The Science of Monads

The Science of Monads
Author: Mike Hockney
Publisher: Magus Books
Total Pages: 429
Release:
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

Scientific materialism isn't the only type of science. Leibniz, the great German genius, was a champion of scientific idealism. The atoms in his system weren't physical, but mental, and he named them monads. A present-day Leibniz might say, "All things are made from mental atoms, which are simple mathematical substances from which all compounds are mathematically derived via the laws of ontological mathematics. Monads are expressed through constant motion, and that mental motion is what we call thinking. Pure thinking takes place in an immaterial, mathematical frequency domain outside space and time. By virtue of Fourier mathematics, frequency functions can be represented in a spacetime domain, and this domain is what is known as the physical world of matter. It is just a certain mode of mental functionality. There is no such thing as scientific matter. There is only mind. A mind is a monad, and monads are all there are. Everything is an expression of monadic, mental mathematics."

Monad to Man

Monad to Man
Author: Michael Ruse
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 641
Release: 2009-06-30
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0674042999

In interviews with today's major figures in evolutionary biology--including Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, Ernst Mayr, and John Maynard Smith--Ruse offers an unparalleled account of evolutionary theory, from popular books to museums to the most complex theorizing, at a time when its status as science is under greater scrutiny than ever before.

Natural Born Monads

Natural Born Monads
Author: Andrea Altobrando
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2020-10-12
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3110604663

We are still looking for a satisfactory definition of what makes an individual being a human individual. The understanding of human beings in terms of organism does not seem to be satisfactory, because of its reductionistic flavor. It satisfies our need for autonomy and benefits our lives thanks to its medical applications, but it disappoints our needs for conscious and free, self-determination. For similar reasons, i.e. because of its anti-libertarian tone, an organicistic understanding of the relationship between individual and society has also been rejected, although no truly satisfactory alternative for harmonizing individual and social wellness has been put forth. Thus, a reassessment of the very concepts of individual and organism is needed. In this book, the authors present a specific line of thought which started with Leibniz' concept of monad in 17th century, continued through Kant and Hegel, and as a result reached the first Eastern country to attempt to assimilate, as well as confront, with Western philosophy and sciences, i.e. Japan. The line of thought we are tracing has gone on to become one the main voices in current debates in the philosophy of biology, as well as philosophical anthropology, and social philosophy. As a whole, the volume offers a both historical, and systematic account of one specific understanding of individuals and their environment, which tries to put together its natural embedding, as well as its dialectical nature. Such a historical, systematic map will also allow to better evaluate how life sciences impact our view of our individual lives, of human activities, of institutions, politics, and, finally, of humankind in general.

The Monadology

The Monadology
Author: Gottfried Wilhelm Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 26
Release: 2018-03-13
Genre:
ISBN: 9781986704465

The Monadology (French: La Monadologie, 1714) is one of Gottfried Leibniz's best known works representing his later philosophy. It is a short text which sketches in some 90 paragraphs a metaphysics of simple substances, or monads. In it, he offers a new solution to mind and matter interaction by means of a pre-established harmony expressed as the 'Best of all possible worlds' form of optimism.

G. W. Leibniz's Monadology

G. W. Leibniz's Monadology
Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780822971498

G.W. Leibniz’s Monadology, one of the most important pieces of the Leibniz corpus, is at once one of the great classics of modern philosophy and one of its most puzzling productions. Because the essay is written in so condensed and compact a fashion, for almost three centuries it has baffled and beguiled those who read it for the first time. Nicholas Rescher accompanies the text of the Monadology section-by-section with relevant excerpts from some of Leibniz’s widely scattered discussions of the matters at issue. The result serves a dual purpose of providing a commentary of the Monadology by Leibniz himself, while at the same time supplying an exposition of his philosophy using the Monadology as an outline. The book contains all of the materials that even the most careful study of this could text could require: a detailed overview of the philosophical background of the work and of its bibliographic ramifications; a presentation of the original French text together with a new, closely faithful English translation; a selection of other relevant Leibniz texts; and a detailed commentary. Rescher also provides a survey of Leibniz’s use of analogies and three separate indices of key terms and expressions, Leibniz’s French terminology, and citations. Rescher’s edition of the Monadology presents Leibniz’s ideas faithfully, accurately, and accessibly, making it especially valuable to scholars and students alike.

