What Leibniz has to "offer" to Modern day Software Engineers?

The Legendary German Philosopher and Mathematician Gottfried Wilhem von Leibniz  was trying to solve a metaphysical problem which vexed theologians world wide. Rather than trying to explain the nuances of the problem, the problem can be summed up in  a sentence which goes like, "If God is powerful and nice, why the world he has created contains so much evil, violence and all sorts of none sense".

The solution devised by Leibniz was novel, it can also be summed  by in the following words, "The God is still powerful and nice. When he tried to pack only good things into the world, he could not fit everything correctly.he was forced to insert an opposing force to balance out the imbalance created by one force. In fact, he created the best of the possible worlds!"


In most software engineering organizations when a new person is inducted or a new set of people are inducted, the new comers too often feel that the incumbents has made a mess of the whole affair. It should have been written in another way. This creates a political situation where the stakeholder has to protect his assets and at the same time, enthuse the new comer to do his job.


A plausible answer from the stakeholder could be, "There can be blemishes in the state of affairs. It is a product of the evolution of the way organization has evolved. You are seeing only a snapshot here and cannot judge the incumbent team based on a static analysis at a point in time. It is the best of the possible solution which as a team could engineer"

It is better for new comers to remeber the dictum from Leibniz, "It is the best of the possible world as a team we have created". This kind of thinking can transform a new comer into a enthusiast (from a skeptic).

Even though Voltaire satirized Leibniz for his remark by creating a character Dr. PanGloss, for the modern day software engineer, it can serve as a good food for thought.

A Lecture, Reductionism vs Holism and a Systems book!

In the month of June 2015, I had attended an Event sponsored by my erstwhile employer, Envestnet Inc. The event was hosted by Nasscom and the Keynote speech was given by futurist, Gerd Leonhard. His presentation was really good and I could walk away with lot of new ideas. The most important takeaway for me is the idea of Reductionism vs Holism. Mechanistic view of the world formulated by Rene Descartes is challenged by holistic (Systems Thinking) school of thought for building Intelligent software systems.

I  have got great respect for the Western Intellectual tradition rooted in the Cartesian Reduction-ism. It has given us Modern Science, which has helped in our understanding of the Natural world. The fruits of this model of investigation are tremendous progress made in all of Science and Engineering.

Thus, Modern Physics with it's one leg on Logico/Mathematical tradition and other on Induction/Deduction/Analytical  framework of sixteenth century became the envy of all sciences. If Mathematics is the Queen of Sciences, Physics became the King.

Carteisan Reductionism percolated even into the Social sciences, where it has not been much effective as people expected. In the early part of twentieth century, Einstien with his Relativity (General/Specific) did imply that when the object approaches the speed of Light, mechanical laws formulated by Newton is his Principia does not explain what is happening. Equally startling was the discovery of Quantum principles, at the sub atomic level. According to quantum theory, we can hope only to have partial determinism. Even Einstein has to say the following, "God does not Play dice with the Universe"!

Physical laws hold good for Natural things. In the case of living beings and the social institutions, there is something called "Consciousness" ( which can be felt only, no one has satisfactorily defined it) and Physical laws break down. It has to do with the limitation of our investigation tools rather than the indeterminacy of the nature. May be, we require a new methodology to tackle this issue.

A Physicist like Roger Penrose, wrote two books advocating the inclusion of Consciousness in the subject matter of Physics. His "Emperor's new mind" and it's sequel, "Shadows of the mind" outlines his school of thought. He attacks the hard AI camp in the process.

To broaden our Scientific horizon, we need to look into our methods of investigation, while trying to solve issues of importance to the human race. That is precisely, Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi sets out to do in a wonderful book,titled,"The Systems view of Life". Had I did not attend Gerd's lecture, I would not have been able to understand the significance of this book. 

In a way, this book has been a long journey for Fritjof Capra, from "Tao of Physics" (was criticized by Physics fraternity, but seems to have succeeded in a holistic approach towards human problem) to a system which is entirely based on Scientific precision. I am enjoying every page of this book.