![]() ![]() ![]() He was, in short, a man operating at the forefront of intellectual advances which were if not themselves strictly secular, certainly rationalistic in the colloquial sense and plausible precursors to the secularization of knowledge which was to take place during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. He met Baruch Spinoza, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens and many other major intellectual figures of the time during this period. He spent time in Paris during the first half of the 1670s, interspersed with brief trips to London. Demonstrations of what? Well, Leibniz envisaged a coherent demonstration of many elements of the Christian religion: God’s existence, the mysteries recorded in the Bible, the authority of scripture and so on. ![]() At its foundation, this would consist in the development of elements of philosophy and science – metaphysics, logic, ethics, mathematics and physics, upon which more distinctly theological ‘demonstrations’ would be built. ![]() Indeed, Leibniz certainly conceived of his life, in part, as an attempt to develop a systematic encyclopedia of the sciences. It is a standard interpretation of Leibniz’s life and work to hold that he was committed to a thoroughly rational approach to religion. Leibniz: His Life and Work A Statue of Leibniz, Martin Bernigeroth, 1710, via Wikimedia Commons ![]()
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