Liebniz is something of an unacknowledged grandfather of computer science. Everyone knows Babbage for designing but never finishing a universal mechanical computer, but a century earlier Lienbniz materially advanced the state-of-the-art by designed and actually constructing the first mechanical calculator capable of all four basic mathematical operations: addition, subtraction, multipication, and division.
Leibniz plays a central role in a book I composed of excerpts of original sources about the history of computation, logic and algebra[1], and in a talk I gave about it[2].
if i were to choose a patron saint for cybernetics out of the
history of science, i should have to choose leibniz. the
philosophy of leibniz centers about two closely related
concepts-that of a universal symbolism and that of a calculus of
reasoning. from these are descended the mathematical notation
and the symbolic logic of the present day. now, just as the
calculus of arithmetic lends itself to a mechanization
progressing through the abacus and the desk computing machine to
the ultra-rapid computing machines of the present day, so the
calculus ratiocinator of leibniz contains the germs of the
machina ratiocinatrix, the reasoning machine. indeed, leibniz
himself, like his predecessor pascal, was interested in the
construction of computing machines in the metal . it is therefore
not in the least surprising that the same intellectual impulse
which has led to the development of mathematical logic has at the
same time led to the ideal or actual mechanization of processes
of thought.
- Cybernetics (1961 ed.)
Leibnitz, in the meantime, saw the whole world as a collection of
beings called "monads" whose activity consisted in the perception
of one another on the basis of a pre-established harmony laid
down by God, and it is fairly clear that he thought of this
interaction largely in optical terms. Apart from this perception,
the monads had no "windows," so that in his view all mechanical
interaction really becomes nothing more than a subtle consequence
of optical interaction. A preoccupation with optics and with
message, which is apparent in this part of Leibnitz's philosophy,
runs through its whole texture. It plays a large part in two of
his most original ideas: that of the Characteristica
Universalis, or universal scientific language, and that of the
Calculus Ratiocinator, or calculus of logic. This Calculus
Ratiocinator, imperfect as it was, was the direct ancestor of
modern mathematical logic. Leibnitz, dominated by ideas of
communication, is, in more than one way, the intellectual
ancestor of the ideas of this book, for he was also interested in
machine computation and in automata. My views in this book are
very far from being Leibnitzian, but the problems with which I am
concerned are most certainly Leibnitzian. Leibnitz's computing
machines were only an offshoot of his interest in a computing
language, a reasoning calculus which again was in his mind,
merely an extention of his idea of a complete artificial
language. Thus, even in his computing machine, Leibnitz's
preoccupations were mostly linguistic and communicational.
- Human Use of Human Beings (1954 ed.)
Wiener becomes preoccupied with Leibniz from his youth, writing philosophical entries for the Encyclopedia Americana which are like premonitions of his cybernetics.
He wasn't uncritical though, he especially attacked the pre-established harmony of monads. The argument I'm pursuing is that if you get rid of God, if you let monads actually intercommunicate, if you reinvent Leibniz's continuum of infinite confusion and infinite clarity of knowledge as entropy and information, you're pretty close to cybernetics.
i just thought it was interesting if not just for the subjects it covers. information theory before shannon, Henri Bergson's time philosophy, thermodynamics/statistical mechanics, learning machines (neural networks?)
I'll try to get my hands on human use of human beings, probably give cybernetics another run through too
They're related, but each hexagram contains two of these (which are apparently sometimes written slightly separated and considered separately). As there are 8 of these symbols, there are 64 hexagrams.
>> every reasoning derivable from notions could be derived from these notions' characters by a way of reckoning, which would be one of the more important means of assisting the human mind.
I guess he's saying that symbolic reasoning can be performed automatically ("by a way of reckoning", in the sense of computation). He's advocating for the use of automatic symbolic manipulation as a way to enhance the capabilities of the human mind. That's, like, the soul of logic-based, symbolicist AI. You know - "GOFAI".
Yes! Leibniz thought it would be possible to invent "a kind of alphabet of human thoughts" in which "everything can be discovered and judged by it comparison of the letters of this alphabet and an analysis of the words made from them." These would be essentially arithmetic - every thought would have a numbers. This would "increase the *power of the mind much more than optical lenses strengthen the eyes and which will be as far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is superior to sight." This was influenced (but not reducible) to what he had been reading from Chinese philosophy.
In 1679 he said it would take, "five years to complete project with a few select men." Famous last words...
Well, there were a few unforeseen problems along the way...
On the other hand, so many brilliant minds have put in so much great work in this idea that it's just silly to let it die only because we're, well, stuck.
It strikes me that Leibniz would have been right at home in this time. I can see him blogging, sending emails like the posted explanation, writing RFCs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepped_reckoner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leibniz_wheel
Liebniz's design was the basis of the first successful mass produced mechanical calculator more than a century later:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmometer
He also wrote extensively on the concept of artificial languages and what we today recognize as Boolean algebra:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characteristica_universalis
https://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-log/
His work on these subjects was explicitly cited by Frege as the inspiration for his own seminal work on formal logic.