Monad (philosophy)

Ancient Greece

According to Hippolytus of Rome, the Pythagoreans called the first thing that came into existence the "monad", which begat (bore) the dyad (from the Greek word for two), which begat the numbers, which begat the point, begetting lines (or finiteness), and so on.^[3] Diogenes Laërtius similarly held that from the monad evolved the dyad; from it numbers; from numbers, points; then lines, two-dimensional entities, three-dimensional entities, bodies, culminating in the four classical elements of earth, water, fire and air, from which the rest of our world is built up.^[3][a]

For the Pythagoreans, the generation of number series bridged the gap between objects of geometry and cosmogony (creation theories).^[5] They thus held the monad as a symbol of divinity, the first being, or the totality of all beings, referring in cosmogony variously to source acting alone or an indivisible origin and equivalent comparators.^[6]

In the Neoplatonic metaphysics of Proclus, reality is organized in a fractal-like structure, where the role of the monad is to bind together each layer with the next, such that a monad at a higher level folds out into a multiplicity at a lower level; this lower multiplicity is itself a multiplicity of monads at the next level down.^[7][8] Proclus thus writes in the Elements of Theology (21.1–3): "Every order of reality has its beginning in a monad and proceeds to a multiplicity coordinate with that monad; and the multiplicity in any order may be referred back to a single monad."^[9]

Some Neoplatonic philosophers, such as Plotinus and Porphyry, were opposed to Gnosticism, which they considered broadly synonymous with Christianity as a whole.^[10] In Against the Gnostics (Enn. II.9), Plotinus contends that they "contract the divine into one",^[11] thereby accusing them of misapplying Platonic theory about the monad in defense of monotheism.^[12]

The idea of the monad is also reflected in the demiurge, or the belief of one supreme being that brought about the creation of the universe.^{[citation needed]}

Medieval Christianity

In his Latin-language treaty Maximae theologiae, Alain de Lille affirms that "God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere." The French philosopher François Rabelais ascribed this proposition to Hermes Trismegistus.^[13] This Euclidean^{[citation needed]} symbolism of the centered sphere also concerns the secular debate on the existence of a center of the universe. The symbolism is a free exegesis related to the Trinity in Christian theology and influenced by Plotinus.^[13] Alain also mentions the Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, wherein it is stated that a Monad will beget only another Monad;^[13] some Christians saw in this the generation, or creation, of God the Son from God the Father. This view might be similar to that of the pagan author of the Asclepius,^[13] who sometimes has also been identified with Hermes Trismegistus. The Book of the Twenty-Four Philosophers completes the scheme adding that the ardor of the second Monad to the first Monad would be the Holy Spirit in Christianity.^[13] It closes a physical circle in a logical triangle (with a retroaction).

Leibniz