Talk:Monadology

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Contents 1 What is a monad? 2 Grammar 3 Saved from Monads article 4 A vital distinction 5 "What is a Monad" section is hopelessly opaque

[edit] What is a monad?

Under the "What is a monad" section, it says that monads "exist in space" and "are metaphysical points". Both of these claims are false. Leibniz is clear that monads have no extension, so they are not in space. Space and time, according to Leibniz, are illusions. They are not "metaphysical points" either. It does not make sense to speak of them as points at all, since they have no extension. They are metaphysical simples, not points. - Jaymay 04:24, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately the phrases "non-extended" and "metaphysical simple" is (I assume) a term of art in philosophy. It would be helpful if this could be rephrased in a way that was comprehensible to the lay reader, obviously without becoming inaccurate. From context and without any background reading I would guess that "non-extended" means that it doesn't have a particular size or extent in space and that saying it's a "simple" means it's not made of anything else. - Ian Jackson 2007-07-27

[edit] Grammar

English is not my first language. If you find some grammar mistakes, please feel free to correct them in the body of the article. --Fedro

[edit] Saved from Monads article

Monads should redirect to Monad which should have a link here. Monads has a paragraph on Monadology so I'll save it here in case it will inspire someone: --TuukkaH 22:03, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

In the writings of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, monads are atomistic mental objects which experience the world from a particular point of view. Leibniz's theory—first described in 1695—does not posit physical space; rather, physical objects are constructs of the collective experiences of monads. This way of putting it is misleading, however; monads do not interact with each other (i.e., they are not "windowless"); rather, they are imbued at creation with all their future experiences in a system of pre-established harmony. The arrangements of the monads make up the faith and structure of this world, which to Leibniz was "the best of all possible worlds".

[edit] A vital distinction

At no point does Leibniz say that Monads "are matter", like one part in this article says. It is precisely because they aren't matter, that they do not have spatial properties, and thus, monads are infinite and are not divisible (as an extended object would be, which Leibniz understood). --Knucmo2 17:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

At various points in the Monadology, Leibniz clearly states that monads are NOT matter. I would advise anyone reading this article to disregard the entire thing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.1.147.96 (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

The entire "paradoxes" section seems to violate 'no original research' policy. Though I personally dislike taking out natural observation, if there were some intrinsic paradox that didn't come from an elaborated theory & original research for example. Though it appears this section also contains fallacy understanding the subject (i.e. claiming Monads *are* matter). So something should be done. Nagelfar (talk) 08:13, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "What is a Monad" section is hopelessly opaque

Both of "non-extended" and "simple" (as a noun) and perhaps also "soul-like" need unpacking if the section is to stand a chance of being comprehensible to anyone without whatever background it is that is required to understand the text as it stands. The apparent contradiction between "soul-like" and "every material [..] is composed entirely of monads" also needs explaining.