MONAD • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Monad

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noun

Monad n.

An ultimate atom, or simple, unextended point; something ultimate and indivisible.

(Philos. of Leibnitz) The elementary and indestructible units which were conceived of as endowed with the power to produce all the changes they undergo, and thus determine all physical and spiritual phenomena.

(Zool.) One of the smallest flagellate Infusoria; esp., the species of the genus Monas, and allied genera.

(Biol.) A simple, minute organism; a primary cell, germ, or plastid.

(Chem.) An atom or radical whose valence is one, or which can combine with, be replaced by, or exchanged for, one atom of hydrogen.

Monad deme (Biol.), in tectology, a unit of the first order of individuality.

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Etymology of 'Monad'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Monad" Quotes from Famous Books

... avoiding all proof. John Stuart Mill has no hesitation in affirming that: "The mind, in perceiving external objects, can only take notice of its own conditions." And Renouvier expresses the same arbitrary assertion with greater obscurity when he writes: "The monad is constituted by this relation: the connection of the subject with the object within the subject."[15] In other words, it is laid down as an uncontrovertible principle that "the mental can only enter into direct relations with ...

— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... rendered fit for the habitation of the first germ of Life? How came it to have air and water, without which nothing that we know of as living can exist? Was the world fashioned and furnished with aqueous and atmospheric adjuncts with a view to the requirements of the infant monad, and to his due development? If so, we have evidence of design, and if so of a designer, and if so there must be Some far vaster Person who looms out behind our God, and who stands in the same relation to him as he to us. And behind this vaster and more unknown God there may be ...

— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler

... from nothing; how the elements and heavenly bodies originated; in what method by self-evolution into higher and manifold forms they separated into minerals, became finally organic, and in man attained self-consciousness. 42. The mathematical monad is eternal. 43. The eternal is one and the same with ...

— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... stroke to that other and more portentous atomism which Christianity has taught best and longest, the SOUL-ATOMISM. Let it be permitted to designate by this expression the belief which regards the soul as something indestructible, eternal, indivisible, as a monad, as an atomon: this belief ought to be expelled from science! Between ourselves, it is not at all necessary to get rid of "the soul" thereby, and thus renounce one of the oldest and most venerated hypotheses—as happens frequently ...

— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche

Words linked to "Monad" : ace, i, single, biological science, chemical science, atom, biology, chemistry, micro-organism, microorganism, one, unity