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Leibniz dug into so many areas, but I wish people had found and published his writings on quantum theory far earlier.
by djloche 11y ago
Leibniz dug into so many areas, but I wish people had found and published his writings on quantum theory far earlier.
- tim333 11y agoQuantum theory? He would have been quite ahead of his time given he died in 1716.
- noblethrasher 11y ago“Quantum mechanics is what you would inevitably come up with if you started from probability theory, and then said, let's try to generalize it so that the numbers we used to call "probabilities" can be negative numbers. As such, the theory could have been invented by mathematicians in the 19th century without any input from experiment. It wasn't, but it could have been.”[1] Still a bit too late for Leibniz by that argument, but within the ballpark. [1]: http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec9.html
- tim333 11y agoI looked up the history of complex numbers and probability theory and both predate Leibniz. Even so I don't think he cracked that one.
- djloche 11y agoI could have sworn he wrote a bunch of things late in his life that, when finally published with the rest of his work in the late 20th century, revealed more quantum theory related philosophy. Unfortunately, I don't have my notes from when I was researching this a few years ago, so I will have to concede that this may be faulty memory attributing things to the wrong individual.
- SilasX 11y agoYou mean monads? His "identity of indiscernibles" that gets referenced in QM? He predated what most people refer to as "quantum theory".
- Toast_ 11y agoHis writings on monads come to mind, though I may be mistaken. Did you know he made a mechanical calculator? Here's a pretty cool link from the wolfram blog: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/05/dropping-in-on-gottfried-leibniz/ http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2013/05/dropping-in-on-gottfr...