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The continuity and derivative of Leibniz

From my book (the invisible world of infinitesimals”

Lambert Academic Publications
http://www.mpantes/

After the Euclidean geometry the calculus has proved to be the

most original and most fruitful concept in all mathematics. The continued
exploration of changing quantities soon forced to scientists to realize that
they required a profounder mathematical tool that they hastened to create
it. This is now called the differential and integral calculus.
The calculus utilizes the concept of function, which, loosely puts a
relation between variables. The calculus of Leibniz and Newton uses
functions but introduces two new and far more complex concepts: the
derivative (or fluxion for Newton) and the definite integral.

continuity

“.. Leibniz was a zealot of continuity, for him it was

something like a religion. As he watched the world around
him, he was convinced that it was a class of continuity in the
universe. He believed that continuity did not need to be
proven but it was an hypothesis ... “(Pr. Chanin
L.Monestero)

The philosophical foundations of Leibniz (that is, the imagination)

in relation to the composition of the continuous, "the labyrinth of the
continuous" as he called it, begins in contact with Aristotle. He
considered that every real entity is either a single unit, or a multiplicity,
and if every multiplicity is necessarily a sum of units, then how can we
classify a geometric continuum such as a straight line? Obviously it is not
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a unit, so it is a sum of units, and the only candidates for geometric units
are points, but Aristotle rejected that a continuous one consists of points.
Therefore, Leibnitz ended, the continuous are not real entities (Bell), and
as the whole goes beyond its parts, the continuous ones must have a
purely virtual character. It thus freed the continuous from the requirement
-that it is conceivable- to be either simple or a union of simple elements.
This virtual Leibniz continuum is the continuum of space and
time, and anything real, especially matter, is discrete, and consists of
simple unitary substances called them Units. In such an intuitively
geometric and temporal continuum, which is more familiar to us, we will
study the limiting numerical approaches of Leibniz.
Leibniz's fundamental doctrine of change is the principle of
continuity.
Exactly, this philosophical background of Leibniz's mathematical
work appears with various expressions in his work, such as:
 Natura non facit saltus , (nature never make leaps) or
 the properties of beings are continuous functions of their
basic characteristics, or nature respects its continuity of
infinite changes (transitions),
 but also gave the following formulation of the principle:

“in any supposed transition, ending in any terminus,

it is permissible to institute a general reasoning in which the
final terminus may be included. (letter to Bayle in 1867)”.

So, as Newton's continuity was a tacit condition, for Leibniz

categorical prerequisite for the validity of the logic, according to which
limit states (transitions) obey the same laws as the approaching
variables.

Or whatever succeeds for the finite, also succeeds for the infinite"
This indicates that Leibniz regarded transitions of any kind as continuous.
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According to Leibniz, it is the Law of Continuity that allows geometry

and the evolving methods of the infinitesimal calculus to be applicable in
physics.
This Principle of Continuity also furnished the chief grounds for
Leibniz's rejection of material atomism and became important to
Leibniz's justification and conceptualization of the infinitesimal calculus.
 With the principle of continuity are expanded concepts such
as numerical operations from finite numbers to differentials.
We will then see the "differential triangle" correlated to
similarity to a normal triangle.

Leibniz’ principle of continuity was not and is not today a

mathematical axiom but a verbalism and intuitive description, it was not
linked to numbers. Nevertheless he emphasized this, and gave many
arguments based on this principle.
But his attempts to describe the Law of Continuity more
rigorously, (1687 Nouvelles de la République des Lettres), have a
decidedly mathematical air: “When the difference between two instances
in a given series or that which is presupposed [deux cas....in datis ou dans
ce qui est posé] can be diminished until it becomes smaller than any
given quantity whatever, the corresponding difference in what is sought
or in their results [in quaesitis ou dans ce qui en resulte] must of necessity
also be diminished or become less than any given quantity whatever”. [2,
p. 539]
This statement describes intuitively the continuity of functional
dependence. Indeed, short only of the crucial stipulation that |y1-y2| can
be made arbitrarily small by taking |x1-x2| sufficiently small, Leibniz
here set forth the familiar ε-δ characterization of the continuity of a
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function nearly 150 years before its rigorous enunciation by Bolzano

(1817) and by Cauchy (1821).1
This described the geometric version of the continuous functions
that were represented by a continuous curve (Descartes), where he
founded his basic discoveries, the derivative and the integral. Later in
Cauchy, continuity will be based on numerical relations, because
mathematics is the science of numbers.
derivative

