The Calculus Wars

According to a consensus that has not been seriously challenged in nearly a century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Isaac Newton independently coinvented calculus. Neither would have countenanced history’s verdict. Maintaining that he alone invented calculus, Leibniz argued that his priority should be recognized for the good of mathematics. As he reasoned [12, p. 22], “It is most useful that the true origins of memorable inventions be known, especially of those that were conceived not by accident but by an effort of meditation. The use of this is not merely that history may give everyone his due and others be spurred by the expectation of similar praise, but also that the art of discovery may be promoted and its method become known through brilliant examples.” Newton believed that Leibniz, for all his fustian rhetoric, was a plagiarist. More importantly to Newton, Leibniz was a second inventor. As Newton framed the issue [15: VI, p. 455], “Second inventors have no right. Whether Mr Leibniz found the Method by himself or not is not the Question... We take the proper question to be,... who was the first inventor of the method.” Probity and principle, he argued, demanded a correct answer: “To take away the Right of the first inventor, and divide it between him and that other [the second inventor], would be an Act of Injustice.”