The Further Mishaps of Young Gottfried Leibniz

In this week’s episode, Young Gottfried’s tireless months of linguistics research finally pay off…

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Tune in next week for more wacky hijinks as Young Gottfried tries to build a horizontal windmill!

[NOTE: No, I am not actually doing a serialized webcomic on the adventures of a teenaged Gottfried Leibniz, c0-inventor of the calculus. You are welcome to do so yourself; I promise I won’t litigate.]

6 thoughts on “The Further Mishaps of Young Gottfried Leibniz

  1. I read the title, and first frame and thought I was getting the misadventures of young Kurt Godel.

    Maybe he is the second character in this play.

  2. In ENGLISH the word “rigor” has connotations of strictness, strength, difficulty (therefore, “hardness”), “strait”-ness in the sense of limited and binding (therefore, via homophony, “straight”-ness in many other senses) …

    For one person, particular a female person, to suggest to another, particularly a male person, that his strict, bound, strong, hard yet controlled powers are alluring is, well, suggestive indeed.

    An unambiguous language would have different words for translating the various uses of one English word “rigor”. And so in panel two, pink would reply to orange with a question – upon what sense of the word “rigor” does your meaning unambiguously depend?

    Otherwise it’s like trying to translate the word “couple”. The number of beasts which can share a yoke to pull a burden. Usually, but not always, more than one, less than four, and not as many as “several” but considerably less than “many”. In practice the only way to eliminate ambiguity in many circumstances would be to eliminate the words — and concepts — altogether.

  3. Eye wish eye new what the hell you guys are talkin about,,, although I try,,, math,,, evin with good drawings,, has been perplexing to me

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