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The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence is a collection of letters exchanged between Gottfried Leibniz and Samuel Clarke between 1715 and 1716, chiefly concerning the nature of space and time. Leibniz expounds his theories of the relativity of space and time, which he defends in his Théodicée (1710), whilst Clarke attempts to rebut these attacks and defend his beliefs in absolute space and time, as put forward by Sir Isaac Newton in his Principia (1687) and Opticks (1704). It was the Princess of Wales at the time, Caroline of Ansbach, who facilitated, co-ordinated and mediated the dispute, and it was through her that all the letters were sent. The Correspondence as we have it today begins with Leibniz's first letter, to which Clarke replied, and from there a further four documents from each man were written, ending only with Leibniz's death in the middle of November of 1716. The full exchange of ten papers was first published in 1717 in French and English, and has been republished more than a dozen times since.
Widely considered the most important work of 18th Century philosophy of physics, it is now seen as a crucial part of the long-running (and arguably continuous to this day) debate about whether space and time should be seen as absolute entities (against which things move) or relative (as mere relationships between objects and events). It inspired and informed the later works of, amongst others, Berkeley, Euler, Voltaire, Maclaurin, Kant, Mach and Einstein. The latter two developed (philosophically and mathematically) a seemingly complete system of space and time that is closer to Leibniz's view than Clarke's. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to say that Leibniz "won", for there are a number of aspects of current physical theory about space and time that he would have shuddered at. As Alexander notes in his 1956 edition: "If, therefore, one insists on awarding points to Leibniz and Clarke, in the light of modern physics, it is perhaps best to call it a drawn contest."