De Arte Combinatoria

The Dissertatio de arte combinatoria was published by Gottfried Leibniz in 1666. It is a youthful work, written before the author had seriously undertaken the study of mathematics. Although it is a very original work and it provided the author the first glimpse of fame among the scholars of his time he often regretted its publication because he considered it premature. The main idea behind the text is that of an alphabet of human thought, which i... more

The Dissertatio de arte combinatoria was published by Gottfried Leibniz in 1666. It is a youthful work, written before the author had seriously undertaken the study of mathematics. Although it is a very original work and it provided the author the first glimpse of fame among the scholars of his time he often regretted its publication because he considered it premature. The main idea behind the text is that of an alphabet of human thought, which is attributed to Descartes. All concepts are nothing but combinations of a relatively small number of simple concepts, just as words are combinations of letters. All truths may be expressed as appropriate combinations of concepts, which can in turn be decomposed into simple ideas, rendering the analysis much easier. Therefore, this alphabet would provide a logic of invention, opposed to that of demonstration which was known so far. Since all sentences are composed of a subject and a predicate, one might For this, Leibniz was inspired in the Ars... less