Abstract
The most obvious thing about the universe in which we find ourselves is its structure. Indeed, according to the basic philosophical viewpoint adopted by thinkers such as Berkeley, Leibniz and Mach, it would not really be possible to speak of the universe at all if it did not exhibit differentiating structure and qualities. Leibniz’s monadology equates existence with variety: monads are defined by and simultaneously distinguished from other monads by virtue of their attributes and nothing else. You cannot remove the attributes of a thing and leave some mysterious “thisness” (haeccity). Remove the attributes and nothing is left.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Barbour, Julian B. (1989), Maximal variety as a new fundamental principle of dynamics. Foundations of Physics, 19, pp. 1051–73.
Barbour, Julian B. (1993), Mathematical modelling of the Monadology. Submitted for publication.
Barbour, Julian B., and Smolin, Lee, Extremal variety as the foundation of a cos-mological theory. To be published in Classical and Quantum Gravity.
Deutsch, David (1989), Private communication.
Galilei, Galileo (1632), Dialogo Sopra i due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo Tolemaico e Copernicano, Florence.
Kepler, Johannes (1596), Mysterium Cosmographicum, Frankfurt.
Prigogine, Ilya (1980), From Being to Becoming. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.
Russell, Bertrand (1945), A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Smolin, Lee (1991), Space and time in the quantum universe. In: Conceptual Problems in Quantum Gravity. Proceedings of the 1988 Osgood Hill Conference, Ashtekhar, A., and Stachel, J. (eds.), Boston: Birkhäuser.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1994 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Barbour, J.B. (1994). On the Origin of Structure in the Universe. In: Rudolph, E., Stamatescu, IO. (eds) Philosophy, Mathematics and Modern Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78808-6_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-78808-6_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-78810-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-78808-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive