Re: [HM] Leibniz's "let us calculate"?

AJ Franco de Oliveira (francoli@dmat.uevora.pt)
Wed, 26 May 1999 21:00:08 +0100

Perhaps, only perhaps, some light on this matter shall be shed by the
publication at the end of the year of a French translation (from Latin) of
the unpublished manuscript of Leibniz (written while he was in Paris,
before moving to Hannover) on the foundations of infinitesimal geometry,
where he develops a calculus of infinitesimals apparently with greater
consistency than in later writings. Sorry, I have no more details just
as yet.

AJFO.

At 17:02 23-05-1999 -0400, Robert Tragesser wrote:
>
> I've been asked for the source of Leibniz's much cited "let us
> calculate." My best track on this is that it does not occur in
> Leibniz's (published, available) writings but, rather, derives
> from a memoir of some contemporary of Leibniz, that whenever
> anyone engaged Leibniz on any matter requiring thought/reason
> (by no means just mathematics), he is supposed to have begun
> with something like, "Well, let's calculate." This must be
> apocryphal, for of course Leibniz was in no position to
> literally do that.