Hello everyone, here is a small broadcast of reading, today to take you to know is the famous philosopher, mathematician, one of the three major rationalist thinkers in modern times: Leibniz.
Modern Western philosophical thought is mainly divided into two schools: empiricism and rationalism. The representatives of empiricism are mainly from the British Isles: Locke, Bakeley and David Hume; while the representatives of rationalism are mainly from continental Europe: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz.
First we introduce the philosophical ideas of Descartes and Spinoza, respectively, and then we begin to introduce the last of the three major rationalists: Leibniz. Leibniz occupies an important place in both the history of mathematics and philosophy. In mathematics, he and Newton independently discovered calculus, and the mathematical notation of the calculus he used was more widely used, and the symbols invented by Leibniz were generally considered to be more comprehensive and more widely applicable, and even Leibniz invented and perfected the binary. There are two theories about Leibniz's discovery of binary:
Theory 1: Leibniz first discovered the binary, and later saw the Chinese innate bagua chart, which just reflects the binary carry law he just discovered. Therefore, he thinks that the hero sees the same thing, and the ancient Chinese sages have long discovered the binary.
Theory 2: Leibniz was inspired to understand the binary carry law after seeing the Chinese innate gossip sequence. Leibniz was one of the first Europeans to come into contact with Chinese culture, and he came into contact with Chinese culture from some of the clergy who had traveled to China as missionaries.
But in reality, it's more likely to be a false myth. Guo Shuchun pointed out in the book "Liu Hui, the mathematical titan of the ancient world": "The fact is that Leibniz first invented the binary, and only later saw the Song Dynasty scholars' rearranged Zhou Yi Bagua brought back by the missionaries, and found that the Bagua could be explained by his binary. Therefore, it was not Leibniz who saw yin and yang gossip to invent binary. In Leibniz's eyes, "yin" and "yang" are basically his binary Chinese versions. He once asserted: "Binary is the most universal and perfect logical language in the world." Today in Thuringian, Germany, a manuscript of Leys is still preserved in the library of the famous Guota Palace, with the title "1 and 0, the magical origin of all numbers." ”
In fact, I personally believe that there is no need for the Chinese people to forcibly associate the binary discovered by Leibniz with Zhou Yi and Bagua. The innate order of the bagua, and even the order of the sixty-four gua arranged according to the binary law, this coincides with the binary, which is an inevitability of the laws of the universe, and can also be said to be a coincidence. But obviously we ancients did not apply this law to the field of mathematics, binary has addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, with conversion to other decimals, while Yin yang Bagua does not add, subtract, multiply and divide, and conversion with other decimals. Therefore, they only have superficial similarities, which are essentially different.
Well, that's it for Leibniz and the story of the Chinese Bagua Chart, and we'll go back to Leibniz's philosophical thought.
Leibniz's most famous ideological view is that he proposed the "monad theory". In addition, he also perfected the three laws of formal logic: the law of identity, the law of contradiction, and the fourth law outside the law of exclusion: the law of sufficient reason. At the same time, Leibniz was an optimistic ethicist, and in ethics, Leibniz distinguished between three different types of evil: metaphysical evil, moral evil, and physical evil. He believed that "our universe is, in a sense, the best one God has ever created."
Next, we focus on Leibniz's "monad theory". First, let's take a look at what a "single" is. This is an important theory that belongs to Leibniz's ontological thought. Regarding ontology, in the ancient Greek Democritus proposed "atomism", everything in the world is composed of "atoms". In Democritus's view, the atom is the smallest particle that makes up matter, it is material, it is expansive, spatial, and indivisible.
But Leibniz questioned how, if the world is made up of atoms that are separated from each other, how do those atoms form an dynamic whole? Just like a bunch of Lego can't make a moving cat. Obviously, it is difficult to explain the complex and changeable world with a single, immovable atom.
Leibniz proposed the "monad theory", the monad is the smallest unit that constitutes the world, but the monad is not a material "particle", it does not extend, does not occupy space, it is an inseparable point, and at the same time has continuity. How to understand this?
The "points" we usually understand, such as the sun and the moon are a point, smaller stones, and sand grains are also a point, these are our points in the traditional sense, they are real, they are material. But apparently Leibniz's "point" is not this. Because Leibniz was also a mathematician, his "point" comes from abstract mathematics, such as the fact that the center of each circle in geometry is a point, and there are also two points at both ends of a line segment. These mathematical or abstract points are not material, do not occupy space, and do not extend.
So, Leibniz proposed a kind of "point" that is more abstract than the mathematical point, called the "list". The monad is a continuous, dynamic, indivisible spiritual entity, the basis and final unit of things. Here you might ask, how does this spiritual entity constitute the physical entity that we can see?
Here Leibniz proposes that the whole material world is nothing more than a representation of the monad in our subjective reflection, which is not an objective reflection, but a subjective consciousness. Usually we think that the mountains and rivers, flowers and trees we see are seen through our eyes, with a subjective ability to "see", but in fact, the reason why we see these substances is because light waves are reflected into our eyes, and the visual system of our brain translates the received light wave information into our cognition through a series of complex neural activities, which is a completely passive process. Therefore, what we see is the way the world is presented to us, the eyes have a superficial ability, and the world composed of monotons is presented through the human eyes, which is the imprint of the apparent ability of the human eye. Different subjects see different worlds, for example, in the eyes of bats and rabbits, the world is a different look.
Therefore, Leibniz believes that the material world is a kind of appearance of the list, and countless lists are connected to each other to form a subjective appearance, for example, we see that the rainbow has seven colors in the sky, but can you catch the rainbow in the sky, in fact, it is not, the rainbow is just a phenomenon that presents to our eyes under the illumination of countless water vapors.
The world is very subjective in everyone's eyes, and we can only see the appearance of the world, but not its essence. In fact, this epistemological point of view can also be found in the philosopher Kant, Kant said that we can only know the world through intuition + concepts, and we can not know the world as it is, and later the philosopher Schopenhauer more intuitively described that "the world is my appearance."
Schopenhauer
In fact, whether it is Eastern thought or Western thought, the thoughts of each thinker independently are very different, but in fact, there are many connections within them, and many ideas are developed on the basis of predecessors, some are continuations, and some are questioned.
For example, we talked about the three representatives of rationalism in the modern West: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz. In Descartes' view, the world is divided into two categories: matter and mind, and he proposed the "dualism of mind and matter"; and in Spinoza's view, "God is nature", the essence of all things in the world is "God" or "one", this "God" is not God in the traditional sense, somewhat similar to the "Tao" of our Taoist thought, it is the law of the world and the origin of the world; and Leibniz proposed on their basis that the world is composed of "monads", and the characteristics of monads are "many", not Descartes's "dualism" Nor is it Spinoza's "monism", but "pluralism".
We can see that Leibniz's "monad theory" was not whimsical, but based on a critique of his predecessors. The tradition of Western philosophical thought is critical thinking, and many thinkers are criticizing and questioning the ideas and theories put forward by their predecessors, although their ideas will also be criticized and questioned by later philosophers, but because of this, human thought will continue to progress and develop.
Therefore, when we study Eastern and Western ideas, we should pay attention not only to their own ideas and opinions, but also to why they put forward such views and what is intrinsically related to their views and other views. Moreover, we should learn from their critical thinking and a spirit of not seeking much understanding.
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