Leibniz on Properties and Individuals

Abstract

The Christian idea that GOD once created the entire world literally out of nothing does not sound very reasonable or intelligible to a modern analytic philosopher. Yet a 17th century forerunner, if not founder, of analytic philosophy, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, apparently did believe in this doctrine or, somewhat more exactly, in the minimally weakened doctrine that GOD created the world out of nothing plus one. Ten years ago the Stadtsparkasse Hannover brought out the following commemorative coin: In the middle of the coin we see a table with the beginning of the binary number system, enframed by samples of elementary arithmetical operations. On the top of the coin one can read the Leibnizian dictum “Omnibus ex nihilo ducendis sufficit unum”, which may be translated as ’In order to produce everything out of nothing one [thing] is sufficient’. And the whole picture is said to present a “imago creationis” is, i.e. a picture of the creation.