- Lived:
- 1646–1716 · Leipzig, Paris, Hanover
- Tradition:
- German rationalism at full stretch — the last of the great seventeenth-century system-builders, and the first prophet of the computer
- The Big Idea:
- Reality is made of infinitely many mind-like atoms called monads, each mirroring the whole universe, perfectly synchronized by God in the best of all possible worlds — because nothing, anywhere, is without a reason.
- In their words:
- "Monads have no windows through which anything could come in or go out."
- If you remember one thing:
- He co-invented calculus, designed binary arithmetic, and dreamed of settling arguments by computation — and he built a universe out of windowless minds that never touch, yet never fall out of step.