Leibnitz

= Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz (1646-1716) =

1. Life [[image:famouslinguists/leibnic.jpg width="210" height="266" align="left"]]
Leibniz was born in Leipzig on July 1, 1646, two years prior to the end of the Thirty Years War, which had ravaged central Europe. His family was Lutheran and belonged to the educated elite on both sides: his father, Friedrich Leibniz, was a jurist and professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and his mother, Catharina Schmuck, the daughter of a professor of Law. Leibniz's father died in 1652, and his subsequent education was directed by his mother, uncle, and according to his own reports, himself. He was given access to his father's extensive library at a young age and proceeded to pore over its contents, particularly the volumes of ancient history and the Church Fathers. Leibniz's father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig and Leibniz inherited his father's personal library. He was given free access to this from the age of seven. While Leibniz's schoolwork focused on a small canon of authorities, his father's library enabled him to study a wide variety of advanced philosophical and theological works – ones that he would not have otherwise been able to read until his college years. Access to his father's library, largely written in Latin, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language. Leibniz was proficient in Latin by the age of 12, and he composed three hundred hexameters of Latin verse in a single morning for a special event at school at the age of 13. In 1661 Leibniz began his formal university education at the University of Leipzig. The “modern” philosophy of Descartes, Galileo, Gassendi, Hobbes and others had not made a great impact by this time in the German-speaking lands; as a result, Leibniz's philosophical education was chiefly Scholastic in its nature, though he was also exposed to elements of Renaissance Humanism. While in Leipzig, Leibniz met Jacob Thomasius, who would have an important influence on Leibniz and who supervised Leibniz's first philosophical treatise //On the Principle of Individuation// ( //De principio individui//). It was Thomasius more than anyone else perhaps who instilled in Leibniz a great respect for ancient and Scholastic philosophy. Indeed, one of the leitmotifs of Leibniz's philosophical career is his desire to reconcile the modern philosophy with the philosophy of Aristotle, Plato, and humanist tradition. After receiving his baccalaureate from Leipzig, he continued his studies at the University of Altdorf. While there Leibniz published in 1666 the remarkably original //Dissertation on the Art of Combinations// ( //Dissertatio de arte combinatoria//), a work that sketched a plan for a “universal characteristic” and logical calculus, a subject that would occupy him for much of the rest of his life. Although Leibniz was offered a position on the faculty of Law upon the completion of his Doctorate of Law in 1667, he had a different future in mind. In 1666, (at age 20), Leibniz published his first book, //On the Art of Combinations//, the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in philosophy. His next goal was to earn his license and doctorate in Law, which normally required three years of study then. In 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibniz's doctoral application and refused to grant him a doctorate in law, most likely due to his relative youth (he was 21 years old at the time). Leibniz subsequently left Leipzig. An essay which there wrote on the study of law was dedicated to the Elector of Mainz, and led to his appointment by the elector on a commission for the revision of some statutes, from which he was subsequently promoted to the diplomatic service. In the latter capacity he supported (unsuccessfully) the claims of the German candidate for the crown of Poland. The violent seizure of various small places in Alsace in 1670 excited universal alarm in Germany as to the designs of Louis XIV.; and Leibnitz drew up a scheme by which it was proposed to offer German co-operation, if France liked to take Egypt, and use the possessions of that country as a basis for attack against Holland in Asia, provided France would agree to leave Germany undisturbed. This bears a curious resemblance to the similar plan by which Napoleon I. proposed to attack England. In 1672 Leibnitz went to Paris on the invitation of the French government to explain the details of the scheme, but nothing came of it. At Paris he met Huygens who was then residing there, and their conversation led Leibnitz to study geometry, which he described as opening a new world to him; though as a matter of fact he had previously written some tracts on various minor points in mathematics, the most important being a paper on combinations written in 1668, and a description of a new calculating machine. In January, 1673, he was sent on a political mission to London, where he stopped some months and made the acquaintance of Oldenburg, Collins, and others; it was at this time that he communicated the memoir to the Royal Society in which he was found to have been forestalled by Mouton. In 1700 the academy of Berlin was created on his advice, and he drew up the first body of statutes for it. On the accession in 1714 of his master, George I., to the throne of England, Leibnitz was thrown aside as a useless tool; he was forbidden to come to England; and the last two years of his life were spent in neglect and dishonour. He died at Hanover in 1716. He was overfond of money and personal distinctions; was unscrupulous, as perhaps might be expected of a professional diplomatist of that time; but possessed singularly attractive manners, and all who once came under the charm of his personal presence remained sincerely attached to him. His mathematical reputation was largely augmented by the eminent position that he occupied in diplomacy, philosophy and literature; and the power thence derived was considerably increased by his influence in the management of the Acta Eruditorum. The last years of his life - from 1709 to 1716 - were embittered by the long controversy with John Keill, Newton, and others, as to whether he had discovered the differential calculus independently of Newton's previous investigations, or whether he had derived the fundamental idea from Newton, and merely invented another notation for it. The controversy occupies a place in the scientific history of the early years of the eighteenth century quite disproportionate to its true importance, but it so materially affected the history of mathematics in western Europe, that I feel obliged to give the leading facts, though I am reluctant to take up so much space with questions of a personal character.

