Leibniz, Verbiest, Pascal: Religious Wars or Conciliation of Missions?

 I came across a posting recently about Ferdinand Verbiest, the Jesuit polymath who became a central figure in the Chinese court of Emperor Kangxi. It turns out that Verbiest invented a steam powered car during this period. Here is an illustration of his invention. This was apparently invented around 1672.

By Unknown author - 18th century print. Reproduction in [www.automotogaleria.pl/historia.html], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3988454

 Now it is also the case that at the same timeframe Gottfried Leibniz was engaged in promoting an opening to China based upon reconciling the philosophy of Confucianism with his own Platonic Christianity. Leibniz also was instrumental in promoting Denis Papin's steam engine design from the very same time. Here is an illustration of his "steam digester" from 1679:

By http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/thurston/1878/Chapter1.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11079399

Now it is also the case that Leibniz and Papin corresponded about the potential use of this invention to power a carriage: 

"The method in which I now use fire to raise water rests always on the principle of the rarefaction of water. But I now use a much easier method than that which I published. And furthermore besides using suction, I also use the force of the pressure which water exerts on other bodies when it expands. These effects are not bounded, as in the case of suction. So I am convinced that this discovery if used in the proper fashion will be most useful .... For myself I believe that this invention can be used for many other things besides raising water. I've made a little model of a carriage which is moved forward by this force: And in my furnace it shows the expected result. But I think that the unevenness and bends in large roads will make the full use of this discovery very difficult for land vehicles; but in regard to travel by water I would flatter myself to reach this goal quickly enough if I could find more support than is now the case .... It gave me much joy to find that you also have some plans to put the moving force of fire to use, and I strongly hope that the little test you told me of succeeded to your satisfaction."

Papin to Leibniz 1698.

Leibniz was at the same time endeavoring to bring China into his grand design to liberate via scientific progress humanity. The Jesuits who were more than willing to bring scientific revolutions to people regardless of their religious beliefs as a sort of means to an end. This is why Leibniz put it to them thusly: that the highest development of mathematics at the time being imaginary numbers as a proof  or rather instantiation of the Logos. 

It is interesting that another of Leibniz' predecessors in the development of yet another such instantiation, the infinitesimal calculus, Blaise Pascal was probably largely responsible for the dismantling of these very same Jesuit missions. Pascal published a very popular condemnation of them called Letters From a Country Gentlemen on behalf of a internecine Catholic rivalry known as the Port Royalists.

It is very unfortunate that Leibniz' vision for China was thusly never realized. However, the spirit of bringing the planets population into a concordant endeavor to improve the human condition has of late reemerged. The fact that humanity currently stands poised to lift itself off of only inhabiting this lonely planet together with the great peoples of the world is in fact just one more confirmation of Leibniz' dictum that the life force is good and therefore indestructible.  

China's plan for a mega space station

Coda: Leibniz' claim about the imaginary numbers representing the Logos may be appreciated in the role of the complex plane give us the geometrical degree of freedom heretofore thought impossible!! Viz. a quality stretching inherent in space. And a rotational degree of freedom. Today, two conundrums are paramount to the apparently insoluble axioms of astronomy. The Lamba stretching of space itself, referred to as dark energy and the rotational anomaly of galactic motion caused by an unknown supposed dark matter. So Leibniz was not far off the mark at all, don't you think?