An attempt to define Leibniz\'s transcendental cosmology

An attempt to define Leibniz's transcendental cosmology

This attempt to define Leibniz's incredibly complex but well-organized
universe completely filled with monads (mental/mathematical points would be
better done by a mathematician (I am not one) but I have yet to see an
account of it other than this. Leibniz deserves better.

To bgin with, a monad (a conjoined mental/physical point, not the
mathematical monad) is best described in Leibniz's Monadology, see

https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/leibniz.htm

as

"1. The monad, of which we will speak here, is nothing else than a simple
substance, which goes to make up compounds; by simple, we mean without
parts. "

There are two perspectives considered, one (A) from the One at the top
downward (as in plotinus), and one (B) of the suroundings or each monadic
point

A. The topdown fractal or physical view: From the monadology the
physical (particle) universe in spacetime is like a fractal (which is
evidenced by the physical spacetime universe):

" 65. Each portion of matter is not only divisible to infinity, as the
ancients realised, but is actually sub-divided without end, of which each
has some motion of its own.

66. Whence it appears that in the smallest particle of matter there is a
world of creatures, living beings, animals, entelechies, souls.

67. Each portion of matter may be conceived as like a garden full of plants
and like a pond full of fishes. But each branch of every plant, each member
of every animal, each drop of its liquid parts is also some such garden or
pond."

B. The holographic view of the bodies surrounding each monad- the mental
(quantum) view: This appears to be holographic (the structure that the mind
is thought to have) as each monad mirrors all of the other monads in the
universe. The monads do not have windows, but this would be the view if
they did. Since each monad is a concept, they all be taken as Saussurean
signs, and being holographic, one might think of the monads - the universe-
as a classic form of Saussurean structuralism. In fact the monads are signs
with signified/signifier faces

"61. In this respect compounds are like simple substances, for all space is
filled up; therefore, all matter is connected. And in a plenum or filled
space every movement has an effect upon bodies in proportion to this
distance, so that not only is every body affected by those which are in
contact with it and responds in some way to whatever happens to them, but
also by means of them the body responds to, those bodies adjoining them,
and their intercommunication reaches to any distance whatsoever.
Consequently every body responds to all that happens in the universe, so
that h e who saw all could read in each one what is happening everywhere,
and even what has happened and what will happen. He can discover in the
present what is distant both as regards space and as regards time; "all
things conspire" as Hippocrates said. A soul can, however, read in itself
only what is there represented distinctly. It cannot all at once open up
all its folds, because they extend to infinity.

62. Thus although each created monad represents the whole universe, it
represents more distinctly the body which specially pertains to it and of
which it constitutes the entelechy. And as this body expresses all the
universe through the interconnection of all matter in the plenum, the soul
also represents the whole universe in representing this body, which belongs
to it in a particular way.

63. The body belonging to a monad, which is its entelechy or soul,
constitutes together with the entelechy what may be called a rising being,
and with a soul what is called an animal. Now this body of a living being
or of an animal is always organic, because every monad is a mirror of the
universe is regulated with perfect order there must needs be order also in
what represents it, that is to say in the perceptions of the soul and
consequently in the body through which the, universe is represented in the
soul."

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Leibniz's monads are nested points representing physical bodies arranged
according to category theory* or cybernetic theory.? Leibniz describes such
structures as a pond full of fish in which each fish is like a pond, etc.
etc.

Plotinus centuries earlier has described a similar but simpler view of the
universe:

"The elements in their totality, as they stand produced, may be thought of
as one spheric figure; this cannot be the piecemeal product of many makers
each working from some one point on some one portion [materialism]. There
must be one [top down] cause; and this must operate as an entire, not by
part executing part; otherwise we are brought back to a plurality of
makers. The making must be referred to a partless unity, or, more
precisely, the making principle must be a partless unity not permeating the
sphere but holding it as one dependent thing. In this way the sphere is
enveloped by one identical life in which it is inset; its entire content
looks to the one life. Thus all the souls are one, a one, however, which is
infinite. "


- Plotinus, the Enneads, VI (9).






* For a taste, see



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-qL2G60zJk

--

see my website https://independent.academia.edu/RogerClough