2. Chronology of major writings

 * 1684 || Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas ||
 * 1686 || Discourse on Metaphysics ||
 * 1686 || Correspondence with Arnauld ||
 * 1689 || Primary Truths ||
 * 1695 || New System ||
 * 1695 || Specimen Dynamicum ||
 * 1697 || On the Ultimate Origination of Things ||
 * 1698 || On Nature Itself ||
 * 1699 || Correspondence with De Volder ||
 * 1704 || New Essays on Human Understanding ||
 * 1706 || Correspondence with Des Bosses ||
 * 1710 || Theodicy ||
 * 1714 || Monadology ||
 * 1714 || Principles of Nature and Grace ||
 * 1715 || Correspondence with Clarke ||

3. Achievements in linguistics
<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is true that in Leibniz's time, and in the circle of the learned scholars who were directly or indirectly in contact with him, works of fundamental importance were produced, particularly in the area of lexicography and of the opening up of sources which, by virtue of the material thus uncovered, have to an extent retained their importance to the present day. In addition to their actual research objects however, these works had to identify fundamental questions of methodology; the spectrum of the aspects taken into consideration would accordingly remain limited and the results obtained were often to lack verification. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Against this background Leibniz's investigations of language are to be seen; they differ in one major respect from those of contemporaries primarily interested in linguistics. Beyond a mere general philosophy-rooted interest in language, linguistics is for Leibniz first and foremost an expedient for historical research. The objective is the reconstruction of the migration of peoples, the identification of ethnic groups and accordingly the elucidation of history prior to the emergence of the written tradition. The way ahead lay in the study of words and - on this basis - the establishment of affinities in language, all based of course on the assumption that from the language of a people its origin may be deduced. Leibniz's interest is therefore predominantly rooted in a single discipline viz. etymology. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Although the materials assembled by his correspondents, from available literature and his own observations are of considerably varying quality, they have, independently of Leibniz's work, remained of great value down to the present day. Thus the major part of the extant textual evidence of Dravenopolabish has only survived due to Leibniz's initiative. In addition there are numerous versions of the Lord's prayer, particularly in languages from the central Asiatic region, just as they were collected by Leibniz (along with lists of everyday words) tracing an older tradition. The sources of the material collection include, in addition to the Chinese missionaries, representatives of the Dutch East India Company. This material was to a large extent assembled by Leibniz himself in his //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Collectanea etymologica // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">. In the case of words found in texts of the classics and in those of the more common European languages, Leibniz attempted the discovery of connections; here his approach is basically associative: etymology = phonetic similarity + semantic proximity. For the indispensable verification of the results obtained the prerequisites were wanting. The material basis was not only too narrow and not seldom unreliable; except for a first approach phonetic rules, whose possible existence is not a subject of investigation for Leibniz, are likewise wanting. In the traditions of the ancients, he based his considerations on phonetic-symbolic ideas (e.g. [k] represents flexure) and he liked to arrange series of words, that appeared to him to confirm this thesis, in the same way that he postulated the etymological relationship of words of different languages and periods (e.g. //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">vir // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">, //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">erus // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">, //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">baro // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">, //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Herr // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">) having approximately the same meaning. The speculative character of such constructions is occasionally emphasized by Leibniz himself.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ideally series of relationships thus established allow not only rough divisions of peoples according to language (e.g. "Scythian" versus the Celto-Germanic languages), but also the classification of scattered peoples, in much the same way as Leibniz attempted in the case of Dravenopolabish through comparison with Slavic and Baltic materials; in this way a prehistoric, if not original, condition was to be established, albeit with the reservation of the //<span style="background-color: #f2f2f2; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Genesis // <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #464646; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> account of the tribal wanderings following the deluge, with which Leibniz constantly sought to harmonize his own results.