> 00:26:34.589 it's pleasant, but because it's the most meaningful 00:26:34.589 --> 00:26:37.109 or the most complex. It has the richest possibilities, 00:26:37.690 --> 00:26:40.509 as he put it. The different elements are compatible 00:26:40.509 --> 00:26:43.329 in the most fruitful way. But you can see how 00:26:43.329 --> 00:26:45.430 this could come across as very cold and abstract 00:26:45.430 --> 00:26:47.839 to someone who's actually suffering. And that's 00:26:47.839 --> 00:26:50.119 exactly what his critics seized on, most famously 00:26:50.119 --> 00:26:53.420 Voltaire. Voltaire absolutely savaged him for 00:26:53.420 --> 00:26:56.660 this. The Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 happens, 00:26:56.779 --> 00:27:00.119 kills tens of thousands of people. And Voltaire 00:27:00.119 --> 00:27:02.740 is horrified by philosophers who are trying to 00:27:02.740 --> 00:27:05.839 explain it away. So he writes his satirical novel 00:27:05.839 --> 00:27:09.180 Candide. Featuring Dr. Pangloss. Whose name literally 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:12.160 means all tongue. He's this ridiculous caricature 00:27:12.160 --> 00:27:14.980 of Leibniz who wanders through a world of unending 00:27:14.980 --> 00:27:18.500 horror war, disease. torture, constantly repeating 00:27:18.500 --> 00:27:21.319 the mantra, all is for the best in this, the 00:27:21.319 --> 00:27:23.240 best of all possible worlds. And it makes the 00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:26.059 philosophy look absurd. It does. It was a brilliant 00:27:26.059 --> 00:27:28.519 piece of mockery. Now, to be fair to Leibniz, 00:27:28.740 --> 00:27:31.460 he was never saying, don't worry, be happy. He 00:27:31.460 --> 00:27:34.380 was making a metaphysical argument that the universe 00:27:34.380 --> 00:27:37.319 is fundamentally rational and ordered, not chaotic 00:27:37.319 --> 00:27:40.359 and meaningless. But it's an argument that's 00:27:40.359 --> 00:27:42.660 very hard to hear when you're in pain. And this 00:27:42.660 --> 00:27:45.480 faith in a deeply ordered, rational universe. 00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:49.759 It leads him to his wildest, most abstract creation. 00:27:50.480 --> 00:27:54.700 Section 6. Monads, space, and time. Okay, buckle 00:27:54.700 --> 00:27:56.339 up. This is where we go into the deep end of 00:27:56.339 --> 00:27:59.299 the metaphysical pool. The monadology. I have 00:27:59.299 --> 00:28:01.019 tried to wrap my head around this, and it is 00:28:01.019 --> 00:28:03.319 difficult. He claims the universe is ultimately 00:28:03.319 --> 00:28:05.660 composed of these things called monads. Are they 00:28:05.660 --> 00:28:07.740 like atoms? That's the first thing everyone thinks, 00:28:07.839 --> 00:28:10.420 but no. They are fundamentally different. An 00:28:10.420 --> 00:28:12.799 atom, for a physicist, is a physical object. 00:28:12.900 --> 00:28:15.059 It has a size, a shape. It occupies a piece of 00:28:15.059 --> 00:28:17.819 space. Leibniz approaches this with pure logic. 00:28:18.140 --> 00:28:20.680 He says anything that is extended in space, no 00:28:20.680 --> 00:28:23.099 matter how small, can be divided. You can cut 00:28:23.099 --> 00:28:24.759 it in half. If you can cut it in half, it's made 00:28:24.759 --> 00:28:26.700 of parts. And if it's made of parts, it can't 00:28:26.700 --> 00:28:28.859 be the ultimate simple substance. So you have 00:28:28.859 --> 00:28:31.279 to get to something that has no parts, something 00:28:31.279 --> 00:28:34.259 indivisible. Exactly. But a physical point with 00:28:34.259 --> 00:28:37.170 no size is nothing. So he concludes that the 00:28:37.170 --> 00:28:39.210 fundamental building blocks of reality can't 00:28:39.210 --> 00:28:41.150 be physical at all. They must be non -physical. 