Substance

From the Quicksilver Metaweb.

Substance

In the metaphysical sense, a substance is that which cannot be reduced any further, the purest form of an entity. One could say that ontology is the search for the substance of being. Leibniz's claim was that a Monad was simple substance, meaning "without parts", and therefore the basic form of all matter. This was the basis for The Monadology, his 1698 work of metaphysics. To him, monads are atomistic mental objects which experience the world from a particular point of view. Leibniz's theory does not posit physical space; rather, physical objects are constructs of the collective experiences of monads. This way of putting it is misleading, however; monads do not interact with each other (are "windowless"), but rather are imbued at creation with all their future experiences in a system of pre-established harmony. The arrangements of the monads make up the faith and structure of this world, which to Leibniz was "the best of all possible worlds." In the way sketched above the notion of a monad solves the problem of the interaction of mind and matter that arises in René Descartes' system, as well as the individuation that seems problematic in Baruch Spinoza's system, which represents individual creatures as mere accidental modifications of the one and only substance.