Request for Question Clarification by
jackburton-ga
on
27 Sep 2004 07:41 PDT
The above quote was by the German philospher, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716).
"Leibniz was one of the great philosophers of the age of Rationalism
and the last major philosopher who was also a first rate, indeed a
great, mathematician. His system, especially as developed by Christian
Wolff (1679-1754), established the basic form of metaphysics in German
universities, providing the philosophical starting point for Immanuel
Kant (1724-1804). Leibniz's metaphysics is most profitably contrasted
with that of his near contemporary Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), since
the two of them come down on exactly opposite sides of many important
issues (giving us something like a step in Hegelian dialectic).
Leibniz's system is also to be compared with the natural science of
Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who became Leibniz's bitter enemy, not just
in metaphysics, but in the argument over who had priority for the
development of calculus. Leibniz, indeed, may have been the better
mathematician, but he did not have Newton's success in applying
mathematics to physical problems."
( http://www.friesian.com/leibniz.htm )
Perhaps it is this quote...?
"119. "I thus conclude that ten men who are learned, willing, and
versed in the necessary sciences would do more in a few years than the
entire human race could do in the scattered and disorderly creations
of many centuries" (Phil., VII, 15; Brief., I, 104). Elsewhere it is
not the number of collaborators but the number of years that Leibniz
fixes: "I venture to say that they would accomplish more in a decade
than the entire human race could otherwise do in the disorderly and
scattered labors of many centuries." The Method of Physics, May 1676
(Foucher de Careil, VII, 105)."
http://philosophy2.ucsd.edu/~rutherford/Leibniz/ch5.htm#note119