00:28:41.230 --> 00:28:44.650 It must be something more like souls. The entire 00:28:44.650 --> 00:28:47.730 universe is made of an infinite number of tiny 00:28:47.730 --> 00:28:50.710 souls. That's essentially it. He calls them monads. 00:28:50.970 --> 00:28:53.750 They are simple, indivisible, eternal centers 00:28:53.750 --> 00:28:56.630 of force or perception. Everything, you, me, 00:28:56.869 --> 00:29:00.789 this table, a rock, a star, is a colony or an 00:29:00.789 --> 00:29:03.829 aggregate of these monads. Okay. That's already 00:29:03.829 --> 00:29:05.910 pretty strange, but then it gets stranger. Then 00:29:05.910 --> 00:29:08.190 it gets much stranger. He says that each monad 00:29:08.190 --> 00:29:10.809 is completely unique. Each one perceives the 00:29:10.809 --> 00:29:13.450 entire universe, but from its own unique perspective. 00:29:13.910 --> 00:29:16.990 And this is the famous part. Monads have no windows. 00:29:17.569 --> 00:29:20.339 What on earth does that mean? It means they cannot 00:29:20.339 --> 00:29:22.079 actually interact with each other. Nothing can 00:29:22.079 --> 00:29:24.220 pass from one monad to another. They can't cause 00:29:24.220 --> 00:29:26.220 anything to happen in another monad. Wait, wait, 00:29:26.240 --> 00:29:28.460 stop. That makes no sense. If I push this table, 00:29:28.640 --> 00:29:30.960 my hand, which is made of monads, interacts with 00:29:30.960 --> 00:29:32.920 the table, which is made of monads, and the table 00:29:32.920 --> 00:29:35.720 moves, that's cause and effect. Leibniz says 00:29:35.720 --> 00:29:38.500 that is an illusion, a very compelling illusion, 00:29:38.720 --> 00:29:41.740 but an illusion nonetheless. So how does he explain 00:29:41.740 --> 00:29:45.220 it? He explains it with his doctrine of pre -established 00:29:45.220 --> 00:29:49.059 harmony. This is his solution to the intractable 00:29:49.059 --> 00:29:51.079 mind -body problem that plagued philosophers 00:29:51.079 --> 00:29:53.900 like Descartes. The problem of how a non -physical 00:29:53.900 --> 00:29:57.039 mind can move a physical body. Right. Leibniz 00:29:57.039 --> 00:29:59.579 says they don't. He uses an analogy. Imagine 00:29:59.579 --> 00:30:02.119 you have two perfect clocks built by a master 00:30:02.119 --> 00:30:04.700 clockmaker. You set them to the exact same time 00:30:04.700 --> 00:30:06.640 and hang them on the wall side by side. Okay. 00:30:06.759 --> 00:30:09.509 The first clock strikes noon. At the exact same 00:30:09.509 --> 00:30:11.769 instant, the second clock strikes noon. Does 00:30:11.769 --> 00:30:13.910 the first clock cause the second clock to strike? 00:30:14.049 --> 00:30:16.289 No, of course not. They're just perfectly synchronized. 