Tao Te Ching
Leibniz
(Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz)
1646 – 1716 CE
Polymath, philosopher, mathematician, scientist, engineer, lawyer, university president and “best-of-all-possible-worlds man”; Leibniz developed calculus, invented components that became the first calculator, and refined the binary number system that became the foundation for digital computers. His writings on law and politics and call for a European confederation inaugurated the European Union. One of the first major European intellectuals to study Chinese culture and philosophy, he read Confucius, studied the I Ching, and integrated Chinese wisdom into both his philosophy and physics. It led to his “law of continuity” that linked the nature of everyone—plants, humans, animals, both the organic and inorganic worlds—, created a theoretical foundation for evolution, and envisioned a non-dual calculus of understanding reality.
Lineages
Central European Rimé Lineage Scientists
Eras
Chinese
Qing dynasty (1644 – 1912 CE)Quotes by Leibniz (11 quotes)
“I always begin as a philosopher but I always end up as a theologian.”
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“Men are linked with animals, these with plants, and these again with fossils which in their turn are connected with elements that sense and imagination represents to us as completely dead”
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“Bodies act as though there were no souls and souls as if there were no bodies, and both act as if each influence the other.”
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“Imperfection in the part may be required for a greater perfection in the whole.”
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“There is in the universe no chaos, no confusion save in appearance.”
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“He who hasn't tasted bitter things hasn't earned sweet things.”
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“Music is the hidden arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating.”
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“All bodies are in perpetual flux like rivers, and parts are passing in and out of them continually”
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“Each simple substance is a perpetual, living mirror of the universe and this interconnection of all created things to each other brings it about that each simple substance has relations that express all the others.”
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“The means of obtaining as much variety as possible, but with the greatest possible order...is the means of obtaining as much perfection as possible.”
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Quotes about Leibniz (2 quotes)
“In the great unifying soul of Leibnitz, the medieval tradition is still powerful enough to turn a mathematician into a precarious theologian.”
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“Leibniz was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable... he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues... What he proclaimed was optimistic, orthodox, fantastic, and shallow... unpublished in his desk... profound, coherent, largely Spinozistic, and amazingly logical.”
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