Leibniz against Hobbes and Nominalism

Very worthwhile reading here. Some quotes from Leibniz follow:

"Hobbes seems to me to be a super nominalist, for not content like the nominalists, to reduce universals to names, he says that the truth of things itself consists in names and what is more, that it
depends on the human will, because truth allegedly depends on the definitions on terms, and definitions depend on the human will. This is the opinion of a man recognized as among the most profound of our century, and as I said, nothing can be more nominalistic than it. Yet it cannot stand. In arithmetic, and in other disciplines as well, truths remain the same even if notations are changed, and it does not matter whether a decimal or a duodecimal number system is used."

" One must confess that there is something strange and indefensible in the opinions of Mr. Hobbes. He maintains that doctrines touching the divinity depend entirely upon the determination of the sovereign, and that God is no more the cause of the good than of the bad actions of creatures. He maintains that all that which God does is just, because there is none above him with power to punish and constrain him."

For Leibniz truth was the doing of the good not some mere nominalist definition of terms. The British East Indies Company needed to navigate in order to loot and plunder. Therefore, for them, the naming of the positions of the points on the globe were highly relevant to get to their next victim. For Leibniz, knowledge of how to perform beneficial work as he demonstrated in his law of force: akin to today's mission to achieve the next higher plateau of energy density throughput of nuclear fusion. For Leibniz, in his day, it was the unleashing of a steam engine for the purpose of transportation in collaboration with Denis Papin. This is the alternative to the rank absurdity and quite frankly evil use of nominalism by the super nominalist Hobbesians of today: the geopolitical looting and reducing the population potential of the planet by enforcing backwardness and hindering progress with their anti scientific quackery.