Leibniz — Beyond The Calculus

Abstract

For Leibniz mathematics was a collection of necessary and eternal truths. Moreover he believed that God was guided by quasi-mathematical considerations in the creation of the world. Hence some of the concepts and results of both ancient and contemporary mathematics served Leibniz as powerful influences on central features of his extra-mathematical thought. Such influences appear, for example, in his logic (in the cardinal distinction betwen necessary and contingent truths), and in his biology (in his vision of a continuous chain of organic life.)