Warning: this film features rapidly flashing images that can be distressing to photosensitive viewers.
The German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) believed that the Universe fundamentally consists of radically simple mind-like building blocks – separate, indivisible, indestructible – from which emerges the unified world of matter and substance. Borrowing a term from ancient Greek philosophy, he called these entities ‘monads’, and attributed their existence to a ‘God, who perceives all monads with utter clarity’. He laid out this theory of metaphysics in his seminal work, the Monadology (1714). This short video essay for Epoché Magazine pairs excerpts from the notoriously dense text with enigmatic archival imagery and original music, making for a whirlwind introduction to Leibniz’s celebrated and controversial conception of the Universe.
Video by Epoché Magazine
Editor and composer: John C Brady
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Oceans and water
A stunning visualisation explores the intricate circulatory system of our oceans
5 minutes
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History of science
Ideas ‘of pure genius’ – how astronomers have measured the Universe across history
29 minutes
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Computing and artificial intelligence
A future in which ‘artificial scientists’ make discoveries may not be far away
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Biology
Butterflies become unrecognisable landscapes when viewed under electron microscopes
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Metaphysics
What do past, present and future mean to a philosopher of time?
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Ethics
Plato saw little value in privacy. How do his ideas hold up in the information age?
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Engineering
From simple motors to levitating trains – how design shapes innovation
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Virtues and vices
Why Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith were divided on the virtues of vanity
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Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
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