00:30:16.410 --> 00:30:18.849 Exactly. Leibniz says the entire universe is 00:30:18.849 --> 00:30:21.730 like that. God, the master clockmaker, created 00:30:21.730 --> 00:30:24.069 all the monads and, at the moment of creation, 00:30:24.390 --> 00:30:26.990 programmed each one with a complete script of 00:30:26.990 --> 00:30:29.789 its entire existence. So my mind monads were 00:30:29.789 --> 00:30:31.930 pre -programmed to decide to push the table at 00:30:31.930 --> 00:30:34.450 this exact moment. And the table monads were 00:30:34.450 --> 00:30:36.309 pre -programmed to move away at that exact same 00:30:36.309 --> 00:30:39.250 moment. Precisely. They are running in perfect 00:30:39.250 --> 00:30:42.009 pre -established harmony without ever actually 00:30:42.009 --> 00:30:44.829 influencing each other. It's a universe of infinite, 00:30:44.990 --> 00:30:48.710 parallel, synchronized processes. That is one 00:30:48.710 --> 00:30:50.730 of the most bizarre and elaborate philosophical 00:30:50.730 --> 00:30:54.049 systems I've ever heard. It is. It's a consequence 00:30:54.049 --> 00:30:56.809 of taking pure rationalism to its absolute limit. 00:30:57.049 --> 00:30:59.569 But what's fascinating is that while he's developing 00:30:59.569 --> 00:31:02.710 these very strange metaphysical ideas, he's also 00:31:02.710 --> 00:31:05.609 having another major debate with Newton. A debate 00:31:05.609 --> 00:31:08.869 about the nature of space and time. And on this 00:31:08.869 --> 00:31:11.609 one, history has proven Leibniz right. This is 00:31:11.609 --> 00:31:14.049 the argument about absolute versus relative space. 00:31:14.250 --> 00:31:17.710 Yes. For Newton, space was like a giant invisible 00:31:17.710 --> 00:31:21.210 empty box. An absolute container. He said if 00:31:21.210 --> 00:31:22.950 you took everything out of the universe, all 00:31:22.950 --> 00:31:24.950 the stars, planets, everything, the empty box 00:31:24.950 --> 00:31:27.470 of space and the ticking clock of absolute time 00:31:27.470 --> 00:31:29.970 would still exist. Unchanging. It's the stage 00:31:29.970 --> 00:31:32.170 and the actors are optional. A perfect way to 00:31:32.170 --> 00:31:34.359 put it. Leibniz thought this was philosophically 00:31:34.359 --> 00:31:36.619 absurd. He argued that space and time are not 00:31:36.619 --> 00:31:38.359 things in themselves. They're relational. What 00:31:38.359 --> 00:31:40.140 does that mean, relational? He said that space 00:31:40.140 --> 00:31:43.619 is simply the order of coexistences, is the set 00:31:43.619 --> 00:31:45.700 of all the distance relationships between objects. 00:31:45.900 --> 00:31:48.339 This thing is next to that thing and far from 00:31:48.339 --> 00:31:50.359 that other thing. If there are no objects, there 00:31:50.359 --> 00:31:52.539 are no relationships and therefore no space. 00:31:52.880 --> 00:31:56.799 So no actors, no stage? Exactly. And time, he 00:31:56.799 --> 00:31:59.599 said. is the order of successions. It's the relationship 00:31:59.599 --> 00:32:02.160 between events. This happened before that, which 00:32:02.160 --> 00:32:04.279 happened before that other thing. No events, 00:32:04.480 --> 00:32:07.539 no time. And for 200 years, the scientific consensus 00:32:07.539 --> 00:32:10.920 was that Newton was right. Overwhelmingly. Until 00:32:10.920 --> 00:32:13.579 a clerk in the Swiss Patent Office named Albert 00:32:13.579 --> 00:32:15.920 Einstein came along. With his theory of relativity. 00:32:16.359 --> 00:32:18.299 Einstein's theory of general relativity describes 00:32:18.299 --> 00:32:20.799 gravity as the warping of space -time by mass 00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:23.900 and energy. Space -time is not a static background. 00:32:24.200 --> 00:32:26.579 Its very shape is determined by the matter within 00:32:26.579 --> 00:32:29.200 it. It's a fundamentally relational concept. 