The Labyrinth of the Continuum: Writings on the Continuum Problem, 1672-1686

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz’s sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum.

The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz’s Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite...