The Moderns! continued (Part II)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz (1 July 1646 [OS: 21 June] – 14 November 1716) was one of the greats because of his integration of sciences, not to mention his white knuckle ability for work.

Over the course of his years he invented binary, which every computer in the world uses in the present day. He also pretty much single handedly invented Library Sciences, and it was his integration of maths that led him to invent the Calculus independently and before Newton. Americans still use Leibnizian notation.

Leibniz worked nonstop over the course of his life, often travelling as he did it. Various other contributions to sciences such as politics, geometry, geology, engineering, and even poetry were all pretty abundant. He invented one of the first calculators.

Working more than probably anyone else of his era, the extent of Leibniz's works have still not been assessed and translated 400 years later. It is possible that Leibniz has other ideas as good as some of his computer solutions lost in his papers.

As for his philosophical contributions, Leibniz re-systemized logic. This paved the way for analytic truth ventures. His Principle of Identity and Principle of Sufficient Reason are really cool. He also made some pretty good cases for Free Will being Compatible with rigid Scientific Organization, or Determinism if you will.

A tremendous leader in so many fields, Leibniz established some of the first German academies of sciences, which would forge Germany into a world power in the 19th and 20th centuries.

If I may speak freely here, I might say that Leibniz was really angry about people being unable to recognize the wonders of this world. He put the problem out there as noumena versus phenomena, whereupon we could know the real essences of things. His theory of Pre-established harmony reminded people that things happen for a reason and we can trust those reasons.