# Leibniz corresponds with Joachim Bouvet on binary arithmetic and the I Ching

Date: 1701

## The fact

Around 1701 Leibniz corresponded with the Jesuit Joachim Bouvet on binary arithmetic and the Yijing hexagrams. The instrument is that letter exchange, not the 1703 binary memoir alone and not a later computer museum.

It is one event.

## Context

Mission letters are shared labour. SEP and the Akademie-Ausgabe independently place the Bouvet–binary file beside the 1703 Explication. Do not assign silicon chips to 1701.

[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz](/people/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz)’s documented role is bounded by other offices and collaborators named in the sources below. Sharing a field with them is not a reason to drop a documented act, and it is not a reason to assign later consequences done in the name after death.

Conventional years are 1646–1716. Surviving public files are GWLB Nachlass pages, the Akademie-Ausgabe, SEP, and encyclopedias. Leibniz did not typeset those later pages. Later electronic computers are not this life.

Named person as heading of the dated public instrument. Later editors, museums, printers, or offices share publication. Complex where later carriers are the surviving public file.

## Evidence and sources

SEP and the Akademie-Ausgabe portal independently describe the Bouvet correspondence on binary and the I Ching.

Official or archival record: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/; Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

## Significance

Education-access path via cross-cultural mathematical letters. High confidence on the correspondence.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Bouvet–Leibniz letters treat binary and hexagrams around 1701. Not established: that the Kangxi court adopted binary bookkeeping.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

Established here: a sourced, dated public instrument with a named contribution by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

They are not a public rating.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz did not file a later UNESCO form, a later Loeb colophon, or a later museum label as a personal act. A portrait or conventional bust is not this mechanism. Allegation, reconstruction, and established occurrence stay distinct. Bouvet letters are not the 1703 print alone. Keep the Jesuit file off a twin of Explication without cause. Keep the carrier date of later English distinct from the received historical year stored in the date field. Do not read a later English edition as a recovered autograph of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

## People

- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: https://factrail.ai/people/gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz

## Sources

- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/
- https://www.leibnizedition.de/

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/gwl-bouvet-binary-1701