Preface to the General Science

Leibniz's plan for a language in which every argument could be settled by calculating.

by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz9 passages held

French, the original language

Original title: Préface de la Science générale
First published: 1903(published posthumously)
Original language: French

Overview

To show how a sum can be checked without counting out pebbles, Leibniz multiplies 1677 by 365 in this unfinished French preface, and Louis Couturat, the French logician who printed it from the Hanover manuscripts in 1903, took the first number for the year of writing. The argument climbs in steps. Happiness requires lasting contentment, contentment requires assurance about God and the soul, that assurance requires science, and science requires demonstration. Only mathematicians have managed demonstrations everyone accepts, because a false theorem can be caught cheaply, with ink and paper, by testing the calculation on the symbols instead of on the things. If signs could be found that expressed all our thoughts as exactly as numbers express quantities, every question that depends on reasoning could be settled the same way, and two disputants would simply sit down and calculate. Such a language, Leibniz predicts, would be hard to make and easy to learn, and it would silence the ignorant, since nobody could write in it about what they did not understand. He calls it the furthest the human mind could go, an instrument that would do for reason what the telescope had done for sight, and claims the idea as his own, first conceived at eighteen and announced in print soon after. He ends by naming it one of his ambitions, to be carried out if God gave him life.

Key concepts

What was the general science this preface introduces?

Leibniz’s plan for a language of signs expressing all our thoughts as exactly as numbers express quantities, so that any question depending on reasoning could be settled by calculating. He calls it the furthest the human mind could go, an instrument that would do for reason what the telescope did for sight, and claims the idea as his own, first conceived at eighteen.

Why does Leibniz multiply 1677 by 365 in the text?

To show how a sum can be checked without counting out pebbles: the calculation is tested on the figures themselves. Louis Couturat, the French logician who printed the unfinished preface from the Hanover manuscripts in 1903, took the first number for the year of writing, which is why the piece is usually dated 1677.

Why are mathematical demonstrations accepted by everyone?

Because a false theorem can be caught cheaply, with ink and paper, by testing the calculation on the symbols instead of on the things. Only mathematicians, Leibniz says, have managed demonstrations everyone accepts. His plan is to give every field that depends on reasoning the same cheap way of catching errors.

How does the preface connect happiness to demonstration?

By a chain of requirements. Happiness requires lasting contentment, contentment requires assurance about God and the soul, that assurance requires science, and science requires demonstration. The universal language is proposed as the way to supply demonstration where it is lacking, so the preface presents a logical instrument as a means to human happiness.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Settling Arguments by Calculation

Could a disagreement about anything be settled the way a sum is checked? Leibniz planned a language of signs in which two disputants would simply sit down and calculate.

The argument climbs in steps: happiness requires lasting contentment, contentment requires assurance about God and the soul, that assurance requires science, and science requires demonstration. Only mathematicians have managed demonstrations everyone accepts, because a false theorem can be caught cheaply, with ink and paper, by testing the calculation on the symbols instead of the things. Signs that expressed all our thoughts as exactly as numbers express quantities would do the same for every question that depends on reasoning. Such a language would be hard to make and easy to learn, and nobody could write in it about what they did not understand.

universal language
symbolic reasoning
formal reasoning
calculation
demonstration
verification
mathematics
reasoning
representation
consensus
ambiguity
happiness
common good
human progress

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 9
distinct concepts: 31
by passages held, corpus-wide: #820

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1684 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (Meditationes de cognitione, veritate et ideis)
A journal article of 1684, written into the Arnauld–Malebranche quarrel over ideas; its grades of knowledge return in the Discourse on Metaphysics and the New Essays.
LA
1691 Whether the Essence of a Body Consists in Extension (Lettre sur la question si l'essence du corps consiste dans l'étendue)
Against the Cartesian view that body is nothing but extension: a letter to the Paris Journal des Sçavans in 1691, followed by a second in 1693.
FR
1695 New System of Nature (Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances)
Leibniz's first public statement of his system, printed in Paris in 1695; his replies to Foucher and Bayle kept it in the journals until 1698.
FR
1698 On Nature Itself (De ipsa natura)
An answer to Johann Christoph Sturm in the Acta Eruditorum of 1698, defending forces inside created things and tying the dynamics to the metaphysics of substance.
LA
1710 Theodicy (Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l'homme et l'origine du mal)
Published anonymously at Amsterdam in 1710, it was the book by which the eighteenth century knew Leibniz, and the one Voltaire answered with Candide.
FR
1717 The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Recueil des lettres entre Leibniz et Clarke)
Ten papers exchanged through the Princess of Wales in 1715–16, cut off by Leibniz's death and published by Clarke in 1717.
FR
1718 Principles of Nature and Grace, Based on Reason (Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison)
A companion summary from the same Vienna months as the Monadology, long mistaken for it and printed before it, in 1718.
FR
1720 Monadology (Monadologie)
Written in French in 1714, it was known for over a century only in German and Latin translation.
FR
1765 New Essays on Human Understanding (Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain)
The book-length reply to Locke, written as a dialogue in 1703–04, withheld after Locke's death and first printed in 1765.
FR
1840 Discourse Touching the Method of Certitude and the Art of Discovery (Discours touchant la méthode de la certitude et l'art d'inventer)
A plea for royal patronage of the sciences, addressed to an unnamed king, apparently Louis XIV, setting out the method of certainty and art of discovery Leibniz pursued for decades.
FR
1840 On the Ultimate Origination of Things (De rerum originatione radicali)
A short Latin essay of 1697 on why there is a world at all, left in manuscript until 1840.
LA
1840 Reflections on the Doctrine of a Single Universal Spirit (Considérations sur la doctrine d'un Esprit Universel Unique)
A French essay written in 1702 at the Prussian queen's palace outside Berlin, and left unprinted until 1840.
FR
1846 Discourse on Metaphysics (Discours de métaphysique)
The opening statement of Leibniz's mature metaphysics, written early in 1686 and left unprinted until 1846.
FR
1846 The Leibniz-Arnauld Correspondence (Correspondance de Leibniz et d'Arnauld)
The exchange of 1686 to 1690 between Leibniz and Arnauld over the Discourse on Metaphysics, every letter carried by the Landgrave of Hessen-Rheinfels.
FR
1854 Refutation of Spinoza (Animadversiones ad Joh. Georg. Wachteri librum de recondita Hebraeorum philosophia)
Private Latin notes on Wachter's book about Spinoza and the Kabbalah, given their title by the French scholar who published them in 1854.
FR
1890 Tentamen Anagogicum: An Anagogical Essay in the Investigation of Causes (Essai anagogique dans la recherche des causes)
A French essay of about 1696, from the years of Leibniz's dynamics, defending final causes against the mechanical philosophers.
FR
1903 New Openings (Nouvelles Ouvertures)
Written in French in 1686, by the Academy edition's dating, and left in manuscript until Couturat printed it in 1903.
FR
1903 Preface to the General Science (Préface de la Science générale) you are here FR
1915 Confessio Philosophi (Confessio philosophi)
Leibniz's first developed theodicy, a Latin dialogue from his Paris years; revised after Steno's objections, its account of sin returns much changed in the Theodicy of 1710.
LA

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