Leibniz’s Encyclopaedia and General Science

By the spring of 1679, Leibniz had reached a striking conclusion: his ambitious plan for a universal characteristic—a symbolic language capable of expressing all concepts and a set of rules for manipulating the symbols to generate new knowledge—could not proceed without a prior foundation. What was needed first was an encyclopaedia. Not a conventional reference work, but a comprehensive and systematically organised inventory of everything that was known.

This encyclopaedia, however, was not conceived as a passive repository. Leibniz envisioned it as an active instrument of discovery. Once its contents were arranged according to the right principles, it would not merely record knowledge but reveal how to extend it. He offered a mathematical analogy: just as a well-constructed numerical table makes clear how a sequence continues, so too could knowledge be organised in a way that exposes paths to further discovery. The encyclopaedia would not simply contain truths: it would generate them.

Leibniz believed this project was achievable. He estimated that a team of around twenty collaborators could complete it within two years. His own role, modestly described as that of an ‘encourager’, was in reality far more substantial: he had already written on many of the fields to be included and clearly envisaged himself as both architect and coordinator of the enterprise. Around the same time, he drafted proposals for collaborative scientific work, including plans for societies dedicated to gathering knowledge of nature and even schemes to turn mining operations into opportunities for systematic observation and documentation.

Yet none of these proposals came to fruition. Patrons did not respond, and collaborators did not materialise. Faced with these obstacles, Leibniz adapted his ambitions. In 1680, he turned to what he called ‘General Science’—a more compact but no less ambitious project intended to lay out the fundamental principles underlying all knowledge. If the encyclopaedia was too vast to realise immediately, General Science would provide its methodological core.

At the heart of this new project were two operations: analysis and synthesis. Analysis breaks concepts down into their simplest components, revealing their structure and conditions. Synthesis, by contrast, recombines these elements to form new concepts and insights. Together, they constituted what Leibniz called the ‘art of discovery’, that is, a universal method that could be applied across disciplines, from mathematics and physics to law and ethics.

Leibniz regarded this method as the key to his own achievements, particularly in mathematics. He was convinced that his breakthroughs were not isolated results but instances of a general approach, one that, if properly articulated, could enable others to make similar discoveries. Increasingly, he became reluctant to publish individual findings in isolation, preferring instead to present them as examples of this broader method.

And yet, here too, the project faltered. He made repeated attempts to draft an introduction to the project, and further attempts at writing a prospectus, but no matter how carefully crafted these documents, he elected not to share them with anyone else. The General Science thus became a kind of hidden project: frequently revised, occasionally renamed, but never published, circulated, or actively pursued.

What remains is a remarkable testament to intellectual ambition. Leibniz did not merely seek to expand knowledge—he sought to reorganise it, systematise it, and ultimately transform the very process by which it is discovered. The encyclopaedia and the General Science were never completed. But in their fragments, we glimpse a powerful and enduring idea: that human understanding might be guided by a universal method, capable of revealing truths across every domain of inquiry.

It is a pleasure to share that fifty-nine of Leibniz’s writings on the encyclopaedia and General Science projects are included in the volume Universal Language, Characteristic, Logic, Encyclopaedia, and General Science (part of the Leibniz’s Philosophical Papers 1677—1686 series). Almost fifty of these writings have never before appeared in English, and three have never been published in any form.

— Lloyd Strickland, 17.iii.2026

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