2.14 Leibniz and Monadology
Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716 AD) was a prominent German philosopher and mathematician. He developed differential and integral calculus independently of Newton. Along with Descartes and Spinoza (1632-1677 AD), Leibniz was one of the advocates of rationalism, and he contributed to modern logic and analytic philosophy. However, his best distinguished contribution to metaphysics is his theory of monads, as exposited in his short book: Monadologie.
Leibniz tried to reconcile the doctrine of the Atomists with the scholastic theory of matter and form. He also wished to avoid both the extreme mechanism of Descartes, who taught that all matter is inert, and the monism of Spinoza, who taught that there is but one substance, God. Descartes defined substance in terms of independent existence, and Spinoza was merely inferring what was implicitly contained in Descartes’ definition when he concluded that therefore there is only one substance, the supremely independent Being, who is God.