Dennis Hollingsworth

Monadology

Aaron recently sent me James Elkin's What Painting Is, it's chock full of nuts.

(page 46)
I.
To begin counting, it is best to start with one. The Bible opens with a primal unity: In the beginning all elements were a single chaos. Alchemists often speak about the world around them as if it were still that ancient chaos "without form", and they imagine their purpose to be the regathering of the fallen parts of the world into a new unity. The "All in all" (omnia in omnibus), a favorite alchemical invocation, is an attempt to compensate for the bewildering variety of the world, by swirling every conceivable object into the first undifferentiated unity. Omnia in omnibus also gestures toward the interconnection of all things, as if to say, Even though there are two marks, or an infinity of marks, they are only a singe mark. The perfectly fused substance is the unwavering goal of alchemy, and it is also alchemy's starting point: just as the world began in a single chaos, so it will end in impeccable perfection.

The best name for this congealed perfection is a monad...

Monads.

I like the close read of paint. The next couple of pages I found to be most interesting/challenging. Originally, I was coming from Leibniz's formulation. Elkins takes this into interesting territory.