Do we learn through experimentation with the environment, or through reflection and introspection? This question reflects the main theme that, during the time of the Enlightenment, served as a differentiating axis to distinguish the great types of philosophers: the rationalists, who defended that knowledge is extracted through reason, and the empiricists, who believed that we develop our intellect through experience.
The German thinker and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz escaped this two-category classification. In fact, although more than 300 years have passed since his death, his ideas can still be used today to understand in an approximate and intuitive way how we experience reality. Let’s see what his theory was.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was born in Leipzig in 1646. From a very young age he showed great curiosity about a wide variety of topics, and this led him to constantly learn about all kinds of subjects. At the age of 11 he had already learned Latin and began to study Greek.
Starting in 1666, when he finished studying law and scholastic logic at the University of Leipzig, he worked for the elector bishop of the town of Mainz. In 1675 he agreed to become advisor and librarian to the Duke of Brunswick, which made him move to Hanover a place where he produced his philosophical work while combining this activity with several trips, trying to carve out a future in other cities with a more stimulating intellectual environment.
He died forgotten by the nobles with whom he surrounded himself during his life due, among other things, to pressure generated by his enmity with Isaac Newton, who accused him of plagiarism in his works on mathematics. His grave remained anonymous until several years after his death.
Leibniz’s theory
Although he died without receiving recognition from practically anyone, Leibniz is considered a genius: he wrote on economics, law, theology, architecture, mathematics and chemistry. Beyond all these fields of knowledge, He is recognized mainly for his contributions to philosophy
The main proposals of Gottfried Leibniz’s epistemological theory which developed a philosophy on how we generate knowledge and develop a complex metal life, are as follows.
1. The idea of notions
Leibniz believed that each element of reality, whether a person, a landscape or an object, is associated with something called a “notion.” The notion is everything that is true about the element of reality to which it is associated. For example, the color of a crow is black, its hind limbs are devoid of feathers, etc.
2. Everything is related
Leibniz was strongly inspired by rationalism, and therefore believed that the most that language can aspire to is to resemble mathematics, a hermetic system of symbols. That is why, for him, if something is true it must being connected to the truths of other elements of reality described by their corresponding notions, at least from a theoretical point of view.
That is to say, if we discover these relationships between the different notions, we will know all of reality as a whole. Ultimately, a notion not only contains truths about the element to which it is associated, but also tells us about all the elements with which it is related.
For example, if there is something that has the fingers of its lower extremities covered in feathers, it is not a crow.
3. Monads
Leibniz recognizes that, although pulling the thread of notions can help us know the truth, in practice this is impossible, because our rationality is not powerful enough to work with such a massive amount of information. However, this does not mean that every element of the universe does not contain pieces of truth. In fact, for Leibniz the universe is composed of units called monads, which are metaphysical entities that contain representations of everything that exists.
A monad, being true and speaking of both the past, the present and the future, is identical to another monad, since they all coincide in containing what is true.
4. Truths of reason and truths of fact
However, the existence of monads does not change the fact that we are not able to assimilate their presence, and in practice we often act as if nothing is certain.
Although we can access simple greens through mathematics, that does not allow us to take the leap and come to know everything that is true and authentic; We simply stay there, with that tiny fragment of reality that the sum of one and one equals two.
That is why in Gottfried Leibniz’s theory a distinction is made between truths of reason and fact, the latter being the lesser evil necessary to be able to work with relative certainties about what happens to us. The only entity that has full access to the truths of reason according to Leibniz, would be the Christian god.
