Has anyone studied Leibniz indepth? There seems to be some interesting parrellels between Einsteinian physics/quantum mechanics and Leibniz’s philosophy. I plan on writing a thread about it, when I’ve researched it some more, but any info or input about the connection, as well as good articles or books on Leibniz would be appreciated.
Just google- Leibniz Einstein
you will find many articles on the subject, perhaps not what you are looking for exactly, but a few do state the link and make good reading.
Is he the indiscernability of identicals guy?
Yeah, if only society had accepted his argument regarding the avoidance of contradiction in realtion to two objects that are identical being different by the mere fact that they are “located” in different “positions”, then Einstein’s relativity would not have been a revolution, but a clarification, and the deification of Newton would not have happened and stagnated science in a way all to similar Aristotle’s stagnation of philosophy and logic.
This is all speculation, naturally, but it’s all so fantastically interesting.
I don’t know alot about liebniz, but there’s a guy named david lewis who has an article called “an argument for identity theory” which is quite nice. He avoids alot of the problems with differences in location by setting a context in which identity can properly be assumed. It doesn’t help much with the skeptics, but it’s good for scientists.
I only trust Leibniz as far as I can throw Descartes. Anyone who bases a career on fixing Rene gets some credit but not much thought in my books.
That said some of his solutions are very elegant.
And I will throw out his theodicy one day and give Joker a huge laugh.
Brian Greene goes through the arguments about “space” between Leibniz, Newton, and Einstein in his Fabric of the Cosmos, in very easy terms, and explains why some won out over others. It also goes on to explain quantum, relativity, string theory, etc. Might be worth the read, just my two cents.