The Philosophy Book

134

THERE ARE TWO

KINDS OF TRUTHS:

TRUTHS OF

REASONING AND

TRUTHS OF FACT

GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ (1646–1716)

IN CONTEXT

BRANCH

Epistemology

APPROACH

Rationalism

BEFORE

1340 Nicolaus of Autrecourt

argues that there are no

necessary truths about the

world, only contingent truths.

1600s René Descartes claims

that ideas come to us in three

ways; they can be derived from

experience, drawn from reason,

or known innately (being

created in the mind by God).

AFTER

1748 David Hume explores the

distinction between necessary

and contingent truths.

1927 Alfred North Whitehead

postulates “actual entities”,

similar to Leibniz’s monads,

which reflect the whole

universe in themselves.

E

arly modern philosophy

is often presented as being

divided into two schools—

that of the rationalists (including

René Descartes, Benedictus

Spinoza, and Immanuel Kant) and

that of the empiricists (including

John Locke, George Berkeley, and

David Hume). In fact, the various

philosophers did not easily fall into

two clear groups, each being like

and unlike each of the others in

complex and overlapping ways.

The essential difference between

the two schools, however, was

epistemological—that is, they

differed in their opinions about

what we can know, and how we

know what we know. Put simply,