Leibniz's primitive is the monad or substance, which is non-extended in space. A complete concept. This would make Leibniz's monad semantic, semiotic, not merely logical. But not all objects are monads, only unitary corporeal bodies.
It contains present as well as future properties, so it is time-portable. Monads are unique nondivisible (therefore nonextended) corporeal bodies which have no parts, but may have variations within. http://www.iep.utm.edu/leib-met/#H8 "8. Substance as Monad "Around the end of the Seventeenth Century, Leibniz famously began to use the word monad as his name for substance. Monad means that which is one, has no parts and is therefore indivisible. These are the fundamental existing things, according to Leibniz. His theory of monads is meant to be a superior alternative to the theory of atoms that was becoming popular in natural philosophy at the time. Leibniz has many reasons for distinguishing monads from atoms. The easiest to understand is perhaps that while atoms are meant to be the smallest unit of extension out of which all larger extended things are built, monads are non-extended (recall that space is an illusion on Leibniz's view). Monads and Complete Concepts We must begin to understand what a monad is by beginning from the idea of a complete concept. previously stated, a substance (that is, monad) is that reality which the complete concept represents. A complete concept contains within itself all the predicates of the subject of which it is the concept, and these predicates are related by sufficient reasons into a vast single network of explanation. So, relatedly, the monad must not only exhibit properties, but contain within itself virtually or potentially all the properties it will exhibit in the future, as well as contain the trace of all the properties it did exhibit in the past. In Leibniz's extraordinary phrase, found frequently in his later work, the monad is pregnant with the future and laden with the past (see, for example, Monadology 22). All these properties are folded up within the monad; they unfold when they have sufficient reason to do so (see, for example,Monadology 61). Furthermore, the network of explanation is indivisible; to divide it would either leave some predicates without a sufficient reason or merely separate two substances that never belonged together in the first place. Correspondingly, the monad is one, simple and indivisible." Roger Clough, [email protected] 10/12/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
