History of Philosophy II

Today we finished up talking about Leibniz (Microsoft seems to insist that is how to spell his name) by talking about his concept of the Monad (which Microsoft doesn't think is a word.) I mostly compared it to contemporary physics (what I know about it) mentioning Brian Greene and the standard model My argument is that Leibniz was way ahead of his time and his positions are very close to much of contemporary thought. While Newton was a proponent of the steady state universe - I suppose it seems called the static universe instead Leibniz was of the opinion that it was a relative universe (much closer to Einstein's conception.) Following this I moved in on a brief discussion of Berkeley and his dialog between Matter and Love of Mind. I argued that Berkeley's position is more likely in tune with that of Leibniz who he corresponded with than the traditional interpretation of his position. Usually he is considered an Idealist and a British Empiricist which seems incoherent. But if we think that his argument is that Spirit is what we mean by Energy today, and Matter is what we mean by Mass, then his argument that matter does not exist, only spirit does, is just like Leibniz - essentially the contemporary point of view. I also mentioned Jonathan Edwards and used this as a point to enter some comments about the colonies in the New World. The quiz question today was what do you think of as a miracle? And if they exist, what are they?