MONISM • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Monism

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

Listen

noun

Monism n.

(Metaph.) That doctrine which refers all phenomena to a single ultimate constituent or agent; the opposite of dualism. Note: The doctrine has been held in three generic forms: matter and its phenomena have been explained as a modification of mind, involving an idealistic monism; or mind has been explained by and resolved into matter, giving a materialistic monism; or, thirdly, matter, mind, and their phenomena have been held to be manifestations or modifications of some one substance, like the substance of Spinoza, or a supposed unknown something of some evolutionists, which is capable of an objective and subjective aspect.

(Biol.) See Monogenesis, 1.

The doctrine that the universe is an organized unitary being or total self-inclusive structure. "Monism means that the whole of reality, i.e., everything that is, constitutes one inseparable and indivisible entirety. Monism accordingly is a unitary conception of the world. It always bears in mind that our words are abstracts representing parts or features of the One and All, and not separate existences. Not only are matter and mind, soul and body, abstracts, but also such scientific terms as atoms and molecules, and also religious terms such as God and world."

See images of 'Monism'

Etymology of 'Monism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Monism" Quotes from Famous Books

... to deal with theories which in their fundamentals are still hypotheses. But since all tendencies of the present which are hostile to Christianity and to the theistic view of the world, from the most extreme materialism up to the most sublime monism (as pantheism and materialism of to-day have begun to call themselves), seemingly with the confidence of complete victory, take possession of Darwinism as the solid ground from which they hope to destroy all and every belief ...

— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... suppose consciousness to be coextensive with a certain part of nature and not with all of it. We are thus led, sometimes to an "epiphenomenalism" that associates consciousness with certain particular vibrations and puts it here and there in the world in a sporadic state, and sometimes to a "monism" that scatters consciousness into as many tiny grains as there are atoms; but, in either case, it is to an incomplete Spinozism or to an incomplete Leibnizianism that we come back. Between this conception of nature and Cartesianism we find, moreover, intermediate ...

— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... force-bearing substance in an animal organism produces a total sum of certain effects, which, when bound together in a unity, are called by us mind, soul, thought." Here he postulates force and mind as emanating from original matter—a materialistic monism. But in other parts of his works he suggests that mind and matter are two different aspects of that which is the basis of all things—a monism which is not necessarily materialistic, and which, in the absence of further explanation, ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... his life should have been moving towards the Christian faith in his eager search for truth and should die not a monist, but a convinced Christian. Neither did he die an old man, to whom the adherents of monism would certainly have the effrontery to impute feeble-mindedness, but at the early age of forty-six years. Nor was his a sudden deathbed conversion—an impression which Schmidt attempts to create (p. 62) in order to be able with H. Heine to relegate the conversion ...

— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert

... of their being unreal conceptions illegitimately abstracted from real personality we are compelled to note a second vivid difference between our point of view and his in regard to this matter of opposites and their contradiction. Bergson's monism, as we have seen, resolves itself into a duality which may be defined as conscious ...

— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... furthers ours if they are worthy. He works in an external environment, has limits, and has enemies. When John Mill said that the notion of God's omnipotence must be given up, if God is to be kept as a religious object, he was surely accurately right; yet, so prevalent is the lazy Monism that idly haunts the regions of God's name, that so simple and truthful a saying was generally treated as a paradox; God, it was said, could not be finite. I believe that the only God worthy of the name must ...

— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

Words linked to "Monism" : philosophy, doctrine, pluralism, monistic, ism