The Monads of Leibniz are the Jivas of Occultism, a Unity of mathematical points in boundless Space

The Monads of Leibniz are the Jivas of Occultism, a Unity of mathematical points in boundless Space
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
Total Pages: 50
Release: 2022-08-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

Esoteric Science strives to enlarge the domain of physical science by trespassing on the forbidden grounds of metaphysics, so distasteful to some materialists. Though modern scientists, learned as they may be, all their wonderful discoveries would go for nothing, and they themselves remain for ever headless bodies, unless they lift the veil of matter and strain their eyes to see beyond. The extent, depth, breadth, and length of the mysteries of Nature are to be found only in Eastern Esoteric Sciences. So vast and so profound are these that hardly a few, a very few of the highest Initiates are capable of assimilating that which is good, pure, and holy, and penetrate into the arcana behind the veil. Without throwing any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, we draw a line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and the knowledge compiled and validated by generations of eastern adepts and seers; in short, between faith and true philosophy, i.e., the Wisdom of Love not the “love of wisdom” as the term is commonly interpreted. The ten precious Cosmic Seeds, brought to Magna Graecia from old India by the great Ionian Sage, eclipsed all those Theogonies and angelologies that ever emanated from the theological brain. The ten mathematical points inscribed within the Pythagorean Triangle transcend the limits of the lower mind and elevate the apperceptions of the spiritual thinker into the realm of primal causes. Along with the plane Cube and Circle, the Abstract Triangle is the cornerstone of cosmic philosophy and symbol of the manifested universe. The equilateral Triangle is the trinity of the first differentiated Substance, or the consubstantiality of Spirit-Matter-Universe, the Son, who unfolds from the Unity of Logos. Aristotle was not an initiate. He misrepresented Plato, mocked Pythagoras, and by omitting the Point and the Circle, and by ignoring the Apex, he demeaned the application of geometry to Cosmic and Divine Theogony. Thus the pupil of Plato succeeded in dwarfing the Majesty of the Ideal Triangle to a simple triad: line, surface, body. His modern heirs, who play at Idealism, have interpreted these geometrical figures as space, force, matter. Those like Aristotle and others, who did not adhere the mathematical correctness of Plato’s deductive reasonings, and did not proceed top-down, from universals down to particulars, begun symbolizing their philosophies and religions by sexual emblems! As an emblem applicable to the objective idea, the Triangle became a solid. When repeated in stone on the four cardinal points, it assumed the shape of the Pyramid — symbol of the phenomenal merging into the Noumenal Universe of Thought — at the Apex of the four triangles. The Apex itself is lost in the Unseen Universe from whence started the first race of the spiritual prototypes of man. The protyle, or undifferentiated cosmic matter, of our most eminent chemists and physicists is the basic line of the Pythagorean Triangle, the grandest conception imaginable, for it symbolizes both the Ideal and the Visible Universes. In the realm of the Esoteric Sciences the unit divided endlessly, instead of losing its unity, approaches with every division the planes of the only eternal Reality, which the Seer can follow and behold it in all its pregenetic glory. The Monads in the present dissertation are distinct atomic Souls, before they descend into terrestrial form. Their descent into concrete matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin ascending through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence between the human and divine consciousness is firmly established. