Leibniz used principles related to Occam's Razor, the Identity of Indiscernibles and the Principal of Sufficient Reason, with great effect.
His arch-rival (each independently invented Calculus) Newton said time and space are absolute. Leibniz said if space is absolute, imagine God moves all the objects in it twenty miles to the left. There is no discernable difference between the two states, therefore they are identical, therefore absolute space has no meaning, no sufficient reason to exist: space (and time) are relative.
Ernst Mach was heavily influenced by Leibniz, and Einstein by Mach. Relativity has triumphed, though there are still disputes about Newton's best argument: If you spin a bucket of water, the water climbs the sides of the bucket. If space is totally relative how does the water "know" it is spinning (and not space spinning around it.)
Mach said the bucket is spinning relative to the "fixed stars" - faraway objects in the universe.
Positivism, which stresses experiment and observation over theory, would claim to be the modern heir of Occam's tradition. It certainly helped with quantum mechanics - "the theory doesn't make any sense:" hey, get over it, these particular measurements yield these results, this percentage of the time - why ask why?
[Leibniz's Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR): 'nothing happens without a sufficient reason why it should be so rather than otherwise'.]
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