Saturday, February 13, 2016

I learn something every day!

I sometimes use the phrase, "in the best of all possible worlds."
Whenever I type this, I internally reference the character Pangloss in Voltaire's Candide.

Just for fun I decided to look it up.
Turns out Voltaire was satirizing Leibniz!
The following is from Wikipedia article, Best of all possible worlds:
The phrase "the best of all possible worlds" was coined by the German polymath Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 work "Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil". The claim that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds is the central argument in Leibniz's theodicy, or his attempt to solve the problem of evil.
As title of post indicates, I learn something every day!

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