Today, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) is best known as a philosopher. George MacDonald Ross puts his philosophy into proper perspective by giving due weight to the other facets of his genius. Alchemist, librarian, diplomat, mining engineer, historian and polymath, Leibniz has often embarrassed commentators by the quirkier aspects of his work. Many of his inventions and schemes were far ahead of his time such as his designs for mechanical calculators, rotary pumps, clocks and barometers, and his proposal for a centralised scientific archive.

After an account of Leibniz's life, more detailed than any available in English, Mr MacDonald Ross explains Leibniz's most important ideas in mathematics, science and logic. He pays special attention to his independent discovery of binary arithmetic, his anticipation of the modern computer, his work on the infinitesimal calculus and on dynamics, and his attempts at a fully symbolic logic. He offers a new interpretation of Leibniz's metaphysics as a synthesis between various opposed positions: modernism and traditionalism, materialism and spiritualism, atomism and holism, mechanism and vitalism, determinism and libertarianism.