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explicit inside physics the aspects of time he thought science
was neglecting.
Exploring the implications and the coherence of those fundamental
concepts, which appear both scientific and philosophical,
may be risky, but it can be very fruitful in the dialogue
between science and philosophy. Let us illustrate this with
some brief references to Leibniz, Peirce, Whitehead, and Lucretius.
Leibniz introduced the strange concept of monads, noncommunicating
physical entities that have "no windows through
which something can get in or out. " His views have often been
dismissed as mad, and still, as we have seen in Chapter 11, it is
an essential property of all integrable systems that there exist
a transformation that may be described in terms of noninteracting
entities. These entities translate their own initial
state throughout their motion, but at the same time, like monads,
they coexist with all the others in a "preestablished" harmony:
in this representation, the state of each entity, although
perfectly self-determined, reflects the state of the whole system
down to the smallest detail.
All integrable systems thus can be viewed as "monadic" systems.
Conversely, Leibnizian monadology can be translated into
dynamic language: the universe is an integrable system.13
Monadology thus becomes the most consequential formulation
of a universe from which all becoming is eliminated. By
considering Leibniz's efforts to understand the activity of matter,
we can measure the gap that separates the seventeenth
century from our time. The tools were not yet ready; it was
impossible, on the basis of a purely mechanical universe, for
Leibniz to give an account of the activity of matter. Still some
of his ideas, that substance is activity, that the universe is an
interrelated unit, remain with us and are today taking on a new
form.
We regret that we cannot devote sufficient space to the work
of Charles S. Peirce. At least let us cite one remarkable passage:
You have all heard of the dissipation of energy. It is found
that in all transformations of energy a part is converted
into heat and heat is always tending to equalize its tem-