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The importance of optimism
WILL PODMORE is enlightened by the achievements of a 17th century scientist whose work anticipates computer programming as well as Marx’s materialism
MECHANICAL SHORTCUTS TO FUTURE: The Stepped Reckoner, a mechanical calculator invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in 1674 and completed in 1694. About 67 cm this was the first calculating machine able to do all four arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
[Hermann Julius Meyer/Public domain; Gottfried Leibniz (c1695) by Christoph Bernhard Francke]
MATTHEW HAWKINS rakes through un-fancy words and flair-free summaries to find who and what might be flamboyant
PETER MASON is exhilarated by an exciting, well-considered and historically minded tribute to the great Trinidadian instrument
Reducing historical lives to ‘male’ and ‘female’ roles, we lose the nuance of those lives and a clearer understanding of past societies, suggests CLAIRE ISABELLA GILMOUR
CHRIS SEARLE relishes the genius of pianist Alexander Hawkins, his many ensembles, and his new album
The Best of all Possible Worlds: A Life of Leibniz in Seven Pivotal Days
Michael Kempe, Pushkin Press, £20
MICHAEL KEMPE, director of the Leibniz Archive in Hanover, has written an enthralling biography of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It is not a conventional biography. Instead Kempe presents a series of snapshots of significant days in Leibniz’s life, vivid pictures of how he lived and worked in Paris, Zellerfeld, Hanover, Berlin and Vienna.
Leibniz was one of the last representatives of a type of universal scientist, with the 17th century scientific revolution’s optimistic trust in progress, and also with the hope, dating back to the Renaissance, of being able to lay claim to all the world’s knowledge. In his amazingly productive life, Leibniz indeed made major contributions across a huge range of disciplines.
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