The brilliant mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz famously proclaimed that this is the best of all possible worlds.
Leibniz didn’t mean “world” in the sense of “heavenly body” – as when someone asks, “are there any other worlds out there with life on them?” He wasn’t making a claim specifically about planet Earth. Leibniz meant “world” in a much broader sense. He was proclaiming that the universe as a whole is better than any other way it could have been.
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month
Content from our partners
