Hi.

> > First, Leibniz spelled his last name "Leibniz" (and not "Leibnitz",
> > "Liebnitz" etc.),

Leibniz is the correct spelling, AFAIK.  Some years ago I took a course
on history of mathematics, and I studied his life (among others).  I
found him to be the first person that wrote something like "in the
future we might get a machine to find and verify all the theorems
possible from a set of axioms".

> Has anyone here read the book "On the Origin of Objects" by Brian
> Cantwell Smith ( http://www.ageofsig.org/people/bcsmith/ )?

Not me.  However, what I find very interesting is that we say "In a
Smalltalk system everything is an object, and everything gets done when
objects send messages".  IMHO, that everything is an object is
insignificant when compared to the requirement that everything gets done
by sending messages.

Why objects is easier to see.  But why messages?

Now that I think about it again, is the key in the fact that you don't
expect an answer after a command, while you expect an answer from a
message?  By expecting an answer you expect objects to be intelligent
enough to tell you something interesting, like living things usually do.

Messaging would be something that encourages to put smarts into objects,
because we developers put ourselves in the situation of objects very
easily when they send messages.  The moment objects start talking, we
can use all our machinery of language interpretation to figure things
out.  So regardless of why messages in particular, the thing is that it
encourages a particular kind of understanding in a system full of
objects.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if somebody came up with Message
Oriented Quantum Mechanics, Message Oriented Physics or Message Oriented
Genetics...

Andres.