Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria
Cover of the Dissertatio de Arte Combinatoria… (1666), the doctoral thesis by 17th-century German philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716). Leibniz’s thesis focused on the combination of simple concepts and was inspired by Llull’s Ars Magna.
The influence of the Mallorcan thinker in Leibniz’s work is not limited to this early tract. Leibniz was interested in Llull throughout his life. It is considered one of the most important milestones of Lullism from a philosophical point of view.
Leibniz sought to find an alphabet of human thought (a lingua universalis) from simple concepts that could be combined. In this way, the activity of thought would become a calculating machine that could go beyond logic and achieve metaphysics.
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