Monad, Process, Hologram
Reading the Monadology of Gottfried Liebniz, a name that has come up linked contexts with Holographic Universe theories, and it resonates with me. Some interesting passages:
56. Now this connexion or adaptation of all created things to each and of each to all, means that each simple substance has relations which express all the others, and, consequently, that it is a perpetual living mirror of the universe. (Theod. 130, 360.)
57. And as the same town, looked at from various sides, appears quite different and becomes as it were numerous in aspects [perspectivement]; even so, as a result of the infinite number of simple substances, it is as if there were so many different universes, which, nevertheless are nothing but aspects [perspectives] of a single universe, according to the special point of view of each Monad. (Theod. 147.)
58. And by this means there is obtained as great variety as possible, along with the greatest possible order; that is to say, it is the way to get as much perfection as possible. (Theod. 120, 124, 241 sqq., 214, 243, 275.)
which has strong echoes for me of computational graph knowledge-representation theories such as the Semantic Web.
There's also a huge lot of stuff here that links with the recurring philosophical worldview described by people with near-death and afterlife experiences: that God is intimately involved with the tiniest details of our lives, and is in fact somehow 'wired in' to the very fabric of the universe - a fabric which is not necessarily primarily physical but mental. It's a beautiful piece of writing and I have to fight the temptation to quote the entire thing, because I think Leibniz here came pretty close to cracking some fundamental ideas about cybernetics, biomechanics, complexity theory and spirituality which we still struggle with today:
63. The body belonging to a Monad (which is its entelechy or its soul) constitutes along with the entelechy what may be called a living being, and along with the soul what is called an animal. Now this body of living being or of an animal is always organic; for, as every Monad is, in its own way, a mirror of the universe, and as the universe is ruled according to a perfect order, there must also be order in that which represents it, i.e. in the perceptions of the soul, and consequently there must be order in the body, through which the universe is represented in the soul. (Theod. 403.)
64. Thus the organic body of each living being is a kind of divine machine or natural automaton, which infinitely surpasses all artificial automata. For a machine made by the skill of man is not a machine in each of its parts. For instance, the tooth of a brass wheel has parts or fragments which for us are not artificial products, and which do not have the special characteristics of the machine, for they give no indication of the use for which the wheel was intended. But the machines of nature, namely, living bodies, are still machines in their smallest parts ad infinitum. It is this that constitutes the difference between nature and art, that is to say, between the divine art and ours. (Theod. 134, 146, 194, 403.)
65. And the Author of nature has been able to employ this divine and infinitely wonderful power of art, because each portion of matter is not only infinitely divisible, as the ancients observed, but is also actually subdivided without end, each part into further parts, of which each has some motion of its own; otherwise it would be impossible for each portion of matter to express the whole universe. (Theod. Prelim., Disc. de la Conform. 70, and 195.)
This is basically the Holographic Paradigm in a nutshell, or a variant of it. And he's right, it's the fractal recursive cellular structure of organic things that gives them their 'living' quality - this is also the line of thought that Christopher Alexander has been following up in his Nature of Order.
The idea of nested souls is also the Powers Theology of Walter Wink, Arthur Koestler's Holons, Dee Hock's 'Chaords', Alexander's 'Centers', Napoleon Hill's 'Master Minds' (I think), and a whole bunch more.
What stuns me about Leibniz is how much his theory revolves around God being a part of the picture:
83. Among other differences which exist between ordinary souls and minds [esprits], some of which differences I have already noted, there is also this: that souls in general are living mirrors or images of the universe of created things, but that minds are also images of the Deity or Author of nature Himself, capable of knowing the system of the universe, and to some extent of imitating it through architectonic ensamples [echantillons], each mind being like a small divinity in its own sphere. (Theod. 147.)
84. It is this that enables spirits [or minds- esprits] to enter into a kind of fellowship with God, and brings it about that in relation to them He is not only what an inventor is to his machine (which is the relation of God to other created things), but also what a prince is to his subjects, and, indeed, what a father is to his children.
85. Whence it is easy to conclude that the totality [assemblage] of all spirits [esprits] must compose the City of God, that is to say, the most perfect State that is possible, under the most perfect of Monarchs. (Theod. 146; Abrege, Object. 2.)
86. This City of God, this truly universal monarchy, is a moral world in the natural world, and is the most exalted and most divine among the works of God; and it is in it that the glory of God really consists, for He would have no glory were not His greatness and His goodness known and admired by spirits [esprits]. It is also in relation to this divine City that God specially has goodness, while His wisdom and His power are manifested everywhere. (Theod. 146; Abrege, Object. 2.)
The word 'glory' here jumps out at me, because I'm pretty sure Leibniz is using it in its original meaning: something like 'radiance' or 'outshining', IIRC. The idea being conveyed is that the glory of an object is not what we might today use the word to mean, 'social status' -- rather it means what is transmitted out from it -- 'glow' or 'aura' or 'field' or 'corona'.
This doesn't mean that God 'gets some kind of ego boost' out of having an audience (and therefore is some kind of needy emotional cripple dependent on praise) but that we, technically speaking, are God's corona: the aura shining out from Him, the energy field that is transmitted. God's nature being to replicate, we are that wave of replication.
(There is a page on Computational Monadology which is intriguing.)
The other philosopher/theologian I am interested in right now is Alfred North Whitehead, also with a computational science sort of background -- worked with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematical -- and his ideas on 'process philosophy'. The same connections show through, this time with the body of work known generally as 'systems theory' -- to which I personally would add Korzybski's General Semantics as part of the same broad stream -- but Whitehead is one of the more consciously religious of the modern systems theorists, and like Leibniz, also seems to have an immensely strong vision of the immanence of God as 'kubernetes' or steersman of the vast cybernetic system that is the universe (physical and mental) in which we find ourselves.
There is a whole lot of related work here that I want to try to cluster together somehow; one of the main ideas that seems to link this material is a kind of East-West philosophical bridging centering around bringing (back) into Western philosophical and religious awareness the notions of flow and ecology: that all (created) things are part of a linked whole system, within which limited borders or subsets can only be drawn from the perspective of an observer. Walter Russell also seems to me to be very important as an early 20th century promoter of this link, from an overtly Christian-mystical perspective (and also with computing links, being a friend in late life of IBM's Thomas J Watson) - also with a strong vision of the immanence and constant involvement of God in the unfolding life of the world.
I suppose the central idea here to me is that there is a sort of process of 'reenchantment' going on, here in the early 21st century: a 'reweaving' of the idea of God as not a 'cosmic absentee landlord', a caricature which has been rightly rebelled against and discarded, but as something even more startling: a living source of creative intelligence energy active at the very core of our being. A 'Vast Active Living Intelligent System', as Philip K Dick struggled to describe his glimpse of the Infinite. And yet, is not a new image of God so much as it is one that has been lost or forgotten during the years of industrialisation.
