Wer sucht, kann gefunden werden

Die Online-Suche provoziert Debatten über die Selbstbestimmung des Einzelnen. Denn wer sucht, kann nicht nur finden, sondern auch gefunden werden. Um diesem paradoxen Verhältnis auf die Schliche zu kommen, lohnt sich ein Blick in die Vergangenheit. Ausgehend von historischen Texten - insbesondere Hugo von Sankt Viktor, Michel de Montaigne, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Martin Schrettinger und Paul Otlet - lassen sich Probleme nachzeichnen, die sich in den gegenwärtigen Diskussionen zu den virtuellen Suchmaschinen wiederfinden. Robin Schrade geht der Frage nach, welche wissens- und subjektpolitischen Konstellationen sich in den Operationen des Suchens und Findens verbergen und zeichnet ihre Geschichte nach.

1. Time until Newton

‘Time until Newton’ begins by describing the historical origin of calendars and mathematical ways of representing time. It discusses the Aristotelian worldview, which formed the dominant understanding of the Universe in the West from the time of Aristotle until the 17th century when Newton proposed his theory of motion. This was the first physical theory in the mathematical form that we expect nowadays and by making space and time subjects of scientific investigation Newton forever changed the way that people studied space and time. After the publication of his theory, a debate about whether space and time were entities or systems of relations broke out between Newton and the philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. A series of letters between Leibniz and the philosopher Samuel Clarke focusing on this question introduced the mathematical tools of symmetry and invariance that would become important in subsequent study of the structure of space and time.

Analysis of Ideas Changing in the History of Mathematical Analysis

Analysis is a branch of mathematics that deals with continuous change and with certain general types of processes that have emerged from the study of continuous change, such as limits, differentiation, and integration. In the history of mathematics, analysis is the first subject became epidemic, the development of analysis originated from the British mathematician and physicist, the Sir Isaac Newton, and the German mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who developed the theory of Calculus, with hundred-years developing, the modern analysis is now very ample and has widely applications, it has grown into an enormous and central field of mathematical research, with applications throughout the sciences and in areas such as finance, economics, and sociology. In this paper, we investigated in some detail with the changing of the ideas in mathematical analysis. By numerating historical facts and the mathematical ideas, we concluded the result that the ideas changing is because of the changing of the studying objects, the conclusion are studied detailly in the paper.

Causal Powers and Ontology in Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz

This essay focuses on an intriguing cycle in early modern ontology—that is, in the early modern study of what exists. René Descartes helped to usher in a new era in ontology by putting pressure on the causal powers posited by his scholastic forbearers. Nicholas Malebranche went a step further in flatly denying the existence of created causal powers. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, however, demurred, arguing for a return once again of causal powers. Having explored the decline, fall, and rise of causal powers in the ontologies of Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, the essay closes by asking if early modern debates over causal powers might have anything to teach us about the study of ontology itself.

On Milton Babbitt, Schenkerian

This chapter explores the influence of Schenker on Babbitt’s theoretical views, analytical prose, and, most importantly, his compositional techniques. Beginning with a discussion of his upbringing in the New York City of the 1930s, surrounded by intellectual refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, the chapter details how Schenkerian organicism influenced Babbitt and how it intersected with his other, often quite divergent, interests. The metaphor of organicism is excavated in Babbitt’s writings and examined for its heuristic utility. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, another predecessor Babbitt repeatedly cited, is discussed as an additional potential influence. Babbitt’s principal compositional techniques—serial arrays, the time-point system, and cross-references—are reconstructed in light of his Schenkerian principles. Readers new to Babbitt’s music will find the basic outlines of his compositional approach surveyed here.

Entrevista a Armin von Bogdandy

Se entrevista a Armin von Bogdandy, quien es un jurista alemán. Es director del Instituto Max Planck de Derecho Público Comparado y Derecho Internacional de Heidelberg (Alemania) y profesor de Derecho Público, Derecho Europeo y Derecho Internacional y Económico en la Universidad Goethe de Fráncfort (Alemania). Entre otros galardones, recibió el premio de la Academia de Ciencias de Berlín-Brandeburgo por sus destacados logros científicos en el campo de los fundamentos jurídicos y económicos en 2008, el premio Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz en 2014 y el “Mazo” de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en 2015. Es presidente del Tribunal Europeo de Energía Nuclear.

Pufendorf and Leibniz on duties of esteem in diplomatic relations

The striving for self-worth is recognized as a driving force in international relations; but if self-worth is understood as a function of status in a power hierarchy, this striving often is a source of anxiety and conflict over status. The quasi-international relations within the early modern German Empire have prompted seventeenth-century natural law theorists such as Samuel Pufendorf and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to reflect about this problem. In his De statu imperii Germanici (1667), Pufendorf regards the power differences and dependencies between the Reichsstände to be an expression of the deficits of constitutional structure of the Empire—a structure that, in his view, causes internal division because it leads to distorted practices of esteem between the estates. Against Pufendorf, Leibniz argues De jure suprematus ac legationis (1671) that political actors such as the German princes who are not Electors could fulfill functions under the law of nations such as forming confederations and peace keeping. Incoherently, however, Leibniz excludes less powerful estates such as the Imperial cities and the Hanseatic cities from the ensuing duties of esteem. This shortcoming, in turn, is arguably remedied in Pufendorf’s later considerations concerning duties of esteem in diplomatic relations.

The best of all possible coexistence

The writings of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) provide a window on early evolutionary thinking of a kind interestingly different from the roots of modern evolutionary theory as it emerged in the years following the French Revolution. Here we relate aspects of Leibniz’s thinking to methods of modern palaeoecology and show that, despite a different terminology and a different hierarchic focus, Leibniz emerges as a strikingly modern theoretician, who viewed the living world as dynamic and capable of adaptive change. The coexistence approach of palaeoecological reconstruction, developed by Volker Mosbrugger and collaborators, with its core assumption of harmoniously co-adapted communities with strong historical legacy, represents, in a positive sense, a more Leibnizian view than functionally based and theoretically history-free approaches, such as ecometrics. Recalling Leibniz’s thinking helps to highlight how palaeoecological reconstruction is about much more than reliably establishing the ecological and climatic situation of a given fossil locality. While reliable reconstructions of past conditions are certainly of great value in research, it is arguably the need to think deeply about how the living world really works that keeps palaeoecological reconstruction such a long-running and central aspect of evolutionary science. And while we struggle to understand the coexistence and dynamic interaction of endless levels of living agents of the living world, simultaneously large and small, global and local, the coexistence approach of palaeoecological reconstruction remains both an outstandingly operational method and part of a philosophical tradition reaching back to the very earliest evolutionary thinking.