Have any of you read anything about Leibniz's theory of the monads? It's one of the few philosophical systems I truly find beautiful in a poetical sort of way. I'm of course simplifying quite a bit, as well as describing this through my understanding and memory, but I thought you'd find it interesting nonetheless.

It's his metaphysics. The universe was created by god, though not quite the christian god. A truly perfect being, who in it's perfection is unable to create anything less than the most perfect universe. This (our) perfect universe is perfect for it's got the optimal balance between simplicity and variety. A monad is a transcendental atom (in the democritusean sense of the word atom) which has no spatial qualities, that is to say, it doesn't exist in space, but in another plane of existence (think heaven, or plato's ideals). Every soul is a monad, but not every monad is a soul. Here's where it gets interesting.

Becouse it's the perfect universe, every monad is just the way this god intended, so if you, through some sort of clairvoyance you knew everything about a single monad, you'd know everything about the universe, for you could see the order and how that particular monad relates to every other monad. He says it's like every monad (including your soul) is like a mirror which shows the rest of creation. The universe is a whole and you are perfectly aligned with it.

That's a very interesting philosophy! Is this the same Leibniz who had a hand in modern differential calculus?

Often, I feel I get a glimpse of how in tune the universe is. I see little bits of how everything meshes, and it usually gives me an energetic shimmer up my spine. I suppose I could be seeing into the mirror that is one of these monads.

Thanks for the post! I've got some reading to do now!

I definitely consider myself influenced by Leibniz; I especially admire his theodicy. Most people mock his metaphysical optimism (e.g., Voltaire) without fully appreciating his reasoning.

Yes, Mr.Peabody, it's the same Leibniz.

So, a few things I'd like to add after doing a quick rereading through the The Monadology and a light skimming of other relevant texts.

A monad cannot be affected by anything except god. When a monad seems to be interacting with another monad it merely seems so, the reason this happens is that the universe is perfectly arranged so that these happenings seem to be interactions. The most extreme case of this is that your soul has no effect on your body and vice versa, it just so happens (not really though, because it's all perfectly aligned due to the world being perfect) that what your body does fits in with what your soul does. This makes the world incredibly deterministic. Many find this conclusion disheartening because they think this means there is no free will, since you couldn't have acted any other way. Leibniz argues that in his theory people are free-er than when one can affect another, since if everyone affects you it changes you, or in other words, the freedom to be able to do other things than you end up doing is only the freedom to be someone who isn't you.
In my understanding god doesn't keep making you do what you do. He created all the monads with their future 'interactions' in mind. This means you were created to be exactly who you are. So you have complete freedom to be yourself, you just don't have any freedom to be anybody else. This is sort of a leap, and I confess it took me quite a while to understand and accept this understanding of freedom.

"56. Now this connexion or adaptation of all created things to each and of each to all, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and, consequently, that it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe.

57. And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad.

58. And by this means there is obtained as great variety as possible, along with the greatest possible order; that is to say, it is the way to get as much perfection as possible."


There's just something about that that fascinates me so.

I likewise find Leibniz endlessly fascinating. Matthew Stewart's The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World maligned Leibniz unjustly.

Regarding #58, according to Nicholas Rescher (a well-reputed scholar of Leibniz), Leibniz actually considers God to optimize variety (alongside another factor: simplicity of laws--i.e., order).

That's actually a nice rebuttal to full-blooded neo-Darwinists who contest that the "wastefulness" of evolutionary processes is evidence against any metaphysical telos. In other words: sure, most species succumb to extinction, but marvel at the variety of forms that have emerged!

I highly recommend Donald Rutherford's Leibniz and the Order of Nature. It's prohibitively expensive, but if you are a student of a university, it should be readily accessible.

Sadly the book doesn't seem to be available in my universities library.

About the variety point:
The beauty of this kind of thinking is that with everything being thought out from beginning, everything is eternal, in a sense. Nobody would talk about a note dying out in a musical composition to be a wasteful death, since it's all part of a bigger whole. Leibniz says that the present is impregnated with the future, so that everything affects everything else (through god, so the effect is indirect). The past is the way it is so that the future can be how it will be and vice versa.

I might ask one of my professors if he has the book and if I can borrow it, it sounds really interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

Thank you Epoe for starting this fascinating thread. Until now I only knew Leibniz as "the other guy" who invented the calculus (there always seems to be another guy with a big idea, at approximately the same time, like Darwin and Wallace). I never read anything else about Leibniz until your post. It sent me on a journey the last hour or more reading about his Monadology.

Wow, it resonates with me also! The monads being blurred perceptions of each other or mirroring each other seems to be a forethought of fractals. The monads being non-material predicts what I think of as a parallel continuum or "other dimension" which is essentially right here just not material. What I read about his idea of matter being sub-divided without end predicts what I always thought was probably true about matter. And his ideas of differences of perfection of these monads having a three tiered hierarchical ordering (1) entelechies or created monads, (2) souls or entelechies with perception and memory, and (3) spirits or rational souls makes me wonder if that's what these entities are that we encounter, the third tier (i.e. spirits), while we would obviously be in the second tier. Maybe these entities do have an existence outside of our brains after all. This philosophy would also point to how archetypes work, if one monad could get a glimpse of other monads. hmm, I wonder if some ideas could be considered monads? (tier one?) It also explains the big bang if it all began with the one, source monad. And also explains how non-local information can be instantly accessed (being mirrored in a monad and not flying through space-time).

And who could not like a philosophy that says your monad is "eternal, indecomposable, individual, subject to their own laws, un-interacting, and each reflecting the entire universe in a pre-established harmony..." to quote wikipedia. Wikipedia also states that according to Leibniz's idea that monads are un-interacting that "space, matter, and motion are merely phenomenal" if that motion includes time then this begins to sound like the theory of relativity mixed with revelations I read about regarding breakthrough experiences being timeless or eternal. This whole monad idea also reminds me of experiences I've had on high doses of mushrooms.

Man, this guy was a serious polymath, way ahead of his time. Thanks for making me aware of him.

Yeah, he really was ahead of his time in many ways. He wrote letters to and recieved letters from most known of his contemporary scholars, of all fields. He designed a windmill that could harness wind power from all directions, and a working calculator, in the 1600's. http://www.thocp.net/har.../leibnitz_calculator.htm

This is really fascinating--thanks for posting this. I find the quote above to tie in the thought that time is cyclical, not linear. I'd really like to read more about this person. Are there any other books that may be a bit more accessible? My library didn't have that one either.

This is a good example of why I love this site--I feel like I come away with a new idea every time I come here!

Find anything by Nicholas Rescher on Leibniz you can. He's very accessible, and some books are much more affordable. He's a philosopher's philosopher, so he won't skimp on the substantive aspects of Leibniz.

I've also found Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed to be valuable, although it's definitely only introductory.

Thank you for the recs

Somehow, I had forgotten Nicholas Jolley's Leibiz, which is both lucid and affordable. (Did I say "affordable"? I meant free, thanks to Google.)

Inspired by this conversation, I found and will be reading Leibniz, Mysticism and Religion.

Leibniz is one of those thinkers who, if you peek at his writings and find yourself bewildered, you can easily let yourself quit; I'm here to say: stick with it! The dude that independently discovered the infinitesimal calculus was also intrigued by the kabbalah--need I say any more?

If anyone wants to assemble a reading group around one of these books, I'm down.