Dennis Hollingsworth

Monadology

I've called these spiny hemispheres Monads since the beginning (1995). My knowledge of Leibniz was rudimentary, and still is in many ways to this day. The more I learn, the more I am satisfied with the nomination.

The West came to a fork in the road in the encounter of Newton and Leibniz. Descartes initiated the divorce of mind and body, Newton cemented it. Interesting, that Newton achieved this via institutional force majeure as the president of the Royal Academy, a capacity that Leibniz lacked. At this crossroad, lie two destinations, Materialism and spiritualism. Today, we are at a loss to account for the mind, much less the soul, especially since we have all but discarded G-d, Truth and all things transcendent. Now, I'm pondering the connection of Leibniz to Heidegger, another modern philosopher who pointed towards the inherent blind spot of Western Civilization. The same goes for Alfred North Whitehead. We stumble onwards, constantly stubbing our toe with constant discord, tumult, runaway technology, civil wars intra and extramural. How much better off could our world would have been if we chose to travel both paths simultaneously? We see so much better in stereo, our brains easily harmonize the hemispheres.