Concept

Monad (Gnosticism)

Overview

gnosticism

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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It is the very nature of the monad to be representative. Its activity consists in picturing or reproducing those relations which make up the world of reality. In a conscious soul, the ability thus to represent the world is called "perception," and thus Leibniz attributes perception to all the monads. This is not to be understood as a conscious representation of reality to itself (for this the term "apperception" is…
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
Names Monad several times; states what Monad is.
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He also extended to his many substances the belief in parallelism which had existed for the two substances of the Cartesians. He called his substances “monads”, and maintained that every monad mirrors the universe, and develops along lines which correspond, point by point, with those along which every other monad is developing. A man’s soul or mind is a single monad, while his body is a collection of monads, each…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
Names Monad several times; states what Monad is.
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Now, Professor Owen subsequently points out that the matter of the sperm-cell performs in the fertilised germ-cell just this same function which the nucleus performs in a single-celled animal. We find the absorption by a germ-cell of the contents of a sperm-cell "followed by the appearance of a pellucid nucleus in the centre of the opaque and altered germ-cell; we further see its successive fissions governed by the…
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Biology, Volume 1
Names Monad several times; states what Monad is.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Gnosticism.

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