From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: weis Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA21219 for caml-redistribution; Tue, 5 Oct 1999 10:14:25 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA04514 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 23:17:42 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from info.numeric-quest.com (info.numeric-quest.com [204.187.76.36]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA21275 for ; Mon, 4 Oct 1999 23:17:40 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (qmail 14311 invoked by uid 500); 4 Oct 1999 21:20:46 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 4 Oct 1999 21:20:46 -0000 Date: Mon, 4 Oct 1999 16:20:46 -0500 (CDT) From: Jan Skibinski To: "Frank A. Christoph" cc: CAML Mailing list Subject: RE: A propos de monad/About monads In-Reply-To: <000101bf0e77$470d1500$0150ebca@nextsolution.co.jp> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: weis On Mon, 4 Oct 1999, Frank A. Christoph wrote: > Toby Moth has informed me (and given a semi-mystical exposition involving > the Holy Trinity :) of another notion of "monad" hailing from non-standard > real analysis, due to the logician Robinson, and in this case it appears > that the term was in fact derived from Leibniz's ideas. These monads of > course have nothing to do with the ones from category theory, which are the > ones relevant for denotational semantics and functional programming. > > --FAC > As a practitioner of monads you may find this Leibnitz's statement interesting: "Monads have no windows by which anything goes in or out" Did he predict monadic IO here? :-) There are few statements in his "Monadologia" that may explain the reasons why the name "monad" was borrowed by the category theory. Generally, what he wrote about monads might seem laughable to us now, but I have some respect to his other philosophical thoughts, particularly about time and space (isotropic, anisotropic, absolute, relative?). Modern physics considers such questions relevant. I also vaguely remember some old text (arabic?) which mentions monads as well. The concept of monads might have been much older than we think. Jan