thms of negative numbers with Johann Bernoulli.In 1710 Leibnitz published Thodice a philosophical work intended to tackle the problem of evil in a world created by a good God. Leibnitz claims that the universe had to be imperfect, otherwise it would not be distinct from God. He then claims that the universe is the best possible without being perfect. Leibnitz is aware that this argument looks unlikely - surely a universe in which nobody is killed by floods is better than the present one, but still not perfect. His argument here is that the elimination of natural disasters, for example, would involve such changes to the laws of science that the world would be worse. In 1714 Leibnitz wrote Monadologia, which synthesized the philosophy of his earlier work, the Thodice. Much of the mathematical activity of Leibnitz's last years involved the priority dispute over the invention of the calculus. In 1711 he read the paper by Keill in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London, which accused Leibnitz of plagiarism. Leibnitz demanded a retraction saying that he had never heard of the calculus of fluxions until he had read the works of Wallis. Keill replied to Leibnitz saying that the two letters from Newton, sent through Oldenburg, had given pretty plain indications whence Leibnitz derived the principles of that calculus or at least could have derived them. Leibnitz wrote again to the Royal Society asking them to correct the wrong done to him by Keill's claims. In response to this letter the Royal Society set up a committee to pronounce on the priority dispute. It was biased, not asking Leibnitz to give his version of the events. The report of the committee, finding in favor of Newton, was written by Newton himself and published as Commercium epistolicum near the beginning of 1713 but not seen by Leibnitz until the autumn of 1714. He learned of its contents in 1713 in a letter from Johann Bernoulli, reporting on the copy of the work brought ...
