Talk:Monad (philosophy)

What's This Supposed to Mean?
"Pythagorean and Platonic philosophers like Plotinus and Porphyry condemned Gnosticism (see Neoplatonism and Gnosticism) for their treatment of the monad or one." Really? There's no source for this and, moreover, the sentence is idiotically vague. What was their treatment on the monad? And were they treating the monad poorly or the idea of it? Did they get rid of the monad at a garage sale? Or did they just have a different idea of it different from Pythagorus? It is an annoyingly stupid sentence. Gingermint (talk) 00:04, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I recall reading description (paraphrases, quotations) from such sources and means their philosophiizing about monad: yes, they (should be neopythagorean & neoplatonic philosophers) had different cosmology than Gnostics.--dchmelik☀️🕉︎☉🦉🐝🐍☤☆(talk 11:22, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Accuracy - possible factual error
quote "according to the Pythagoreans, [monad] was a term for Divinity or the first being, or the totality of all beings" - is this correct - ie the association of the "monad" with "god" in the eyes of the pythagoreans? As far as I know the "monad" was the 'first thing' - but not necessarily god. eg in the book
 * "The true intellectual system of the universe: wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted, and its impossibility demonstrated : with a treatise concerning eternal and immutable morality, Volume 2 Ralph Cudworth, Johann Lorenz Mosheim, 1845, p.10 google books

- it states that some others considered the monad to be god - which suggests the connection was infered not explicit - are the people mentioned considered to be "pythagoreans"? - is this a more modern or greek interpretation? What does pythagrorus actualy say etc etc.Imgaril (talk) 05:13, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * That's according to Hippolytus: "And so he proclaimed that the Deity is a monad; and carefully acquainting himself with the nature of number..." (http://christianbookshelf.org/hippolytus/the_refutation_of_all_heresies/chapter_ii_pythagoras_his_cosmogony_rules.htm) If this a correct description of what the Pythagoreans though I know not. Rune X2 (talk) 20:58, 6 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Most Pythagoras' work was lost except as quoted by others (in Pythagorean Golden Verses, Complete Pythagoras, Pythagorean Sourcebook, etc.) which I've read but don't recall right now, but sounds accurate as 'totality of all beings' (which I only recall from modern Pythagoreans) though in the case of 'deity' could mean goddess or god or generic divine spirit. In the case of Hermetism (or as copied into 1800s Theosophy, which was interesting for its time but made some mistakes) it may have also been totality as Monad and any being as a monad, but I'm not sure...--dchmelik☀️🕉︎☉🦉🐝🐍☤☆(talk 11:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Comparison with German article
(Original section title: "A joke?")

Compare this tiny page with its equivalent on the German wiki: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monade_(Philosophie) --75.154.246.100 (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Interesting comparison. No, this is not a joke. It just is a consequence of different focus and division of topics in the two Wikipedias. The term "monad" has been used by
 * the Pythagoreans ...
 * ... people in between ...
 * ... Leibniz ...
 * ... and after.
 * In English en:Monad (philosophy) describes #1, while #3 - what you are looking for - is covered by en:Monadology. (That is mentioned in parentheses in the last section; maybe it should be made clearer.) #2 and #4 are not covered at all here; maybe someone could translate that from German.
 * In German, content is arranged very differently. Strangely, #1 seems to be not covered at all; the section "Die Monas bis zu Leibniz" in de:Monade (Philosophie) starts right with Plotin. Conversely, #3, Leibniz's monads, are fought over by two articles, de:Monade (Philosophie) and de:Monadologie, the reasons for which escape me. (This has been raised as an issue at WikiProjekt Philosophie, but there seemed to be no conclusion.) &mdash; Sebastian 18:25, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Having said the above, I looked at this article to see if I could improve it. But it is so bad that it may be better to discard most of its current content and change it to a redirect to Monadology, and add the missing bigger picture of monads there. &mdash; Sebastian 18:45, 3 January 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think it should be discarded. I think it just needs a complete revision and rewrite. --142.33.66.178 (talk) 03:33, 11 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Now I miss the Monad symbol at last. No reference for it on Wikipedia? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.19.132.225 (talk) 20:30, 18 July 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't think it's a bad article though should have same sections as German one... ould be redirected but I don't think that'd be good. Since 10+ years ago monad symbol image is in article--dchmelik☀️🕉︎☉🦉🐝🐍☤☆(talk 11:26, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Reverted article
This article had been fleshed out very nicely and much improved. Then the old inferior version was restored. I don't understand, but maybe someone had a good reason. No talk contribution to explain, though. James Council (talk) 22:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The version I reverted was terribly written (see WP:RS/AC and WP:UNDUE) and possibly in violation of WP:SYNTH. It also lacked full citations (see Template:Incomplete short citation). If portions of the proposed version are to be restored, the editor will have to completely rewrite them first. --Omnipaedista (talk) 00:25, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Pretty harsh, but on re-reading I concede your points (largely). However, I am a rank beginner at this compared to you. This was a class project tied to the APS Wikipedia Initiative. I now have a new class to start on this project. Would you be willing to help if one of the groups chooses to fix the article you reverted? James Council (talk) 00:01, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * My comments are in good faith. An article should be as accurate and as useful to its readers as possible. I am willing to help if my help is needed. --Omnipaedista (talk) 09:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Lede cleanup
This opening:

