On Leibniz / Nicholas Rescher.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rescher, Nicholas, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Freiherr von, 1646-1716.

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm.

Physical Description:

x, 406 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Edition:

Expanded edition.

Place of Publication:

Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2013].

Summary:

Contemporary philosopher John Searle has characterized Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (164-716) as "the most intelligent human being who has ever lived." The German philosopher, mathematician, and logician invented calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton), topology, determinants, binary arithmetic, symbolic logic, rational mechanics, and much more. His metaphysics bequeathed a set of problems and approaches that have influenced the course of Western philosophy from Kant in the eighteenth century until the present day. On Leibniz examines many aspects of Leibniz's work and life, extrapolates the fundamentals of his ontology, and provides discussions of his epistemology and methodology, among many other topics. This expanded edition adds new chapters that explore Leibniz's revolutionary deciphering machine, his theoretical interest in cryptography and its ties to algebra, his thoughts on eternal recurrence theory, his rebuttal of the thesis of improvability in the world and cosmos, and an overview of American scholarship on Leibniz. Book jacket.

Contents:

Leibniz on possible worlds

Contingentia mundi: Leibniz on the world's contingency

Leibniz on intermonadic relations

Leibniz and the plurality of space-time frameworks

Leibniz and the concept of a system

Leibniz and issues of eternal recurrence

Leibnizian Neo-Platonism and rational mechanics

Leibniz and the world's improvability

The epistemology of inductive reasoning in Leibniz

Leibniz, Keynes, and the rabbis

Leibniz and socialized medicine

The contributions of the Paris period (1672-1676) to Leibniz's metaphysics

Leibniz finds a niche (1676-1677)

Leibniz visits Vienna (1712-1714)

Leibniz crosses the Atlantic

Leibniz and American philosophy

Leibniz and cryptography

Leibniz's Machina Deciphratoria: a seventeenth century proto-enigma machine

Process philosophy and monadological metaphysics

Was Leibniz ennobled?

Leibniz disillusioned: parting ways from J.D. Crafft.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780822962182

0822962187

OCLC:

794361953