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.
Mathematical Logic at Penn State
Department of Mathematics