Cogito Ergo Sum
Differentiation and integration
Cogito, Ergo Sum (referred to as “Cogito” hereafter) is a very popular philosophy connected to René Descartes. Scholars have debated the exact source of it. Some Researchers have connected “je pense, donc je suis” from Discourse of Methods to the Cogito.
Another notion scholars have connected to the Cogito is, “Ac proinde haec cognitio, ego cogito, ergo sum”, which can be seen written in Principia Philosophiae.
I think what is interesting and perhaps worth pointing out is the similarity between the morphology of ‘s’ and the symbol of an integration function ‘∫’ (the Roman cursive medial ‘s’), as we can see in the two images above. I think it is interesting Leibniz took to this symbol of ‘s’ to elaborate upon some of his ideas.
I wonder if Leibniz was influenced by this specific part in Descartes writing, given how it is said he studied some of his work just before proposing his calculus.
