A Philosophy Written in the Mountains (opens in new tab)

Not many seminal works of philosophy are the product of an unoccupied mind in the midst of a failed mining project, but that, it seems, was the story behind Leibniz’s Discourse on Metaphysics. At the beginning of January 1686, he travelled to the Harz mountains to continue his (ultimately ill-fated) project to improve the productivity of the mines there via wind machines and water pumps of his own invention. When the work stalled for a few days, Leibniz did what he did best: he thought. At th...