Leibniz: Dissertation on Combinatorial Art

Leibniz published the Dissertation on Combinatorial Art in 1666. This book contains the seeds of Leibniz's mature thought, as well as many of the mathematical ideas that he would go on to further develop after the invention of the calculus. It is in the Dissertation, for instance, that we find the project for the construction of a logical calculus clearly expressed for the first time. The idea of encoding terms and propositions by means of numbers, later developed by Kurt Gödel, also appears in this work. In this text, furthermore, Leibniz conceives the possibility of constituting a universal language or universal characteristic, a project that he would pursue for the rest of his life. Mugnai, van Ruler, and Wilson present the first full English translation of the Dissertation, complete with a critical introduction and a comprehensive commentary.

Massimo Mugnai is Professor Emeritus of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. He is a member of the scientific board of the Florentine Center for History and Philosophy of Science and of the Leibniz-Gesellschaft of Hannover. Mugnai has previously worked at the University of Bari and the University of Florence. He has delivered papers at numerous universities, including Bonn, Düsseldorf, Freiburg, Hannover, Konstanz, Leipzig, Edinburgh, Madrid, MacMaster, and Ontario. Han van Ruler studied philosophy at Utrecht University and obtained his PhD at the University of Groningen in 1995. He is Professor of Intellectual History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also Scientific Director of the Dutch Research School of Philosophy (OZSW) and General Editor of Brill's Studies in Intellectual History. He has published a variety of modern editions in English and Dutch of seventeenth-century philosophical works by Descartes, Geulincx, and Spinoza. Martin Wilson graduated in mathematics at the University of London in 1964, after which he completed an MA at the University of Sheffield and then spent two years at Newcastle University studying Polynomial theory. His publications include an English edition of the seventeenth-century Flemish philosopher Arnold Geulincx's Metaphysics (Christoffel 1999) and, together with Han van Ruler and Anthony Uhlmann, an English edition of Geulincx's Ethics: With Samuel Beckett's Notes (Brill 2006).

- On This Edition - Introduction - A Dissertation on Combinatorial Art: Text - A Dissertation on Combinatorial Art: Translation - Bibliography