Alliteration’s Almost Always Appropriate
I’m sorry, but I must address this issue, as I had a dream about it mere hours ago (it’s like 10 AM) and if it’s infiltrated my dreams, it must be important to me.
So as I’ve stated, I’m reading The Calculus Wars. In the blog about said book, I briefly mentioned the fact that the book used the word “invented” to describe how calculus came about. As I read on, though, the author appears to switch randomly between the words “invented” and “discovered.”
As confused as I was at the beginning over this, I’m more confused now, mainly because I’m not sure which word should really be used. Really, what sounds more accurate?
If we say that Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus, that basically means that there is some sort of preexisting system of mathematics that humans are in the process of unlocking.
But if we say that they invented calculus, then it just seems kind of strange that they were able to just invent something with such mathematical power to explain all the things it explains.
But then again, I find it rather suspicious that human beings have developed these systems called “numbers” and “math” and they somehow magically explain the workings of the universe (velocity, the speed of light, rate of acceleration, etc.). I mean, don’t you find it the least bit suspicious that we can explain these things using simple formulas? It makes sense that the universe is ordered in some fashion, I just find it kind of odd that we’ve managed to gain possession of something that seems to be able to explain the patterns. It seems too easy, you know what I’m saying?
What if it’s all arbitrary?
(See, this is why I want to take freaking Metaphysics)
HOLY FREAKING CRAP!
Guys, there is a best of all possible worlds, and this is what it looks like:
This is from Tarsky’s World, my Symbolic Logic’s virtual world where we can validate/invalidate sentences. Today I (barely) started working on my logic homework. So I get to this one problem and read this: Launch Tarsky’s World and open Leibniz’ World…
Of course, if you have been listening to me at all these past few weeks, you can imagine the ruckus this caused. Well actually, it caused virtually no ruckus, as I was in the recitation session at the time so I couldn’t jump up and down and scream “HOLY CRAP!” like I wanted to. So I just sat there giggling to myself and reveling in my little joke for about ten minutes.
Seriously guys. Leibniz claims there is a “best of all possible worlds.” There is a Leibniz’ World in LPL’s files. I have got to think the writers of Tarsky’s World had to understand the little joke they made. This is almost better than the cookies.
Haha, I’m sorry, this is probably a really boring blog, but it’s funny as hell to me.
The Leibniz jokes will subside in due time, perhaps after I get my chocolates in the mail, or perhaps after I read some of his other writings. But as of now, you guys’ll just have to deal with them. At least I’ve refrained from the statistics jokes for awhile, right?
Tautologies are really unnecessary. Indeed, tautologies are quite superfluous.
(Really, stop me if my titles get too “out there.”)
World, I present to you a new metaphysical theory on God and the universe.
In a sentence:
It is through Ren’s boobs that God is represented.
Elaboration:
We looked at this through three different philosophical viewpoints (actually I did, everyone else there extrapolated, laughed, or was like “Claudia, what the hell?”)—Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz (the Rationalists!).
Descartes
We have to establish some sort of dualism. This task is easily accomplished, due to the fact that there are two boobs. One boob is to represent the substance “mind,” and the other boob is to represent the “material” substance. “I think therefore I’m Ren’s boobs.”
Spinoza
We are Ren’s boobs, and Ren’s boobs are us. Everything is Ren’s boobs. Ren’s boobs are the cause of all things. There is no dualism; the boobs themselves are of the same substance. Oh, and Ren’s boobs can indeed be perceived and understood.
Leibniz
Ren’s boobs are the best of all possible boobs. They are perfectly omnipotent, omnipresent, and good. Ren’s boobs created the world. Therefore, it is because of Ren’s boobs that we live in the best of all possible worlds. There is no other and better world, just as there are no other and better boobs.
Yeah.
It’s a Vast Dessert Conspiracy!
OH MY GOD.
This hadn’t even crossed my mind. This hadn’t even entered my thought processes even remotely, even after listening to Brian Regan’s rant on Fig Newtons today.
Freaking go here and read the comments if at first you don’t get it (I didn’t).
Choco LEIBNIZ.
Fig NEWTONS.
Can it possibly be that the two great, independent inventors of calculus are both represented in tasty dessert form?
Answer: YES!
Fig Newtons were indeed named after good ol’ Isaac, who, according to Wikipedia, “liked figs” (not nearly as entertaining a story as the one behind Choco Leibniz, but interesting nonetheless).
What’s even freakier is the fact that both cookies were developed independently of each other in the SAME FREAKING YEAR (1891).
I think the one and only way to resolve the “who invented calculus first” debate is to find out once and for all whose tasty delight was created first. Unfortunately, the Fig Newtons website is entirely uninformative, and Bahlsen’s website (the company that makes the Chocos), while delightfully entertaining due to their obvious knowledge of Flash, has nothing informative, either.
So I guess the debate can’t be solved. At least by me tonight.
But wow…that’s really funny, don’t you think?
Choco Leibniz: The Best of All Possible Cookies
And if any of you get that joke, freaking congratulations, ’cause no one else has gotten it yet, save Sean.
Holy crap, you guys, you’ll never guess what I found!
So as a break from the insanity that is my Spring Break (at least it’s winding down a little, I think), my mom and I went up to Spokane for the day. Whenever we go to Spokane we make sure to visit Auntie’s bookstore, mainly because it actually has a good selection of books (unlike Hastings) and because you can actually buy things from there (unlike the library, to whom I apparently owe $161, but more on that later).
Today I had the pleasure of finding the book Calculus Wars, which basically describes the entirety of Newton’s and Leibniz’s feud over which one of them first invented* calculus. The fact that I’m reading a book about calculus proves how into Leibniz I really am, people.
