Local Panglossianism

Local Panglossianism

Voltaire mocked Leibnitz (in the guise of Dr. Pangloss) for proposing that this is the ‘best of all possible worlds’. But it occurs to me that Leibnitz, as co-inventor of the calculus, knew the difference between local and global maxima. A global maximum is the largest value that a function reaches, for any input; whereas a local maximum is the largest value that a function reaches, in some neighborhood of the locally-maximizing input.

I therefore propose this modification of Panglossianism; Local Panglossianism, which states that this is the best of all sufficiently similar possible worlds. The world locally optimizes; it’s the best of all nearby possibilities.

Local optimization in fact applies in physics and biology, with, respectively, the least-action principle and adaptation.

Local Panglossianism leaves open the possibility of better worlds, but to get there you must first pass through worse worlds.