text: The Reawakening of Leibniz through Possible Landscapes

In his paper entitled, The Possiblity of Plural Worlds, David Lewis discusses The City and its Parts as “a Leibnizean hallucination in the wake of modal realism…mixing the hallucinogenic properties of possible worlds and the metaphysics of monadology to concoct an unsettling physicality as represented in the pulsating artificiality of the city landscape” (Lewis 49).  Andre Paderewski creates a possible world in which the city is a mechanistic organism: a cyborg of spirits and monads, human creatures and human creations colliding in such a way as to allow the city to have information, perception and memory.  Thus the city becomes a “living unit” (Leibniz 63), as it unifies soul (it breathes through its smoke stacks) and body (the tenements that shell the breath).  Over time, the city of Monata develops rationality.  With reason, it is able to manipulate the information, as it knows everything to which it is connected, that is, all the moving parts of which it is composed.  Unbeknownst to the humans who inhabit the city, they become but infinitesimal parts, each of which has its “own particular movement” (Leibniz 64).

Monadology: The Monadology was written by Leibniz toward the end of his life.  It is divided into 90 sections, or paragraphs, that explain his metaphysics concerning monads, “simple substances which have nothing but perception and appetition,” souls, which have memory, and spirits, which have reason (Leibniz 19).

City: “Just as the same city regarded from different sides offers quite different aspects, and thus appears multiplied by the perspective os it also happens that the infinite multitude of simple substances creates the appearance of as many different universes.  Yet they are but perspectives of a single universe, varied according to the points of view, which differ in each monad.” (Leibniz 57)

Perception: The perceptual system creates the concept of spaciality, and the ability to make inferences about objects in the external world.  The objects of perception, however, are not the things-in-themselves.  Rather, they are mere symbols.  (Helmholtz 1878)

Body: A body is a “relative permanency” (Mach 1886), composed of sensations and properties: colours, sounds, temperatures, and so forth.  These are thus translated through moods of the mind, and are connected and combined through memory (Mach 1886).

Tenements: “Suppose that there be a machine, the structure of which produces thinking, feeling, and perceiving; imagine this machine enlarged but preserving the same proportions, so that you could enter it as if it were a mill.  This being supposed, you might visit its insides; but what would you observe there?  Nothing but parts which push and move each other, and never anything that could explain perception.” (Leibniz 17)

Develops: Development contains change, but not progress.  It is a mechanistic process.  Although there is a certain outcome, it did not come about as a result of any purpose.  Thus a machine can develop, change, through a process.  This change can allow for the machine to develop into something other than a machine.  An automobile, for example, can develop into a chariot.

Parts: The parts of the city are indistinguishable: the humans are the same as the machines, the buildings are the same as the trees.  The pigeons that gather around the fountains are themselves the fountains.  The city breathes through them.  A subtle inhale and exhale that is unobserved from within.