The Best of all Possible Worlds: A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days
Seven particular days, taking in binary arithmetic, the calculus dispute, epidemic-control proposals and mining engineering, instead of one continuous Leibniz life.
Kempe reconstructs Leibniz through seven particular days rather than as a continuous life, covering binary arithmetic, the calculus dispute with Newton, his proposals for epidemic control, mining engineering, and the enormous correspondence. The structure works because Leibniz did too many things for a conventional narrative to hold them together.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
A good book, I had not realized the full import of Leibniz in the history of binary computation, his understanding of “novels as models,” his theory of social distancing during epidemics, or just how much attention he devoted to the historical episode of a woman as Pope.
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