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Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz
(1646-1716)
Baron Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz (more correctly Leibniz) was a German
philosopher and mathematician, born in Leipzig and educated in Leipzig,
Jena, and Altdorf where he graduated in 1666. He was in the service of the
archbishop elector of Mainz from 1667-76, then spent four years in Paris
and London, meeting many scholars. He discovered and published, in 1684,
new notations of calculus before Newton, thus causing much, long-debated
controversy. While in the service of the Duke of Brunswick as librarian
and privy councilor, he wrote Systema Theologicum, an attempt to find a
common ground for the Catholic and Protestant faiths. Leibnitz spent the
last thirty years of his life in the study of mathematics, natural science,
philosophy, theology, history, law, politics, and other subjects. He
composed most of his philosophical works, chiefly as essays, treatises, etc.,
during these later years. He left no complete and finished exposition of
his philosophy (Leibnitzianism). His principal work in theology,
Théodicé (1710), in the main a discussion of the
problem of evil and a
defense of optimism, was ridiculed by Voltaire in Candide.
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