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial trials and tribulations, but with their life and behaviour in Space, on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional chemist and physicist cannot reach them. Leibniz was not an Initiate, not even a mystic, only a very intuitional philosopher. Yet no psycho-physicist ever came nearer than he has to the mysteries of cosmic evolution. Let not the word “Psychology” cause the reader to carry his thought by an association of ideas to modern “Psychologists,” so-called, whose idealism is another name for uncompromising Materialism, and whose pretended Monism is no better than a mask to conceal the void of final annihilation — even of consciousness. An idea has no subsistence by itself, but gives figure and form unto shapeless matter, and becomes the cause of the manifestation. Once the idea of protyle is accepted, Chemistry will have virtually ceased to live: it will reappear in its reincarnation as New Alchemy, or Metachemistry. For what are the manifested Mother, the Father-Son-Husband,” and the Son — the three First-born — but Hydrogen, Oxygen, and that which, in its terrestrial manifestation, is called Nitrogen? The Monads of Leibniz may, from one point of view be called force; from another, matter. To Occult Science, force and matter are two sides of the same Substance. These Monads, every one of which is a living mirror of the universe, each Monad reflecting each other, are hidden in a veil of thick darkness, forming mirrors of the atoms of the world, and casting reflections from its own face on every atom. Where, then, is the Ultimate Element? As we advance, it recedes like the tantalizing mirage lakes and groves seen by the tired and thirsty traveller in the desert. The very idea of an element, as something absolutely primary and ultimate, seems to be growing less and less distinct. Occult Science teaches that “Mother” lies stretched in infinity, during Pralaya, as the Great Deep, the “dry Waters of Space,” and becomes wet only after the separation and the moving over its face of Narayana, the Spirit which is an Invisible Flame that never burns, but which sets on fire all that it touches, and gives it life and generation. Hydrogen and oxygen (which instil the fire of life into the Mother) is Spirit, the noumenon of that which becomes in its grossest form oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen on earth — nitrogen being of no divine origin, but merely an earth-born cement to unite other gases and fluids, and serve as a sponge to carry in itself the breath of Life — pure air. The is no such thing in Nature as inorganic (inanimate) substances. Stones, minerals, rocks, and even chemical “atoms” are simply organic units in profound lethargy. Their coma comes to an end when their inertia becomes activity. The divisions made by Leibniz, however incomplete and faulty from the standpoint of Occultism, show a spirit of metaphysical intuition to which no man of science, not Descartes, not even Kant, has ever reached. With him there always existed an infinite gradation of thought. Only a small portion of the contents of our thoughts rises into the clearness of apperception, “into the light of perfect consciousness.” From the shock of Leibniz’ and Spinoza’s systems (as opposed to the Cartesian system) emerge the truths of the Archaic doctrine. Both opposed the metaphysics of Descartes: his idea of the contrast of two substances — extension and thought — radically differing from each other and mutually irreducible, was too arbitrary and too unphilosophical for them. What Leibniz calls Monads, and Eastern philosophy Jivas, is the Unity of units, immaterial and infinite. They are with us, as with Leibniz, “the expression of the universe,” and every physical point is but the phenomenal expression of the noumenal, metaphysical point. Leibniz’s distinction between perception and apperception is the philosophical, though dim expression, of the Esoteric teachings. Every Monad differs from each other qualitatively, and every one is a peculiar world to itself. But this is not so with atoms: they are absolutely alike quantitatively and qualitatively, and possess no individuality of their own. To Leibniz atoms and elements are centres of force, or rather “spiritual beings whose very nature is to act.” The molecules of materialistic philosophy are extended and divisible, while Monads are mere mathematical points and indivisible. At this point, the Monads of Leibniz closely resemble the Elementals of mystic philosophy. Every Monad or Elemental is a speaking mirror. Esoteric philosophy, teaching an objective Idealism, draws a practical distinction between collective illusion, from the purely metaphysical standpoint, and the objective relations in it between various conscious Egos so long as this illusion lasts. The adept, therefore, may read the future in an Elemental Monad, but he has to draw for this object a great number of them, as each Monad represents only a portion of the Kingdom it belongs to.