00:32:29.720 --> 00:32:32.380 Einstein himself was a great admirer of Leibniz's 00:32:32.380 --> 00:32:34.759 thought on this and explicitly sided with him 00:32:34.759 --> 00:32:37.160 against Newton. So Leibniz had the correct physical 00:32:37.160 --> 00:32:39.640 intuition two centuries before the mathematics 00:32:39.640 --> 00:32:43.140 existed to prove it. Once again, correct, but 00:32:43.140 --> 00:32:45.500 way ahead of his time. And it's important to 00:32:45.500 --> 00:32:47.940 remember, he wasn't just a thinker. He was always 00:32:47.940 --> 00:32:51.839 trying to apply these ideas. Section 7. The doer 00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:54.259 engineering science and projects. Right. He's 00:32:54.259 --> 00:32:56.420 not just locked in a room writing about monads. 00:32:56.440 --> 00:32:59.359 He has a day job and he takes it seriously. Very 00:32:59.359 --> 00:33:01.660 seriously. For a large part of his career, he 00:33:01.660 --> 00:33:03.759 worked for the House of Brunswick in Hanover. 00:33:04.420 --> 00:33:06.839 And one of their main sources of wealth was a 00:33:06.839 --> 00:33:09.480 series of silver mines in the nearby Harz Mountains. 00:33:09.940 --> 00:33:13.119 And these mines had a problem. A chronic, persistent 00:33:13.119 --> 00:33:16.059 problem. They kept flooding. The deeper they 00:33:16.059 --> 00:33:18.319 dug, the more groundwater would seep in, making 00:33:18.319 --> 00:33:21.049 it impossible to work. So Leibniz puts on his 00:33:21.049 --> 00:33:23.869 engineer's hat. He does. He dedicates almost 00:33:23.869 --> 00:33:26.930 five years of his life, from about 1680 to 1685, 00:33:27.210 --> 00:33:29.609 to solving this problem. He's not just drawing 00:33:29.609 --> 00:33:31.849 up plans. He's down in the mines in the dark 00:33:31.849 --> 00:33:34.549 in the mud, supervising. He designs an ambitious 00:33:34.549 --> 00:33:37.369 new system to pump the water out using wind power. 00:33:37.529 --> 00:33:39.990 Windmill. Not just any windmills. He designed 00:33:39.990 --> 00:33:42.869 a new type of vertical -axis windmill and a series 00:33:42.869 --> 00:33:45.630 of linked pumps and propellers to lift the water 00:33:45.630 --> 00:33:48.500 out of the shafts. It was a very complex, very 00:33:48.500 --> 00:33:50.380 innovative piece of engineering. And did it work? 00:33:50.740 --> 00:33:55.059 In the end. No. It was a failure. Why? What went 00:33:55.059 --> 00:33:57.339 wrong? A combination of things. The technology 00:33:57.339 --> 00:33:59.579 was pushing the limits of the materials available. 00:34:00.119 --> 00:34:03.500 But the biggest problem was human. The miners 00:34:03.500 --> 00:34:05.759 and the mine administrators were deeply skeptical 00:34:05.759 --> 00:34:08.659 of this court philosopher coming in and telling 00:34:08.659 --> 00:34:11.820 them how to do their jobs. They actively resisted 00:34:11.820 --> 00:34:14.219 him. And according to his letters, they may have 00:34:14.219 --> 00:34:16.820 even sabotaged the equipment. A classic case 00:34:16.820 --> 00:34:19.079 of innovation clashing with entrenched interests. 00:34:19.460 --> 00:34:22.360 Yes. He finally had to abandon the project, much 00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:24.739 to his frustration and the annoyance of his employers. 00:34:24.920 --> 00:34:27.039 Yeah. But he just moved on to the next thing. 00:34:27.159 --> 00:34:29.840 His mind never stopped. He was making contributions 00:34:29.840 --> 00:34:31.980 in fields that didn't even really exist yet. 00:34:32.139 --> 00:34:35.000 Like psychology. Absolutely. Yeah. He essentially 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:37.420 anticipates the concept of the subconscious mind. 00:34:37.840 --> 00:34:40.239 He wrote about what he called Petite's perceptions 00:34:40.239 --> 00:34:43.480 or small perceptions. He used a brilliant analogy. 