Leibniz's Legacy and Impact

Julia Weckend, Lloyd Strickland, Julia Weckend, Lloyd Strickland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351595476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This volume tells the story of the legacy and impact of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz made significant contributions to many areas, including philosophy, mathematics, political and social theory, theology, and various sciences. The essays in this volume explores the effects of Leibniz's profound insights on subsequent generations of thinkers by tracing the ways in which his ideas have been defended and developed in the three centuries since his death. Each of the 11 essays is concerned with Leibniz's legacy and impact in a particular area, and between them they show not just the depth of Leibniz's talents but also the extent to which he shaped the various domains to which he contributed, and in some cases continues to shape them today. With essays written by experts such as Nicholas Jolley, Pauline Phemister, and Philip Beeley, this volume is essential reading not just for students of Leibniz but also for those who wish to understand the game-changing impact made by one of history's true universal geniuses.

Part I

Early Receptions

1 Leibniz and the Royal Society Revisited¹

Philip Beeley

1. A Short Detour Across the Channel

For one who was so concerned about mathematical practice, Leibniz badly miscalculated the duration of his return journey to Germany in the autumn of 1676. From Paris, he had travelled to London, crossing the Channel by packet-boat between Calais and Dover. That crossing alone had taken six days because of the kind of stormy weather and unfavorable winds which are not uncommon at that time of year (Müller and Krönert 1969, 31). In London he had needed to enquire into “some very important things,” as he later told Johann Carl Kahm (fl. 1672–6), by way of explaining why he took this detour in the first place. As valet to Duke Johann Friedrich (1625–79), Kahm had been personally tasked with conducting the negotiations for Leibniz’s entry into the Hanoverian court, and he was naturally interested to learn about what the new ducal librarian had done along the way (A I 2, 3). As to his intended passage to Holland, from where after meetings with Jan Hudde (1628–1704), Jan Swammerdam (1637–80), Benedict de Spinoza (1632–77) and others he was to travel by land to Hanover, he does not appear to have made any arrangements either. The packet-boat for Rotterdam departed from Harwich, opening the prospect of as equally an arduous journey as the one he had experienced from the Kent port. Understandably, therefore, he readily took up Prince Rupert’s (1619–82) offer, when the two men met in London on Sunday, 15 October, a week after his arrival in the metropolis, that he travel directly from London instead. The prince’s yacht would shortly be departing to collect a wine consignment from the Palatinate and would stop at Rotterdam before proceeding down the Rhine to the wine-trading town of Bacharach (Schaab 1992, 98–9, 222–4). There was another advantage, too. No doubt because of the value of the intended cargo and the generally difficult sailing conditions at that time of year, the captaincy of the yacht was entrusted to one of England’s most esteemed seamen, Sir Thomas Allin (1612–85), comptroller of the navy.²

The following Thursday, Leibniz boarded the vessel at the appointed time in London, only for it to remain tied securely to its mooring for the next two days. When the yacht eventually did get underway, bad weather and the need to load freight at Gravesend meant that it was not until 1 November that it left the mouth of the Thames, arriving in Rotterdam the following day. Leibniz was not one to while away the time idly. He had used those days of immobility on the Thames to write a new tract on the theory of motion, to which he gave the name Pacidius Philalethi (A VI 3, 528–71; LC 127–221; Müller and Krönert 1969, 45–6).³ Nonetheless, increasingly frustrated by the length of time he had to wait, he actually contemplated going back on land and trying to make the passage from Harwich instead.⁴

For the accountant and inveterate promoter of mathematics, John Collins (1626–83), with whom Leibniz had spent part of the last five days of his second visit to London investigating some of those “very important things,” the German virtuoso had to all intents and purposes left England’s shores at the appointed time. Writing to his friend Thomas Strode (c.1626–97), a landowner and part-time mathematician in the county of Somerset, Collins reflects on Leibniz’s visit, the enjoyment of which on his part had been considerably dampened by an attack of scurvy:

