Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz
QUOTES
- "...monads or simple substances are the only true substances and that material things are only phenomena, though well founded and well connected..."Enter
- "...everything in nature happens mechanically and at the same time metaphysically but that the source of mechanics is metaphysics..."
- "Our reasonings are based on two great principles, that of contradiction… [and] that of sufficient reason."
- “it is not true that two substances can resemble each other completely and differ only in number [solo numero].”
- "Nothing takes place suddenly, and it is one of my great and best confirmed maxims that nature never makes leaps."
- "I consider the notion of substance to be one of the keys to the true philosophy"
NOTES
- eclectic mix of Aristotle and Christian Platonism
- reaction to two sets of modern opponents: on the one hand, Descartes and his followers; on the other hand, Hobbes and Spinoza
- God freely chose the best world from an infinite number of possible worlds
- a person could be said to act freely when the contrary of that action does not imply a contradiction
- The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) in its classic form is simply that nothing is without a reason (nihil est sine ratione) or there is no effect without a cause.
- nothing takes place without a sufficient reason means that nothing happens in such a way that it is impossible for someone with enough information to give a reason why it is so and not otherwise
- every event must have a cause and that there is a reason why everything is so and not otherwise
- everything is composed of or reducible to simple substances
- x is a substance if and only if x has a complete individual concept (CIC), that is, a concept that contains within it all predicates of x past, present, and future
The Identity of Indiscernibles


Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz 1