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FINE-TUNING THE MULTIVERSE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2013

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was quite a thinker. As a philosopher, he made major contributions to epistemology, logic, the philosophy of religion and metaphysics. He was also an accomplished scientist, historian, and linguist. In mathematics, he built the first (admittedly somewhat unreliable) calculating machine able to perform all four elementary arithmetical operations, and devised the first proper formulation of binary numbers. Although Chinese and Indian scholars had developed several types of rudimentary binary notation centuries earlier, the number system at the heart of every modern computer was put together by Leibniz. As if that were not enough to guarantee his immortality, he also developed calculus independently of Isaac Newton, and it is mostly Leibniz's version that survives in our textbooks, due to his superior notation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013

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