00:34:43.880 --> 00:34:46.659 Imagine you were standing by the ocean. You hear 00:34:46.659 --> 00:34:49.820 the roar of the waves. That sound, he argued, 00:34:49.960 --> 00:34:52.599 is composed of the sound of countless individual 00:34:52.599 --> 00:34:55.769 water droplets crashing. You are not consciously 00:34:55.769 --> 00:34:58.070 aware of the sound of any single droplet. Right. 00:34:58.150 --> 00:35:00.489 It's below the threshold of my perception. But 00:35:00.489 --> 00:35:02.329 your mind is still processing them. Those are 00:35:02.329 --> 00:35:04.590 the petite's perceptions. And when enough of 00:35:04.590 --> 00:35:07.130 them accumulate, they cross a threshold and enter 00:35:07.130 --> 00:35:09.190 your conscious awareness as the roar of the sea. 00:35:09.639 --> 00:35:12.260 That conscious awareness he called apperception. 00:35:12.500 --> 00:35:14.960 So he's saying we're constantly being influenced 00:35:14.960 --> 00:35:17.500 by stimuli that we aren't consciously aware of. 00:35:17.559 --> 00:35:19.960 That's a foundational idea of modern psychology. 00:35:20.460 --> 00:35:23.219 150 years before Freud, he was also a pioneering 00:35:23.219 --> 00:35:26.840 geologist. In a work called Protogia, He proposed 00:35:26.840 --> 00:35:29.239 that the earth was once a molten ball of fire. 00:35:29.420 --> 00:35:31.739 Which was a pretty radical idea at the time. 00:35:31.840 --> 00:35:34.019 Usually radical. The biblical account of creation 00:35:34.019 --> 00:35:36.579 was still the dominant model. He also correctly 00:35:36.579 --> 00:35:38.900 identified fossils as the remains of ancient 00:35:38.900 --> 00:35:41.699 living creatures and argued that by studying 00:35:41.699 --> 00:35:43.960 rock strata, you could read the history of the 00:35:43.960 --> 00:35:46.699 earth. He was laying the groundwork for modern 00:35:46.699 --> 00:35:49.500 geology. And all this while doing his actual 00:35:49.500 --> 00:35:52.300 day job, which for many years was being a librarian. 00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:55.789 And he revolutionized that too. As the librarian 00:35:55.789 --> 00:35:58.809 for the Ducal Library in Wolfenbüttel, one of 00:35:58.809 --> 00:36:01.090 the best in Europe, he wasn't just a caretaker. 00:36:01.110 --> 00:36:03.010 He created one of the first alphabetical author 00:36:03.010 --> 00:36:06.469 catalogs. He argued a library's purpose was to 00:36:06.469 --> 00:36:09.429 be a tool for research, not a dusty museum for 00:36:09.429 --> 00:36:11.989 the Duke to show off. He wanted to make the information 00:36:11.989 --> 00:36:14.650 accessible. He even proposed that publishers 00:36:14.650 --> 00:36:16.690 should be required to create abstract, short 00:36:16.690 --> 00:36:18.630 summaries of all new books published each year. 00:36:19.030 --> 00:36:21.329 He wanted to create a searchable database of 00:36:21.329 --> 00:36:24.050 human knowledge. He's inventing Google Scholar 00:36:24.050 --> 00:36:26.969 in the 1690s. It's the same impulse that drove 00:36:26.969 --> 00:36:30.369 his characteristica universalis. The desire to 00:36:30.369 --> 00:36:32.670 organize, to systematize, to make all knowledge 00:36:32.670 --> 00:36:35.110 accessible and calculable. So when you stack 00:36:35.110 --> 00:36:37.170 it all up, calculus, binary, physics, philosophy, 00:36:37.530 --> 00:36:39.989 engineering, psychology, geology, library science, 00:36:40.210 --> 00:36:43.610 this man's resume is just staggering. He should 00:36:43.610 --> 00:36:45.309 have been the most celebrated intellectual in 00:36:45.309 --> 00:36:47.190 Europe. You should have died rich and famous. 