Gottfried Leibniz: Is this the best of all possible worlds?

He was turned into a caricature by Voltaire but, far from being some sort of buffoon, he was in fact one of the leading intellectual figures of his age

The German philosopher, polymath and mathematician (Getty/iStock)

Among his many achievements, Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) invented differential calculus independently of Isaac Newton; much of the notation and vocabulary used today comes from Leibniz, who possessed a flair for both symbolism and language. He was also a pioneer in the field of symbolic logic.

However, unhappily for Leibniz, he is probably best known as the inspiration for Voltaire’s satirical creation, Dr Pangloss, who spends his time in the novel Candide insisting that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds, despite the fact that he is confronted with disaster after disaster. There is an element of truth in this characterization of Leibniz’s philosophy – or his metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology, as Voltaire put it – but it would be a mistake to think that Leibniz was some sort of buffoon. He was one of the leading intellectual figures of his age.

He was born in Leipzig on 21 June 1646. His father, who taught moral philosophy at the University of Leipzig, died when he was only six years old, and he was raised mainly by his mother, who was careful to nurture and encourage his precocious intellectual talents. He taught himself Latin at an early age in order to read Livy, and then, having been given free run of his father’s library, worked his way systematically through the ancients – Cicero, Herodotus, Seneca and Plato.