Mister Leibniz, You Should Have Gotten a Copyright

Gottfried Leibniz, Mathmatician, Philosopher, Prominent Lutheran -Cathlic Reconciler. Hair included.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. 

   Gottfried Leibniz was born on the first of July 1646 in Leipzig. His father was a Professor of moral philosophy, a fact that would later influence his development as a philosopher and a religious figure. For the most part the Polymath was self taught, not really attending any schools after his father had died. His resume was exceedingly impressive, including self taught Greek and Latin  and logic.  He entered the University of Leipzig as a law student at the age of fifteen. Fifteen. For the most part he seemed to want to study philosophy and law, but it was likely during this time he became acquainted with the scientific and mathematical works of Kepler, Galileo and Descartes. Leipzig refused him a law degree, but leaving his hometown he received his doctorate in 1666, not yet even 21 years old. He was even offered a professorship, that he turned down.

  Leibniz found employment under what was known as the "elector", a position designed to defend the fractured German states and principalities. For example, Leibniz spent some of his time writing under the guise a catholic priest as to why a German noble ought to have the kingdom of Poland  from a mathematical stand point. Leibniz later found his attention turned towards France  who had grown aggressive toward Holland and Germany, and Leibniz wrote the French Secretary of Sate tying to funnel aggression away from Germany and into a holy conquest of Egypt or the like. Leibniz was invited to Paris and was informed that Holy Wars had gone out of Fashion with St Louis some centuries earlier, but thank you anyways. Leibniz continued to try and convince them to go forward with this neo-crusade but it didn't really happen until napoleon. 

    Leibniz's time in Paris was not without merit though, he spent some time meeting with the philosophers there and he wrote an essay both defending the new Mathematical explanations of nature, and reconciling them with the new methods of philosophy. He also defended the Trinity claiming that the study of Mathematics almost required divinity to be a thing.  

   However more importantly it was during this time that he met a Mathematician by the name of Christian Huygens. This became a time of huge discovery both for math and science but for Leibniz as well. by 1673, in between political missions to London and being inducted into nearly scientific organization under the sun for discoveries in math, natural science, optics, philosophy, hydro-statics, pneumatics and even early computing, Leibniz stumbled almost at once onto perhaps the most famous discovery of his career, the formulation of differential and integral calculus. 

   For those of you who know the history of calculus, most of you will protest that it was in fact Issac Newton (another famous christian physicist-mathematician, but we'll get to him later) that discovered calculus. well it appears quite separately and a little before Newton, Leibniz discovered the exact same thing, but received little to no credit for it for various reasons, except for having his name on the common d/dx notation. The most fundamental discovery in math in several centuries, and he forgot to write about it extensively and claiming it for his own. Sure he was in it for the discovery, but the irony is still astronomical.

   Returning to Germany in 1673, Leibniz found found employ under the Duke of Brunswick, Performing many Chancellor duties for the duke. He traveled and composed the Brunswick family, studying even Vatican records (despite being Lutheran) where he was offered custodianship of the Vatican library on condition of his conversion.

   Speaking of which, during his 40 years under the Brunswicks, a great deal of his time was spent on his scheme for the reunification of the Lutheran and Cathlolic Churches. Various writings and meetings upon which he implored them to recognize their differences, but the English revolution in 1688 destroyed his scheme in Hannover and Leibniz reunion fell apart.

   Leibniz's last great contributions came between 1690 and 1716, in philosophy. They were for the most part preliminary sketches. But they hinted at something far larger and greater.

  So what can we learn from Leibniz? his was a life of reconciliation of math philosophy and divinity of all stripes.