Leibniz

[Terrance]

The texts of Buddhism have this much in common with Leibniz, they are
both revelatory. 
However, the Buddhist texts are agonistic, like Pynchon, call it
both/and or postmodern indeterminacy if you like, although this last is
rather silly, it has more to do with irreconcilable opposites sustained
in tension with only rare and unexpected displacements of dislocations,
like Murphy's Laws. There is difference too, in principle. Leibniz is
interested in a universal language characteristic and a principle of all
principles while the B texts are more Freudian, elemental. 


In Hegel we find an attempt to trace the movement of philosophy from
East to West. Hegel, of course, was a dialectician. So, his attempts to
reconcile East and West is very different from what we find in Leibniz.
But, in some ways,  Hegel finds precedent for East/West dialectic in
Leibniz. Yes, the idea that the "world" is one comprehensive (East &
West) unity emerges in unique form during the 18th century. I guess we
could trace this worldview to the Renaissance-geographical,
philosophical, scientific, artistic world mapping. So, there is a
connection that runs back quite a ways, ultimately to the Greeks. So the
mapping by the Enlightenment includes the possession of "new" worlds
(America), the repossessing of "old" worlds (classical antiquity), and
the unifying of the world East and West (i.e., Leigniz and the I Ching). 

What Leibniz was interested in, or one of things that drove him, was a
"universal characteristic." This has to do, first with language. 

>From Leibniz's "Towards a Universal Characteristic" [1677]. 
http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/seminars/alc/Archive/Leibniz.Characteristic.html

But it has more profound implications as Leibniz searches for his
"Principle of all Principles" (not to be confused with Husserl's
"Principle of all Principles) that will reconcile the paradigms of the
ancient, medieval, modern philosophers, scientists, cabalists,
alchemists. 


As a philosopher, Leibniz exhibited that many-sidedness which
characterized his mental activity in general. His sympathies were broad,
his convictions were eclectic, and his aim was not so much that of the
synthetic thinker who would found a new system of philosophy, as that of
a philosophic diplomatist who would reconcile all existing systems by
demonstrating their essential harmony.

WILLIAM TURNER Transcribed by Tomas Hancil 
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IX

This drive to discover and reconcile the foundation that recurs (see
Aritotle's Metaphysics) and what is connected fundamentally, is
conspicuous in the novel M&D. It is there because it is was part of the
Enlightenment project-to celebrate the "principles of nature." Of
course, this all goes to Newton's Physics. While it may be popular to
say that Newton was digital, a clock man or some such nonsense, the
truth is far from that. Dixon loves the man as a God/Hero. And Newton,
like Locke on the political level, can only be read with the Bible in
hand. Both turned to the Bible and to the Ancient Greeks (specifically
the Epicureans) for the First Principles. Astonishing? 
How could such brilliant men (there has never been a more brilliant man
than Newton) turn to the Bible for their Principles? No, for their First
Principles! 

When Dixon observes the Transit of Venus, he says he sees God in all his
glory. 

Yes, and the grandeur of God, in all his terrible beauty, is living in
the stones beneath our feet. 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
     It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
     It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
     Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
     Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
     And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
     And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
     Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

     And for all this, nature is never spent;
     There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
     And though the last lights off the black West went
     Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
     Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
     World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

-- GMH