But this isn’t the big thing of the day. I thought to myself when I got home, “you need to get some books on Leibniz, woman!” So I got online (Amazon.com), and typed in “Leibniz.”
This is what I found. This was like the fourth item down:
OMG!!
I am so incredibly amazed. I want these cookies. Like, now. I will do anything for these cookies.
In fact, I was so enthralled that I looked them up on Wikipedia. This is what I read:
“The brand name Leibniz comes from the philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The only connection between man and biscuit is that Leibniz was one of the more famous residents of Hanover, where the company is based. At the time when the biscuit was first made, there was a fashion for arbitrarily naming products after famous people.”
Dear god, that is funny. I’m so getting my hands on these cookies.
And I could make so many jokes about them with regards to Leibniz’ philosophy, you don’t even want to know.
*Now here’s a thing I’m wondering: they use the verb invented to describe the introduction of the use of calculus. If mathematics (specifically, calculus) is a tool for understanding the universe, if it is the key that we have for unlocking all understanding of all things, why do they say we invented it? Shouldn’t they say, if math indeed explains the fundamental workings of all we could possibly need to understand, that we discovered it, since a tool that explains how things work should already exist and not have to be invented, just discovered? Just a thought…
Blog 660: Leibniz, Leibniz, Leibniz! (Get out of my pool!)
OH.
MY.
GOD.
You all know my love of Voltaire and his absolutely brilliant novella Candide, correct? Of course you do. If you didn’t by this point I’d be seriously disturbed.
Well anyway.
You all know (maybe) that the main target of Voltaire’s satire was Gottfried Leibniz’ philosophy, particularly his now infamous claim that we live in the best of all possible worlds (Pangloss in Candide preached this philosophy throughout the whole book, you may recall).
Let me tell you something: you have not LIVED until you actually sit down and READ Leibniz, particularly his Discourse on Metaphysics. The thing is so absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical that it is quite possibly the best piece of philosophical work in existence.
Let me elaborate:
God is an absolutely perfect being who has metaphysical and moral perfection, according to Leibniz. That is, he has perfect power and knowledge and does everything for the best. He criticizes Descartes and Spinoza respectively for putting subordinate to god’s will his intellect and putting subordinate god’s intellect to his will. Leibniz says that god’s will and intellect are both substantial and perfect; thus, it is not possible for god’s will to be indifferent, and because he has moral perfection, it is incompatible for god not to have chosen the best things in the world in which we live (and we are driven to assume that this is the best of all possible worlds because of this).
This is all well and good, in my opinion. Leibniz still sounds rather rational in comparison to Spinoza (freaking Spinoza…).
Just wait.
To leave us simply with this definition of god is rather inadequate. Therefore, Leibniz further develops his ideas as the Discourse goes on. He next goes on to establish what he believes to be the way that god interacts with the substances—namely, us humans. Leibniz labels us all as individual “substances”—things created by and subsequently put into harmony with one another by god. He kind of relates this to Aristotle’s ideas of the primary substance, which I won’t really get into save to say that Leibniz elaborates on it a little further—he states that we—each of us, individually—are individual substances and “complete beings.” Ourselves, our substances, include our entire history and our future of everything that has occurred or will occur to the substance (us). Basically, we’re everything that we’ve ever done, everything we’ve ever experienced, everything we’ll ever do, and everything we’ll ever experience. We cannot know about our substances a priori, but god can. Thus, god sees from every individual substance’s viewpoint (every individual human) all at once, and all their lifespan can be seen at once by him.
That’s still okay, pretty much, right?
Okay.
Now imagine this scenario: I walk up to you tomorrow and give you a good slap on the cheek. Common sense would tell us that the substance that is “I” just hit the substance that is “you,” right? In other words, two substances just interacted, correct?
Not to good ol’ Leibniz!
There are no interactions between substances, he says. Substances are entirely independent of each other. Each is simply a perspective on the entire universe that is free of any influence of any other substance. But then how on earth, you may be asking yourself, does it appear that we substances interact with each other on a daily basis?
Simple!
Remember when I said Leibniz felt that god could know every individual’s substance in its entirety, from way back at the beginning of its history to the moment it dies? And remember how he said god could see every single substance’s perspective?
This is where Leibniz makes the claim of the century: because of god’s ability to see everybody’s history and future, he can essentially “align” everybody’s what I’m going to call “linear time and action paths” (pretty cool-sounding, eh?) so that it appears that subjects are interacting.
So remember when I said imagine me giving you a good slap to the cheek a few paragraphs ago? Yep, god planned for that. He “saw it coming,” I guess you could say, and “aligned” our two linear time and action paths so at the very moment when my substance (“me”) was making a move as if to slap, your substance (“you”) feels as if they were just slapped. All without no interactions between substances whatsoever!
This freaking blows my mind for several reasons:
1) I’m actually shocked more satires weren’t produced off of this guy. I mean, Candide didn’t even touch this “god pulls on the matrix of life so that everything’s lined up perfectly and we’re all kept in this illusion that we’re actually interacting” thing.
2) Why in the world is this guy even in our repertoire of “famous philosophers we should study”? Why is this horribly fantastical philosophy still even considered? Is it because it’s such an epic failure? Seriously, the thing has a “WTF” factor to rival scientology. In fact, it may surpass scientology. Observe:
3) This was the one and only cartoon-worthy thing I could think of. I’m disappointed in myself. It’s so dumb.
Leibniz, I freaking love you, man. I’m totally adopting your philosophy as my religion. Leibnizm.
He is now the frontrunner in “the philosopher Claudia is going to dress up as” for my little party. And he edges out Voltaire only because he’s primarily considered a philosopher and Voltaire’s primarily a writer/satirist/sexy man.
Eigenblogger 