Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig and spent most of his life near the court of Hanover in the service of the dukes, one of whom became King of England under the name of George I. He was even more catholic in his interests than the other great thinkers of his century; his philosophy embraced history, theology, linguistics, biology, geology, mathematics, diplomacy, and the art of inventing. He was one of the first after Pascal to invent a computing machine; he imagined steam engines, studied Chinese philosophy, and tried to promote the unity of Germany. The search for a universal method by which he could obtain knowledge, make inventions, and understand the essential unity of the universe was the mainspring of his life. The scientia generalis he tried to build had many aspects, and serveral of them led Leibniz to discoveriees in mathematics. His search for a characteristica generalis led to permutations, combinations, and symbolic logic; his search for a lingua universalis, in which all errors of thought would appear as computational errors, led not only to symbolic logic but also to many innovations in the mathematical notation. Leibniz was one of the greatest inventors of mathematical symbols. Few men have understood so well the unity of form and content. His invention of the calculus must be understod against this philosophical background; it was the result of his search for a lingua universalis of change and of motion in particular.