Number & MeasureGreek → English
Monad
/ˈmoʊnæd/noun
An indivisible unit, in philosophy a simple substance without parts.
The Greek roots
μονάς, μονάδος
monás, monádos
unit, single thing
μόνος
mónos
alone, single
Literally: “a one”
The story of the word
Μονάς was the unit, the number one treated as the source from which the others are generated, and Pythagoreans made it the origin of everything. Leibniz took the word in 1714 for the simple mind-like substances he thought the universe consists of, each reflecting the whole and none with windows. Functional programmers borrowed it again in the 1990s for a structure that wraps values, which is how a Pythagorean term ended up in Haskell tutorials.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
monasterymonopolymonkmonotone
In a sentence
Leibniz argued that every monad mirrors the whole universe from its own point of view.