Remarks

I recently had the chance to reread G.W.F. Leibniz’s 1714 essay Monadology This short work—comprising 90 succinct remarks—offers a compact yet profound treatment of the nature of reality, covering topics ranging from the nature of substance, the soul, free will, God, Science, and more.

While reading, I was reminded of a short interview which I watched a few years ago of physicist Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder, hosted by Big Think. In the interview, Dr. Hossenfelder was asked to reflect on the question of the soul’s existence in light of modern science.

The philosophical position underlying her response may be described as scientific reductionism or naturalism—the view that reality consists entirely of the natural world and is, in principle, fully explainable by science. This outlook is widely shared among many scientists and philosophers today.

Her argument, which I analyze below, relies on this reductionist framework.

Reductionist Argument Against Dualism

1. All physical things are made up of elementary particles (e.g., quarks, electrons, protons).
2. Everything that exists is composed of these particles, including complex systems like animals, brains, and human beings.
3. Therefore, reality consists entirely of physical bodies composed of elementary particles. (from 1 and 2)
4. Particle physics (including the Standard Model and gravity) provides the fundamental account of how these particles behave and interact.
5. Anything not included in this fundamental model is either:
    a. an illusion, or
    b. emergent—that is, reducible in principle to particle-level processes.
6. Consciousness is not part of the Standard Model of physics.
7. Therefore, if consciousness exists, it must be emergent from, and reducible to, particle-level interactions. (from 5 and 6)
8. In principle, a complete account of consciousness could be derived from the behavior of elementary particles, given sufficient knowledge or computing power. (assumption of physicalist reductionism)
9. Dualism holds that, in addition to bodies, there exist immaterial minds or souls that are not reducible to physical particles.
10. If these immaterial minds interact with physical bodies, such interaction would have to show up in the fundamental physical theories.
11. No such interaction is observed or required in the Standard Model or gravitational theory.
12. Therefore, if immaterial minds exist, they cannot interact with the body. (from 10 and 11)
13. But if immaterial minds cannot interact with the body, then they are explanatorily irrelevant. (assumption: only causally efficacious entities are relevant to science)
14. Therefore, dualism is either false or scientifically irrelevant. (from 9, 12, and 13)
15. Therefore, naturalism (reduction to particles) provides the best explanation of consciousness and reality. (from 3, 4, 7, 8, and 14)

Analysis

The original argument depends on several key assumptions, especially:

• Ontological assumptions about the kinds of things that exist (premises 1, 5–7).
• Epistemological assumptions about what can be known or inferred from physics (premises 4, 9, 12).

We may further subdivide the reasoning into two interconnected arguments:

Argument 1: Ontological Reductionism

1. All physical things are made up of elementary particles (e.g., quarks, electrons, protons). (Ontological assumption — from premise 1)
2. Therefore, all physical reality must be explainable in terms of the Standard Model of particle physics, plus gravity. (from 1)
3. Consciousness is not currently included in this fundamental model.
4. However, consciousness is in principle explainable by the fundamental model, given sufficient theoretical and computational resources. (Ontological assumption + methodological reductionism)

Argument 2: Epistemological Irrelevance of the Soul

1. If the soul interacts with the body, then such interaction would be empirically observable and theoretically accounted by physics. (Epistemological assumption — from premise 9)
2. No such interaction has been observed or is required by physical theories.
3. Therefore, either the soul does not exist, or the soul exists but has no causal efficacy in the physical world. (from 5 and 6)
4. If the soul has no causal efficacy, it is scientifically irrelevant.
5. Therefore, dualism is either false or scientifically irrelevant. (from 7 and 8)
   

Summary Conclusion of Both Arguments

• By Argument 1, only physical bodies exist in the natural world and are explanatory.
• By Argument 2, if the soul exists, it has no causal role in the physical world and thus no epistemological or scientific significance.

Response: A Leibnizian Alternative

I return now to Leibniz’s Monadology. There we find a metaphysical framework that:

• Affirms the existence and relevance of the soul,
• Metaphysically grounds the existence of bodies on the basis of the soul and other simple substances (called monads),
• Yet also denies direct causal interaction between the soul and body.

