Series: Penn State Logic Seminar

Date: Tuesday, April 10, 2001

Time: 2:30 - 3:20 PM

Place: 316 Willard Building

Speaker: Emily Grosholz, Philosophy Department, Penn State University

Title: Leibniz's Characteristic and the Discourse on Metaphysics

Abstract: 

Leibniz's fascination with notation and with the formal languages
which he called "characteristics" play an important role in his method
of analysis, which seeks the conditions of intelligibility of
things. In mathematics, this search is strongly analogous to the
search for the conditions of solvability of problems.  I want to argue
three things: (1) Leibniz knew that in the employment of a
characteristic, we write down more than we know, and add to the
content of what we are investigating.  For Leibniz, the study of man
is theomorphic; and we imitate the creativity of God in our ability to
add to conditions of intelligibility: by understanding (looking for
causes and reasons) we make things more intelligible.  (2)
Characteristics include not only symbolic language, but iconic
language: in all of Leibniz's mathematical investigations, the
characteristics of arithmetic, logic, algebra, and differential
equations are accompanied by diagrams and tables: Leibniz calls
mathematics "the logic of the imagination," a formulation I find more
suggestive than Kantian intuition.  (3) Leibniz's investigations, by
means of his characteristics, do not constitute a closed system,
outside of time, but rather a fluid and multiple set of
systematizations that are revised over time.