The admirable Monsieur Leibnitz, a Germain but a Member of the R S scarce yet middle aged, was here last Weeke, being on his returne from Paris to the Court of the Duke of Hannover by whome he was importuned to come away and refuse such emoluments as were offered him at Paris but during his stay here, which was but one Weeke I was in such a Condition I could have but little conference with him, for being troubled with a Scorbutick humour or saltnesse of blood, and taking remedies for it they made me ulcerous and in an uneasy condition however by his letters and other Communications I presume I perceive him to have outtopped our Mathematics quantum inter Lenta &c.⁵

Collins, always quick to praise mathematical learning when he recognized it, here evokes his considerable esteem for Leibniz but unfortunately jumbles the quotation from Virgil in the process.⁶ His correspondent was a man whose university career at Oxford had been largely thwarted by the Civil Wars.⁷ But having inherited his father’s estate, he set about educating himself in the mathematical sciences, first through involvement with the circle around Thomas Aylesbury (1579/80–1658) and more recently through his friends such as Thomas Baker (1623–89) and Collins himself. He had succeeded in apprising himself of recent work by John Kersey (1616–77) and Isaac Barrow (1630–77) on algebra and conic sections with Collins regularly lending him books by English and continental European authors to study.⁸ Strode went on to produce a number of publications of his own, including a substantial tract on combinatorics, although Collins was more eager for him to publish a work on algebra instead.⁹ He would correspond with John Wallis (1616–1703), and Collins would later send him details of Leibniz’s latest work. As a Somerset man, Strode repaid Collins for his kindness in the most appropriate way possible, by sending him whole rounds of cheese or tubs of butter.¹⁰ And in fact immediately before setting out his account of Leibniz’s visit to London, Collins had thanked Strode for his latest contribution to the family kitchen.

How Leibniz had spent the earlier part of his visit can scarcely be reconstructed from the few traces left behind. After a full three-day journey from Dover, he arrived in London late in the evening of 8 October. The next day, he set off to see his fellow countryman and correspondent, Henry Oldenburg (c.1619–77) at his lodgings in Pall Mall. Apart from his close personal ties to Oldenburg, he had brought with him a letter from Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) that he was keen to deliver.¹¹ Oldenburg’s hand-written endorsement on the wrapper states clearly that he received it on 9 October.¹² No doubt to his disappointment, Leibniz would have learned from Oldenburg that the Royal Society had not yet resumed its weekly meetings after the summer recess. And Oldenburg would also certainly have informed him of the unpleasant dispute that had recently erupted between himself and Robert Hooke (1635–1703), probably confirming Leibniz’s own opinion of the Society’s notoriously proprietorial curator of experiments. Oldenburg had recently been publicly rebuked by Hooke for failing to acknowledge his work on a regulatory spring mechanism for pocket watches in a report on a similar invention by Christiaan Huygens (1629–95) he had recently printed in his journal, the Philosophical Transactions (Hooke 1677, 53–4).¹³ There is no indication of further meetings between Leibniz and Oldenburg on this occasion. If Leibniz had hoped to restore some of the trust that had been lost between them in recent years, he would surely have been disappointed about this, too. Although he and Oldenburg continued to exchange letters up to the death of the secretary of the Royal Society in the autumn of 1677, their dialogue had none of the warmth of earlier times, being overshadowed by latent suspicions towards Leibniz as a result of his prodigious successes in pertinent areas of the mathematical sciences.

2. Bright Beginnings

How different things had been just seven years earlier. From his very first letter, dated 13/23 July 1670, Leibniz had stood out from Oldenburg’s other German correspondents. His desire to communicate news of experiments to the Royal Society, his ongoing work in producing a new physical hypothesis capable of explaining all natural phenomena, including gravity, hydrostatical paradoxes and the motion of projectiles, could not fail to find favor.¹⁴ Likewise, his professed interests in universal language, combinatorics, and technical inventions created just the right impression as being of one who subscribed to the ideals of scholarly communication and the exchange and dissemination of knowledge that were dear to Oldenburg’s heart. In contrast, the impression created when two members of the Academia naturae curiosorum, the later Leopoldina, had contacted Oldenburg in the mid-1660s had been fairly disastrous. Philipp Jacob Sachs von Lewenhaimb’s (1627–72) initial letter had revealed the German society to be composed of medical men with little time for experimentation, and his tract on winegrowing, the Ampelographia, was at best what one might call an Aristotelian history of that topic.¹⁵ Things were even worse when Johann Daniel Major (1634–93) used his opening letter to Oldenburg to stake a claim to having discovered a method of infusion surgery.¹⁶ English virtuosi, including Christopher Wren (1632–1723) and Timothy Clarke (d. 1672), had devised what were considered to be similar techniques earlier, but typically had failed to publish them. Understandably, therefore, Major’s attempt to establish his own claim to priority did not go down well in London.¹⁷

