"The manuscripts of Leibniz... show, perhaps more clearly than his published work, the great importance which Leibniz attached to suitable notation in mathematics and... in logic generally. He was perhaps the earliest to realize fully and correctly the important influence of a calculus [some mindless method of calculation] on discovery. ...There is a frivolous objection... to the effect that such economy of thought is an attempt to substitute unthinking mechanism for living thought. This contention fails... through the simple fact that this economy is only used in certain circumstances. In no science do we try to make subject to a mechanical calculus any trains of reasoning except such that have not been the object of careful thought many times previously. ...this reasoning has been universally recognized as valid, and we do not wish to waste energy of thought in repeating it when so much remains to be discovered by means of this energy. Since the time of Leibniz, this truth has been recognized, explicitly or implicitly, by all the greatest mathematical analysts."
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Academics from GermanyInventorsMathematicians from GermanyPhysicists from GermanyPhilosophers from Germany
Original Language: English
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J. M. Child, Preface, The Early Mathematical Manuscripts of Leibniz (1920)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz
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Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1 July 1646 {21 June O.S.} – 14 November 1716) was a German philosopher and mathematician.
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