Monads within monads within monads-- Leibniz, strings, and atomic structure

[Roger Clough]

Monads within monads within monads-- matter, strings and atomic structure    

First I'm going to have to take you, searchlight in hand, through   
the darkest, most difficult topic in Leibniz's philosophy, which    
is difficult for beginners, especially if they're materialists.  
The dark passageway is what Leibniz means by "substance"   
and "monad". Leibniz sometimes refers  to substance as if it   
were  a description of a physical object, but these both only   
apply to mental entities.   

Leibniz  developed his idealistic theory of monads before anything was known   
about atomic physics, so, although being aware of the possibility from the   
ancient Greeks, he did not include atoms specifically in his theory.  
Instead, he used Aristotle's concept of substance, but allowed it to  
be continually changing. In place of physical atoms, he based his philosophy
on the corresponding mental quantity, the monad.
Without going into great detail, Leibniz used an atom of mind,
the monad, 

Leibniz began by asking, in the tradition of Descartes, if there might be any 

fundamental quantity, anything certain, on which he could base his philosophy.   

He found that everything in spacetime could be divided  an infinite number of

times, so that the fundamental quantity must not be physical. Today we know that

there may be a size limit, the atom or fundamental particles, but one cannot

isolate these, due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle.  Here I use

isolatability instead of infinite divisibility to dismiss anything physical

(anything in spacetime) as being fundamental. That includes space and

time, which are infinitely divisible. Also, there are arguments

by others such as Paul Davis that matter is not fundamental.

Next then we ask whether mind has fundamental units

on which to build a philosophy. If you recall the double aspect

theory of mind, you can see that parts of the brain, while

not being fundamental, possess fundamental functions,

such as units of memory, or visual or sensory motor functions.

So it appears that mind, a mental substance, can be divided up

into fundamental or logical wholes or concepts. 

Leibniz then used these units of mind or monads as the

fundamental "mental atoms" of existence.

 

A monad then is a complete concept, a whole. a simple substance

of one part. A monad may and probably does have variations within,   
but it is a whole, constantly changing entity which, being so, does not have a    
boundary within, as long as we assess the whole as a single function.

Thus man as a monad contains a brain as a monad which contains

neurons as monads. Note that, although each of these monads

is physically within the others, the monads are to be classed

as functions within functions, and may not be directly related to

the physical monads.

 

A piece of matter would mentally consist of a monad for the whole,

inside of which (here both mentally and physically) are a huge

number of monads for the atoms. Then if we look further, we

might have within the atom monad, monads for its subparticles

such as electrons, protons and neutrons. Similary each

atom is made up of strings. I would suspect that the various modes

of vibration would be further monads inside the basic atom

monad. Higher frequency strings inside lower frequency strings.

 

If we look at this abstractly, as on a spreadsheet,  we see that

the universe can be characterized topically, as monads within

monads, depending on how finely we focus our vision.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Roger Clough NIST (ret.) 5/7/2013    
See my Leibniz site at   
http://team.academia.edu/RogerClough

[Richard Ruquist]

Monads within composite monads. How can you discuss Leibniz without mention of composite monads

In addition, Indras Pearls were known before the time of Leibniz

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[Stephen Paul King]

*Any* compositions of monads is a monad.

[spudb...@aol.com]

How far down, or up, do the Monads go? Perhaps how for in or out. Do monads stop at the Planck length, or the Beckenstein Bound?? Monads seem, somehow more primal then an average particle. I could see neutrinos being real monads, because they can alter from an electron neutrino to a muon, or tau neturino, which for me seems magical, as well as being able to penetrate a light year of solid lead, supposedly.

[Stephen Paul King]

spudb...@aol.com	11:10 AM (44 minutes ago)

How far down, or up, do the Monads go? Perhaps how for in or out. Do monads stop at the Planck length, or the Beckenstein Bound?? Monads seem, somehow more primal then an average particle. I could see neutrinos being real monads, because they can alter from an electron neutrino to a muon, or tau neturino, which for me seems magical, as well as being able to penetrate a light year of solid lead, supposedly. 

Hi,

As a concept, the depth of monads is infinite; every monads reflects and thus is defined by all other monads. If this is a perfectly homogeneous and symmetric reflection, then all monads will be identical and thus there will be only one, by Leibniz' principle of the identity of indiscernibles. If we break this symmetry and consider only finite collections of monads, then maybe we can relate such concepts as the Planck length and Beckenstein's bound. breaking more symmetries can manifest other groups that are associated with particles, etc. What must be understood is that monads are not 'in a space'; they are indivisible units of perception and as such all that can be percieved from one point of view is 'contained in' and defines a single monad. 

  When we consider that a monad is the perfect representation of an observer and its point of view, we can rederive all of physics without having to assume some disembodied superobserver that is 'nowhere'. It has been suggested that space-time (and the Lorentz relations) itself can be derived from ordered lattices of such observers.

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