Monad (from Greek μονάς monas, "unit" in turn from μόνος monos, "alone"),[1] conceived reportedly by the Pythagoreans meant divinity, the first being, or the totality of all beings, referring in cosmogony (creation theories) variously to source acting alone and/or an indivisible origin. It had a geometric counterpart, which was debated and discussed contemporaneously by the same groups of people.

... is confusingly worded. The purpose of the opening sentence should be to clearly define what the article is about without unnecessary exposition. I'm not an expert in monad (hence why I came here) but I'm certain that there is an easier way to explain this for the purposes of this article. Breaking apart the various prepositions and conjunctions, the point of this sentence appears :

Monad (from Greek μονάς monas, "unit" in turn from μόνος monos, "alone") refers in cosmogony to the first being, divinity, or the totality of all beings. It was reportedly conceived by the Pythagoreans and may refer variously to a source acting alone and/or an indivisible origin

Since I'm not an expert, I'm simply re-arranging this information (with some additional research) to try to clean up this lede in a way that is useful to non-experts. I don't think this new sentence loses any meaning, but if there are any problems, please discuss or alter accordingly. Scoundr3l (talk) 00:18, 18 September 2015 (UTC)


 * My problem with the lead (sic) paragraph was the last two sentences, "The concept was later adopted by other philosophers, such as Leibniz, who referred to the monad as an elementary particle. It had a geometric counterpart, which was debated and discussed contemporaneously by the same groups of people." What groups of people? Those "other philosophers, such as Leibniz" may be one group of people, but I don't see any others. I would either omit "by the same groups of people" entirely or perhaps replace it with "by these same people."
 * I am surely even less of an expert than Scoundr3l, just trying to get a handle on an esoteric concept. Mathyeti (talk) 23:00, 23 November 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure who this sentence is referring to either, so rather than change or remove it, I tagged it with a tag. Hopefully whoever wrote it can clarify that sentence. Also, nitpicking, but your "(sic)" was unwarranted as I neither spelled the word incorrectly (see Lead_paragraph) nor did you use my spelling (sic meaning "thus").Scoundr3l (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 12 April 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the pages at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 05:19, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

– Is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC with 2x-3x the pageviews of the next highest viewed topic and greater historical precedence/signifiance. ZXCVBNM (TALK) 20:13, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Monad (philosophy) → Monad
 * Monad → Monad (disambiguation)


