Leibniz’s interest in earlier mystico-logical systems extended beyond the kabbalah, including myriad alchemical emblems, Llull’s Ars, and perhaps most fruitfully (considering the current ubiquity of binary code, basis for digital computatio…The discovery consists of the following: Whereas the decimal system requires ten digital numbers from 0 to 9 as a base, a binary number requires two digital numbers, 0 and 1 only. The first ten numbers of the decimal system from 0 to 9 is w…
Joachim Bouvet
theologian · 2 mentions across 1 reading
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Joachim Bouvet was a Jesuit missionary and sinologist whose correspondence with Leibniz about the I Ching proved foundational to the philosopher's development of binary logic—a system that would become the mathematical substrate of all digital computation. The readings position Bouvet as the crucial intermediary through which Chinese divination systems entered European intellectual history, enabling Leibniz to perceive the I Ching's hexagrams as a proto-computational language of 0s and 1s. This connection matters for "Pandaemonium Architecture" because it traces how non-Western symbolic systems were absorbed into the genealogy of modern computing, collapsing any neat boundary between mystical thought and algorithmic rationality.
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