Remaking America by George Shollenberger, Idea XXXX (The science of Gottfried Leibniz, Part XIX)

In his Monadology (statement 16), Leibniz says that a simple substance, such as our soul, experiences plurality. One thus wonders how plurality can come from a thing that has no plurality because we know that the integer ‘two’ comes from the integer ‘one.’ Yet, all humans would agree that our world has plurality. Thus, our world must have an origin just like the integer ‘two’ has an origin.

Today, three different origins of our world are proposed. The first origin is pantheism. It has a god. If its God has no parts, this God is self-destroying for the purpose of creating things for our world. The second origin is the Big Bang theory of today’s physicists. The origin is a single physical particle that explodes for the purpose of creating things for our world. These two origins have the same truth, that our world must come to an end. The third origin is the monotheistic God of Abraham. This origin cannot be exhausted and thus can maintain our world eternally. In my book, I proved scientifically that Abraham’s monotheistic God is one and infinite. As such, it is the origin of all finite things that will exist in our world eternally.

More recently, I came to the conclusion that the single essence of a monotheistic God is a loving essence. I came to this conclusion because humans and other animals express many different forms of love. So, I have come to the conclusion that science or theology has no end and cannot be completed.

According to Nicholas of Cusa, God creates all finite things when God contracts his single essence by the concepts, plurality and finitude. This does not mean that God has a language and can communicate to us like we communicate with each other. Contraction is an act of God. It tells us that the symbols, plurality and finitude, will be found as real concepts in God’s intelligent design of our universe.

I conclude that our understanding of God’s act of contraction will be improved if we use our symbolic languages carefully. So, I suggest in Part IIb of my book that God be given three absolute symbols. Early Christians spoke of God as ‘Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.’ This expression might come from Jesus Christ, who said, ‘I and the Father are one’ (John 10:30) and ‘... I am in my Father ... (John 14:20). Later Christians spoke of God as ‘Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’ Further thought forced me to accept Nicholas of Cusa’s 15th century scientific version of a trinitarian God. This version is offered by Nicholas of Cusa at Bk. I, Ch. 8 (Eternal Generation) of his book ‘On Learned Ignorance.’ (click)

After accepting Cusa’s Trinity, I was able to use our everyday symbols to reveal other new understanding about God. Cusa’s Trinity is expressed as ‘One, Equality, and Union.’ These three symbols are absolutes and apply only to God. Thus, these symbols will never be found in our world. With these three absolutes, I made two advances as follows: (1) I improved my understanding of God’s intelligent design and (2) I was able to connect God logically to his creation. Thus, if God is expressed as One-Equality-Union, we can conclude that our universe’s highest expression is ‘many-inequality-relation.’ So, God and the universe can be connected beautifully with logic.

Since God’s act of contraction leads to plurality and finitude in our world, I say that plurality and finitude are found only in atoms of substances, such as our souls. In Leibniz’s Monadology (statement 17), he says, ‘... there is nothing else whatever to be found in the simple substance except just this, perceptions and their change.’ The finitude perceptions and the plurality of changing perceptions in our souls are the initial effects of God’s act of contraction. So, I conclude that the concepts ‘plurality’ and ‘finitude’ express the nature of the simple substances such as our souls. When the symbol ‘relation’ appear to our souls, the third symbol of the universe appear and God’s intelligent design becomes known as our highest level of thought about the universe. With the symbol ‘relation’ the simple substances are embodied and the dominant simple substances become real things in the universe.

This lengthy blog must be studied because I could not shorten it without hiding important ideas.