As the new characteristic in the exploration of change dealing with

variables, that is quantities which change continually, the mathematicians
distinguished between the change and the rate of change, and for the
second is very significant to distinguish between the average rate of
change and the differential rate of change where the variable’s change is
infinitesimal.
As an example for the investigation of the concept, se shall
consider the case of the speed of a particle.
If v=v(t) is the relation between speed and time it is significant to
calculate the instantaneous rate of change of speed compared to time at an
instant. For example a person travelling in an automobile has a speed, but
in a collision with a tree, the significant is the speed in the instant of the
collision. Or since an object near the surface of the earth falls with
varying speed, to know it’s speed at any time means of course to know
an instantaneous speed.
If the notion of moment is clear, then the notion of instantaneous
speed is not.
The average speed which applies over an interval of time is the
distance traveled during that interval divided by the time. We want now
to define and calculate instantaneous speed in the same way. But at an
instant, a zero distance is travelled, and zero time elapses. Here to define
instantaneous speed we have the expression 0/0 which is meaningless.
And here come the differentials of Leibniz, where the mathematical

1
Hardy Grant
The College Mathematics Journal, September 1994, Volume 25, Number 4, pp.
291-294.
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calculation of 0/0, is determined by algebraic and geometric methods

combined with the calculus of the differentials of Leibniz and with the
axiom of continuity that gives substance to calculus. It is assumed the
continuity of space and time that dominates in the whole physics.
The differential dy as an infinitely small (or infinitesimal) change
in the value y of the function, corresponding to an infinitely small
change dx in the function's argument x. For that reason, the infinitesimal
rate of change of y with respect to x, which is the value of
the derivative of the function, is denoted by the fraction dy/dx in what is
called the Leibniz notation for derivatives. The quotient dy/dx is not
infinitely small; rather it is a real number. In physics and geometry we
have hundreds of differential rates of change, and we must recognize that
it is often the more significant one. For example we find the derivative of
the area of a circle as it’s radius that is it’s rate of change for an
infinitesimal change of the radius. Leibniz calculated the rate of change
of the curvature of on a point of a curve for an infinitesimal change of the
position of the point.
What about of the derivative and the “ultimate ratio” of 0/0? We
have
𝑑𝑦 𝑦(𝑥+𝑑𝑥)−𝑦(𝑥) 0
= = (𝑎𝑠 𝑥 = 𝑥 + 𝑑𝑥) = =
𝑑𝑥 𝑑𝑥 0

𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑝𝑙𝑒 = 𝑎𝑙𝑔𝑒𝑏𝑟𝑎 𝑜𝑟 𝑔𝑒𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑦 = 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟

The point- curvature of a curve

The approach of Leibniz to the differential calculus, that is to
derivative, was geometrical.
The tangent of a curve (σ) at it’s point A was interpreted by
Leibniz with the limiting approach of the point B to A so as to approach
as close as possible without coinciding with it. Leibnitz wrote that "it is
enough to remember that in order to find the tangent we must unite with
two straight points of the curve that have an infinite distance".
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The curvature effect of the curve (σ), Leibniz will describe it in

arithmetic terms. This was his approach to the calculus. What was
changing at each point of the curve was the slope of the tangent of the
curve at this point. When the intersecting AB begins to be considered
tangent to A, Δx and Δy become dx and dy and AB tends to become (ε).
But the similarity of the ABH and ZAΔ triangles remains in the new
position we imagine. Then we have in the next figure the ratio of the two

differential quantities.

where dy/dx = y / x = tanω = slope of tangent to the curve at the

point P(x,y), …………(1)
the side ds of the triangle is taken as coincident with the tangent of
the curve ( at the x)
The AHB triangle of the first figure was first conceived by Pascal
as the characteristic triangle, without imagining the geometric
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consequences of differential differences in coordinates. This triangle

calculated the torque of a quadrant in its diameter.
This triangle, now called PQR, is called a differential triangle, and
gave inspiration to Leibniz (as he writes) and conceived - something that
Pascal did not do - that the determination of slope of a tangent on a curve
depends on the ratio for the differences of y-coordinates as to x-
coordinates, as they became infinitely small. Leibniz defended this use of
the differential triangle in one of his letters in Wallis, as a size less figure,
where the shape remains after it’s diminution to zero, saying "who does
not accept a size less figure"?
The relation (1) we see the manipulation of the ratio of the
differentials. Leibniz said that the differential dx of the abscissa x is an
arbitrary quantity, and that the differential dy of the ordinate y is defined
as the quantity which is to dx as the ratio of the ordinate to the
subtangent. In this definition, we find all the characteristics we saw in the
beginning. The differentials are finite, assignable quantities, static
indivisibles, actual infinite and infinitely small quantities, and not real but
fictitious numbers. Through (1) they restore the gap between the
rectilinear and curvilinear, the infinitesimal and the finite, so the world of
infinity becomes familiar for our senses.
So for Leibnitz, derivative is the ratio of the differences that
expressed the slope of the curve at each point (for y = f (x) = x3, dy/dx =
3x2 = f΄ (x), for Newton was defined as the rate of every fluxion, (as
instantaneous speed), connecting the infinitely small with the concept of
motion ( calculus of fluxions), but in both had a special meaning:
captures the change in a "moment or in a point" (Quadrature of curves of
1704) , where the variations were described by the formulas of constant
motion (or constant curvature).
George Mpantes
Serres Greece