Leibniz and the Structure of Sciences

Vincenzo De Risi is currently Research Fellow at the French CNRS. He has previously been Research Director at the Max Planck Institute for The History of Science in Berlin (2010-2016), fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig and invited Leibniz-Professor in the latter city. He worked extensively on the history of geometry and geometrical epistemology from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age, and in particular on Leibniz’s analysis situs, and the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry. His main publications are Geometry and Monadology: Leibniz’s Analysis Situs and Philosophy of Space (2007), Leibniz on the Parallel Postulate and the Foundations of Geometry (2015), a commented edition and translation of Saccheri’s masterwork on non-Euclidean geometry (Euclid vindicated from Every Blemish, 2014), and a collection of essays on geometry and space (Mathematizing Space: The Objects of Geometry from Antiquity to the Early Modern Age, 2015), all published by Birkhäuser. He has recently published a long essay on the tradition of Euclid’s Elements (The Development of Euclidean Axiomatics, “Archive for History of Exact Sciences”, 2016)

• Chapter 1. Leibniz on the Logic of Conceptual Containment and Coincidence (Marko Malink and Anubav Vasudevan).- Chapter 2. Leibniz’s Mereology (Massimo Mugnai).- Chapter 3. Leibniz in Cantor’s Paradise: A Dialogue on the Actual Infinite (Richard T.W. Arthur).- Chapter 4. Leibniz and the Continuity of Space (Vincenzo De Risi).- Chapter 5. On the Plurality of Spaces in Leibniz (Valérie Debuiche and David Rabouin).- Chapter 6. One String Attached: Geometrical Exactness in Leibniz’s Parisian Manuscripts (Davide Crippa).- Chapter 7. Leibniz and the Calculus of Variations (Jürgen Jost).- Chapter 8. Teleology and Realism in Leibniz’s Philosophy of Science (Nabeel Hamid).

“The volume should be of value to scholars of Leibniz with interests in the ‘exact sciences’ and the formal dimensions of his thinking, as well as to historians and philosophers concerned with understanding how Leibniz’s thinking anticipates later approaches. … the volume is a valuable contribution to our understanding of Leibniz’s projects in the exact sciences.” (Christopher P. Noble, Metascience, August 20, 2020)