Leibniz’s Argument in Monadology (Reconstructed)

1. Reality consists of monads—simple, indivisible, immaterial substances without parts.
2. All physical bodies are composites, that is, aggregates of monads; thus, bodies are not fundamental entities but derivative phenomena grounded in basic metaphysical units.
3. Each monad is unique and cannot be generated or destroyed by natural means. As such, monads are metaphysically prior to nature and are not subject to physical laws.
4. Monads undergo internal change through a succession of perceptions—internal representations of the world. In higher monads, such as human souls, this includes apperception, or self-conscious awareness.
5. Each monad develops according to an internal law, such that its present state arises solely from its own prior states, without influence from outside.
6. Therefore, no monad is causally affected by any other monad; monads are causally closed systems.
7. It follows that bodies, being aggregates of monads, do not causally affect monads—nor do monads causally affect bodies. Hence, there is no direct interaction between the soul and the body.
8. Nevertheless, all phenomena of causal interaction are accounted for by a pre-established harmony, instituted by God, who ensures that internal changes in each monad correspond exactly with the apparent interactions of bodies in the world.
9. Thus, although soul and body do not interact, the soul nonetheless serves as the explanatory ground of the body’s appearances: the states of the body mirror the internal development of the soul. This correspondence is not one of physical causation, but of metaphysical coordination.
10. Therefore, the soul is not excluded from scientific explanation because it is inexplicable, but rather because science concerns itself only with appearances. Scientific naturalism, by limiting itself to empirical phenomena, fails to account for the metaphysical ground of those phenomena—and consequently, the soul.

Leibnizian Implications

• Reality is fundamentally non-material in structure, consisting of metaphysical points (monads).
• Physical bodies and their interactions are appearances (based on perceptions), grounded in a deeper monadic order.
• The soul has epistemological and metaphysical significance, even if it plays no direct role in physical causality.
• Natural science describes appearances or phenomena, but not ultimate metaphysical reality.
• Therefore, science does not explain all of reality.
• A broader metaphysical account—such as Leibniz’s—is therefore needed to explain being as such, including consciousness and the soul.

Conclusion

My point is not to argue that Leibniz’s account of reality is the correct one. In fact, there are several foundational assumptions I would question—chief among them, the concept of the monad itself. Nevertheless, his metaphysical framework offers an alternative to the naturalist and reductionist worldview that Dr. Hossenfelder, along with many scientists and philosophers today, have adopted.

In its current form, this worldview is typically assumed to be true and functions as a philosophical dogma underlying modern scientific materialism.

More specifically, the naturalist argument reduces reality to elementary particles and dismisses the explanatory role of the soul. In contrast, the Leibnizian framework holds that:

• The soul exists,
• It is epistemologically meaningful,
• It is causally independent,
• And science is limited to describing appearances, not reality as such.
  

This view challenges both the ontological and epistemological assumptions of reductionist physicalism and naturalism. It reveals that naturalism is not inevitable—there is no compelling reason to treat it as the only acceptable philosophical framework. On the contrary, naturalism rests on a set of largely unexamined metaphysical commitments that now dominate scientific and philosophical discourse.

Still more, the naturalistic dogma, as we might call it, may also be hindering scientific progress rather than promoting it. Theoretical physicist Dr. Àlex Gómez-Marín makes precisely this case in his essay, Materialism Is Holding Science Back. He argues that clinging to materialist assumptions may blind us to deeper insights and limit the scope of scientific inquiry.

We do well to take such arguments seriously. In the pursuit of knowledge, entrenched dogmas and unconscious biases can obstruct inquiry for centuries—if not millennia. In the classical age, science developed alongside philosophy and theology. In the modern age, a sharp rupture between these domains occurred—and in the process, the baby (the soul, God, metaphysics) was thrown out with the bathwater (science).

Today, however, the boundaries between disciplines are once again beginning to blur. Natural science itself is confronting limits in its capacity to explain reality. The prevailing assumption is that greater complexity demands greater computational sophistication, and in this, artificial intelligence is heralded as the next great hope for scientific advancement.

But perhaps that hope is misplaced. While AI may certainly help synthesize knowledge, the kind of insight required to truly advance science, along with human understanding more broadly, may lie beyond the scope of artificial intelligence.

Genuine insight, I take it, springs from minds capable of grasping essences—of intuiting the simple, intelligible structures that underlie complexity. And such thought may require not just material computation, but the presence of real, immaterial intelligence.

In this sense, the soul, and the immaterial dimension of thought, may be far more central to the future of human knowledge than the current scientific paradigm is prepared to admit.

Until then, the unsettling truth is this: the future of our best science may be limited not by the complexity of the world, but by the philosophical biases of our best scientists.