00:36:47.550 --> 00:36:50.050 You should have. But that is not what happened. 00:36:50.489 --> 00:36:53.510 And the story of his final years is deeply tragic. 00:36:54.449 --> 00:36:58.389 Section 8. The Lonely End in Hanover. It all 00:36:58.389 --> 00:37:00.190 comes down to a history project, doesn't it? 00:37:00.269 --> 00:37:03.469 It does. His primary official duty for his employers, 00:37:03.690 --> 00:37:05.969 the House of Brunswick, was to serve as their 00:37:05.969 --> 00:37:08.809 historian. They commissioned him to write a grand 00:37:08.809 --> 00:37:11.309 history of their family line, the House of Gulf. 00:37:11.630 --> 00:37:14.329 Basically a vanity project to prove their ancient 00:37:14.329 --> 00:37:17.550 and noble lineage. Exactly. Prove we're descended 00:37:17.550 --> 00:37:20.619 from Charlemagne. For any normal court historian, 00:37:20.820 --> 00:37:22.800 this would be a straightforward job of, you know, 00:37:22.820 --> 00:37:25.780 some creative genealogy. But this was Leibniz. 00:37:26.019 --> 00:37:28.159 He couldn't just do a simple job. He couldn't. 00:37:28.159 --> 00:37:30.860 He decided he had to do it properly. He had to 00:37:30.860 --> 00:37:33.340 write the definitive, most rigorously researched 00:37:33.340 --> 00:37:36.340 history ever produced. He started his research 00:37:36.340 --> 00:37:38.300 not with the recent Dukes, but in the early Middle 00:37:38.300 --> 00:37:41.460 Ages. He traveled all over Europe to archives 00:37:41.460 --> 00:37:44.389 in Austria and Italy. digging up ancient manuscripts. 00:37:44.650 --> 00:37:46.989 He's treating it like a massive scientific undertaking. 00:37:47.309 --> 00:37:51.110 He is. And the project just balloons. Decades 00:37:51.110 --> 00:37:54.769 go by. And his employers, the electors of Hanover, 00:37:54.849 --> 00:37:57.110 are getting more and more annoyed. They just 00:37:57.110 --> 00:37:58.769 want the book. They keep writing him letters 00:37:58.769 --> 00:38:01.190 asking about his dilatoriness. They think he's 00:38:01.190 --> 00:38:03.130 slacking off. They don't appreciate that he's 00:38:03.130 --> 00:38:05.489 also, you know, inventing modern science on the 00:38:05.489 --> 00:38:07.630 side. They don't care about his mornads or his 00:38:07.630 --> 00:38:09.389 calculating machines. They want their family 00:38:09.389 --> 00:38:11.559 history. Yeah. And this all comes to a head in 00:38:11.559 --> 00:38:14.860 1714. This is the big political moment. The biggest. 00:38:15.260 --> 00:38:17.699 Through a series of dynastic and political events, 00:38:17.920 --> 00:38:20.780 which Leibniz actually helped facilitate, his 00:38:20.780 --> 00:38:23.460 boss, the elector George Louis of Hanover, is 00:38:23.460 --> 00:38:26.559 named the heir to the British throne. Queen Anne 00:38:26.559 --> 00:38:28.900 of Great Britain dies and he becomes King George 00:38:28.900 --> 00:38:31.639 I. So the whole Hanoverian court is about to 00:38:31.639 --> 00:38:33.820 pack up and move to London, the biggest, richest 00:38:33.820 --> 00:38:35.699 city in the world. It's the ultimate promotion. 00:38:36.250 --> 00:38:38.570 And Leibniz, who has served this family faithfully 00:38:38.570 --> 00:38:41.449 for nearly 40 years, surely expects to go with 00:38:41.449 --> 00:38:44.289 him. He expects a prestigious position at the 00:38:44.289 --> 00:38:46.809 British court. But the new king has other ideas. 00:38:47.230 --> 00:38:49.710 King George III forbids Leibniz from coming to 00:38:49.710 --> 00:38:52.070 London. He just leaves him behind. Wow. Two main 00:38:52.070 --> 00:38:54.429 reasons. The official reason was the unfinished 00:38:54.429 --> 00:38:57.329 history book. The king basically tells him, you 00:38:57.329 --> 00:38:59.409 are not to come to London until you have finished 00:38:59.409 --> 00:39:02.349 your work. It was a punishment for his perceived 00:39:02.349 --> 00:39:05.150 laziness. And the unofficial reason. The unofficial 00:39:05.150 --> 00:39:09.820 reason. was Isaac Newton. By 1714, Sir Isaac 00:39:09.820 --> 00:39:12.340 Newton is a god in London. He's the president 00:39:12.340 --> 00:39:14.739 of the Royal Society, master of the mint, the 00:39:14.739 --> 00:39:18.099 nation's greatest scientific icon. And he loathes 00:39:18.099 --> 00:39:22.139 Leibniz. For King George, a brand new German 00:39:22.139 --> 00:39:24.300 -speaking king who was already unpopular with 00:39:24.300 --> 00:39:26.800 some of his new subjects, bringing his pet philosopher 00:39:26.800 --> 00:39:29.380 Newton's mortal enemy to London would have been 00:39:29.380 --> 00:39:31.920 a political disaster. So Leibniz was sacrificed 00:39:31.920 --> 00:39:34.800 for political convenience. He was left behind 00:39:34.800 --> 00:39:37.159 in the provincial backwater of Hanover while 00:39:37.159 --> 00:39:39.099 the court he had served his whole life moved 00:39:39.099 --> 00:39:41.659 on without him. It must have been utterly devastating. 00:39:41.940 --> 00:39:44.139 And he dies there not long after. He dies two 00:39:44.139 --> 00:39:47.820 years later in 1716 at the age of 70. And the 00:39:47.820 --> 00:39:50.139 circumstances of his death are just so sad. He'd 00:39:50.139 --> 00:39:52.079 been suffering from gout. He was increasingly 00:39:52.079 --> 00:39:54.559 isolated. He went to funeral. The funeral was 00:39:54.559 --> 00:39:58.000 a disgrace. He was so out of favor with the court 00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:00.630 that no one attended. No official representatives. 00:40:00.809 --> 00:40:02.989 The Royal Society in London, which he should 00:40:02.989 --> 00:40:05.190 have been a member of, completely ignored his 00:40:05.190 --> 00:40:08.329 passing. The Berlin Academy of Sciences, which 00:40:08.329 --> 00:40:10.429 he himself had founded and served as president 00:40:10.429 --> 00:40:12.630 for, didn't even mention it. So who was there? 00:40:12.949 --> 00:40:15.909 Only his personal secretary. One man walked behind 00:40:15.909 --> 00:40:18.690 the coffin. He was buried in an unmarked grave, 00:40:18.889 --> 00:40:21.389 which remained that way for more than 50 years. 00:40:21.969 --> 00:40:24.690 A man who'd given the world so much was treated 00:40:24.690 --> 00:40:28.070 as if he was nothing. It's a tragic end. You 00:40:28.070 --> 00:40:30.250 have to wonder, if he had just been a specialist, 00:40:30.550 --> 00:40:33.090 if he had only done calculus or only done philosophy, 00:40:33.429 --> 00:40:35.670 would he have been better understood and celebrated 00:40:35.670 --> 00:40:38.510 in his own time? I think it's very likely. He 00:40:38.510 --> 00:40:40.670 was a man of so many talents that he didn't fit 00:40:40.670 --> 00:40:43.010 neatly into any box. People couldn't see the 00:40:43.010 --> 00:40:45.769 whole picture. It took centuries for us to piece 00:40:45.769 --> 00:40:47.869 together the true scale of his contributions. 