 * Oppose: I don't know where you got your page view numbers from, but |Monad_(category_theory)|Monad_(functional_programming) this says that Monad (functional programming) has double the views of Monad (philosophy). Smyth (talk) 22:55, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. |Arete_(mythology) This pageviews analysis says that the functional language gets 67 percent of the relevant views while the philosophical concept gets 26 percent. Although the pageview numbers strongly favor the language, the philosophical concept is obviously more encyclopedic. (After all, it's the one with an article in Britannica.) Either of them would make a fine primary topic as far as I am concerned. The current setup sends everyone to a disambiguation page. That doesn't satisfy either the philosophers or the programmers. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 02:38, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Strong Oppose. Clearly no primary topic. &mdash;Xezbeth (talk) 05:46, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Monads in programming languages are a clearly encyclopedic topic, being discussed in more college courses than the philosophical equivalent I'm sure.  It's not a "language", either, re Nine Zulu Queens, but rather a concept / structure.  If anything, disambig page should be modified to float the computer science meaning up more prominently.  SnowFire (talk) 20:40, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Monads generally refer to Haskell, a less commonly taught programming language. Here is the NYU curriculum. They start off with Python, then C, C++, and Java. Nothing about Haskell or monads. All the same, you're right that the computer science meaning should be on top. Nine Zulu queens (talk) 09:36, 14 April 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

monad (μοναδ) (correct exact transliteration)
Monad (μοναδ) is most exact transliteration from Hermetic/related/continued ((neo)Pythagorean, (neo)Platonist, other ancient/Classical, Leibnizian & German Idealism) philosophy sources (including centuries of English/translated sources) (d:δ, s:ς, so monas/μονᾰ́ς isn't in direct transliteration)... perhaps more popularly [μονάδα] but you can see 'α' isn't always appended--sometimes dropped: [μοναδολογία]. occurs as 'μονάδ' in: may occur in: --dchmelik (t|c) 09:31, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Euripidies: (section two):
 * Sophocles:
 * Refutation of All Heresies (the book, not article).
 * Corpus Hermeticum


 * Nope. As per discussion on Talk:Monadic plane. You have found the word used twice, poetically omitting final alpha, in accusative case. The nominative is μονᾰ́ς. Please do not change against consensus. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:40, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I would, however, query whether ‘singularity’ is the most natural translation of the word. It is not wrong, but the word really just means one, or alone, and when derived through genitives to monad, it means unit. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:42, 13 August 2022 (UTC)


 * This is where the discussion should've been (and maybe related Monad (Gnosticism) which some cases are philosophical). I found it used six times including two by ancient Greek writers, one book by ancient/Classical Age Christian writers (all above, whom you omitted) and (usage as in Greek & English wiktionary) 2000s philosophical/metaphysical/spiritual/mystical/esoteric usage in a modern Greek Theosophy ebook (not much point finding again because duplicate as wiktionary but you might find in a Google Search 'μοναδ site:*.el'). Absolutely right simpler translations are 'one', 'unit' (similarly 'number', 'point' in sense of 'geometric/algebraic zero-dimensional object', not 'finger-pointing').
 * Have you checked those sections of Euripidies & Sophocles yet (or Christian heresies book) whom just say 'μοναδ'?
 * Complete Greek Corpus Hermeticum may not exist anymore; apparently complete ones are in Latin which only says 'monadem' (on the Internet Archive, IA, archive.org and many sites I could look up again) which may indicate more closely-related transliterations.--dchmelik (t|c) 08:31, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Per WP:FORUM this is not the place to discuss this matter. All sources are clear that the lemma is μονᾰ́ς. No WP:OR please. If you would like me to provide some information on lemmas and the Greek case system, drop me a message on my talk page. For *this* article, there is simply no consensus to change. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 10:25, 14 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Okay, well I also replied whether terminology is good enough: 'singularity' almost sounds too much like physics than metaphysics, though many physicists might disagree, I'm unsure about many metaphysicists... I don't really know what the best term would be... 'singularity' isn't necessarily bad, but you described more than I knew (or forgot 'alone' definition). It seems in both languages 'one' leads to 'unit' so latter is less fundamental.  Of course Pythagorean Monad preceded Platonic 'The One' (To En) preceded neopythagoreanism preceded neoplatonism which Plotinus apparently spelled 'one' differently around same time such term(s) were also/still in Hermetism, so there's most likely ancient to contemporary relevant/academic secondary/tertiary commentaries about whether various 'One' in Greek philosophy ever were same, which may (or not) help clarify/describe.--dchmelik☀️🕉︎☉🦉🐝🐍☤☆(talk 11:07, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

"infinite monads" error?
The article says "there are infinite monads" but surely it means "there are infinitely many monads"? I hope someone with expertise will fix this if it's an error. Zaslav (talk) 00:24, 13 August 2023 (UTC)