Abstract

In raising the question of what is a monad I am continuing along the line of two previous discussions. Those dwelt with the questions of what is an atom and what is a gene. Each contained proposals to sharpen meanings of old terms rather than to resort to new ones. The old term “monad” will also be subject to such a proposal. It will not mean merely any one of a dozen things it has meant to different users, but will serve as a more or less well fitting name for the third member of the sequence: atom-gene-x.