00:40:48.190 --> 00:40:50.190 So let's try to do that. As we wrap up here in 00:40:50.190 --> 00:40:52.349 the outro, how do we synthesize this legacy? 00:40:52.710 --> 00:40:55.269 What's the final score on Leibniz? The score 00:40:55.269 --> 00:40:58.250 is that he's everywhere. His binary logic is 00:40:58.250 --> 00:41:00.929 the foundation of the digital world. His calculus 00:41:00.929 --> 00:41:03.630 is the language of science and engineering. His 00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:05.989 physics, with the idea of the relativity of space 00:41:05.989 --> 00:41:09.070 and time, was a crucial step on the road to Einstein. 00:41:09.659 --> 00:41:12.559 He laid the conceptual groundwork for computer 00:41:12.559 --> 00:41:14.980 science, for artificial intelligence, for modern 00:41:14.980 --> 00:41:17.880 psychology, for geology. It's this incredible 00:41:17.880 --> 00:41:20.840 breadth. He really was the last person who could, 00:41:21.000 --> 00:41:24.019 with some justification, claim to have a grasp 00:41:24.019 --> 00:41:26.599 of the totality of human knowledge before it 00:41:26.599 --> 00:41:28.599 fractured into a million specialized fields. 00:41:28.840 --> 00:41:31.099 He was the end of an era. But there is that dream 00:41:31.099 --> 00:41:33.679 of his that still haunts us. The Calculimus. 00:41:33.820 --> 00:41:35.980 Let us calculate. The dream of the rational world. 00:41:36.119 --> 00:41:37.619 And that's the final thought I want to leave 00:41:37.619 --> 00:41:40.039 you with. Leibniz genuinely believed that if 00:41:40.039 --> 00:41:41.900 we could perfect our language and our logic, 00:41:41.960 --> 00:41:44.280 we could resolve our deepest disputes as easily 00:41:44.280 --> 00:41:46.559 as solving a math problem. We could literally 00:41:46.559 --> 00:41:49.460 debug human society. A world without misunderstanding. 00:41:49.739 --> 00:41:52.750 A world without a rational conflict. And today, 00:41:53.030 --> 00:41:56.449 we have the tools he dreamed of. We have computers 00:41:56.449 --> 00:41:59.210 that can calculate billions of times faster than 00:41:59.210 --> 00:42:01.710 he could have imagined. We have access to more 00:42:01.710 --> 00:42:05.309 information than ever before. And yet, we seem 00:42:05.309 --> 00:42:08.230 to be more polarized, more divided, more trapped 00:42:08.230 --> 00:42:10.750 in our conflicting narratives than ever. We have 00:42:10.750 --> 00:42:12.989 the hardware, but we don't seem to have the right 00:42:12.989 --> 00:42:16.280 software. So here's the question. Was Leibniz's 00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:20.280 dream just a naive, rationalist fantasy? Or have 00:42:20.280 --> 00:42:22.679 we just not figured out how to use his legacy 00:42:22.679 --> 00:42:25.079 properly yet? Is the problem that a universal 00:42:25.079 --> 00:42:27.940 language is impossible? Or is the problem, as 00:42:27.940 --> 00:42:30.460 it always has been, simply us? That's a calculation 00:42:30.460 --> 00:42:32.619 we're still trying to run. And a deep dive for 00:42:32.619 --> 00:42:34.780 another day. Thank you for joining us for this 00:42:34.780 --> 00:42:36.980 look into the mind of a true universal genius. 00:42:37.260 --> 00:42:39.019 My pleasure. It was a fascinating journey. We'll 00:42:39.019 --> 00:42:39.579 see you next time.