It is not necessary here to rehearse the story of Oldenburg’s encouragement for Leibniz in his youthful scientific endeavors, for this had been done before (Beeley 2004, 51–2). After being repeatedly pressed by Oldenburg to complete the work, Leibniz sent him the first part of his Hypothesis physica nova [New Physical Hypothesis] on 1 March 1670/1, while the remaining part together with the Theoria motus abstracti [Theory of Abstract Motion] was sent to London from Frankfurt on 29 April 1671.¹⁸ What is particularly noteworthy is the adeptness with which he made his first overture to the Royal Society. With the aid of his patron Johann Christian von Boineburg (1622–72), who shared his interest in the work of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), Leibniz set out his various intellectual endeavors and concerns in a way that would naturally chime well with Oldenburg. The secretary of the Royal Society embodied many of the ideals of knowledge promotion of friends such as Theodore Haak (1605–90) and Robert Boyle (1627–91) and was in many ways the natural heir to the tradition of Samuel Hartlib (d. 1662) and Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670). Leibniz’s only serious mistake was to enclose with his introductory letter to Oldenburg a letter to Hobbes, evidently unaware of the antipathy with which the philosopher was viewed by many in the Society, and particularly by John Wallis, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford. With typical foresight, Oldenburg held back that letter. By not forwarding it to Hobbes, as he had been requested to do, he sought to prevent Leibniz from being swept along by that anti-Hobbesian sentiment (Beeley 2014, 46–7). Moreover, the Hypothesis physica nova was not only dedicated to the Royal Society but also coincided thematically with many of its scientific concerns. Furthermore, Leibniz cited in numerous places works by illustrious members, such as Hooke’s Micrographia (1665) or Boyle’s Nova experimenta physico-mechanica [New physical-mechanical experiments] (1669).¹⁹

A number of members of the Royal Society was asked to report on the Hypothesis physica nova (Birch 1756–7, II, 475). Only Hooke and the mathematicians John Pell (1611–85) and Wallis seem to have done so. Nothing is known of Pell’s response, while Hooke’s was short and dismissive.²⁰ Wallis on the other hand, whose opinion on such matters carried a great deal of weight, wrote a glowing report, noting the many points of agreement between Leibniz’s new physical hypothesis and his own Mechanica: sive, de motu, tractatus geometricus [Mechanics, or, a Geometrical Tract on Motion] (1670–1), the third and longest part of which was still at the press:

As for the work itself, I find many things expressed in it with very good reason, and to which I can fully assent since my own views are the same. Such are: “Everything in physics ought to be accommodated, as far as is possible, to mechanical reasoning” (§15); “By the abstract theory of motion, no body can of itself return again in the same line as before, even with resistance removed, unless a new force is applied” (§ 22); “All perceptible bodies, hard ones at any rate, are elastic,” and “Resilience arises from elasticity” (§21). These are in complete agreement with my hypotheses concerning motion which you formerly inserted in the Philosophical Transactions, which I have developed more fully in Chs. 11 and 13 of my Mechanica sive de motu.²¹

Such was the strategic success of the Hypothesis physica nova that members of the Royal Society were prepared to overlook the deficits of the short, excessively theoretical tract Theoria motus abstracti that accompanied it and which displayed a strong Hobbesian influence.²² Moreover, they happily sanctioned the reprinting of Leibniz’s earliest contribution to the physical sciences by the Society’s printer John Martyn (1617/18–80).²³ In his announcement of the new impression in the Philosophical Transactions, Oldenburg notes particularly the difficult professional circums...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• List of Figures
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Making Waves: Leibniz’s Legacy and Impact
• Part I Early Receptions
• Part II Legacy in Science and Metaphysics
• Part III Impact in Law, Political Thought and Ecology
• List of Contributors
• Index