Gabriel Tarde
Monadology and So
Monadology
and Sociology
ciology
re.press
Edited & translated by
Theo Lorenc
Open Access Statement – Please Read
This book is Open Access. This work is not simply an electronic book; it is the open access version of a work that exists in a number of forms, the traditional printed form being one of them.
Copyright Notice
This work is ‘Open Access’, published under a creative commons license which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form and that you in no way alter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without express permission of the author and the publisher of this volume. Furthermore, for any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see the details of the creative commons licence at this website: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/
This means that you can:
•
read and store this document free of charge
•
distribute it for personal use free of charge
•
print sections of the work for personal use
•
read or perform parts of the work in a context where no financial transactions take place
However, you cannot:
•
gain financially from the work in anyway
•
sell the work or seek monies in relation to the distribution of the work
•
use the work in any commercial activity of any kind
•
profit a third party indirectly via use or distribution of the work
•
distribute in or through a commercial body (with the exception of academic usage within educational institutions such as schools and universities)
•
reproduce, distribute or store the cover image outside of its function as a cover of this work
•
alter or build on the work outside of normal academic scholarship
Cover Art
The artwork on the cover of this book is not open access and falls under traditional copyright provisions and thus cannot be reproduced in any way without written permission of the artists and their agents. The cover can be displayed as a complete cover image for the purposes of publicizing this work; however, the artwork cannot be extracted from the context of the cover of this specific work without breaching the artist’s copyright.
Support re.press / Purchasing Books
The PDF you are reading is an electronic version of a physical book that can be purchased through any bookseller (including on-line stores), through the normal book supply channels, or re.press directly. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university purchase a physical printed copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself.
If you have any questions please contact the publisher:
re.press
PO Box 40
Prahran, 3181
Victoria
Australia
info@re-press.org
www.re-press.org
MONADOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
TRANSMISSION
Transmission denotes the
transfer of information,
objects or forces from one
place to another, from
one person to another.
Transmission implies
urgency, even emergency:
a line humming, an alarm
sounding, a messenger
bearing news. Through
Transmission interven-
tions are supported, and
opinions overturned.
Transmission republishes
classic works in philoso-
phy, as it publishes works
that re-examine classical
philosophical thought.
Transmission is the name
for what takes place.
MONADOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Gabriel Tarde
edited & translated by Theo Lorenc
re.press Melbourne 2012
re.press
PO Box 40, Prahran, 3181, Melbourne, Australia
http://www.re-press.org
© re.press 2012
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
This work is ‘Open Access’, published under a creative commons license which means that you are free to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors, that you do not use this work for any commercial gain in any form whatsoever and that you in no way alter, transform or build on the work outside of its use in normal academic scholarship without express permission of the author (or their executors) and the publisher of this volume. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. For more information see the details of the creative commons licence at this website:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Author: Tarde, Gabriel de, 1843-1904.
Title: Monadology and sociology / Gabriel Tarde ; translated by
Theo Lorenc with afterword and notes.
ISBN: 9780980819724 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9780980819731 (ebook : pdf)
Series: Transmission.
Subjects: Sociology--Philosophy.
Monadology.
Other Authors/Contributors:
Lorenc, Theo.
Dewey Number: 301.01
Designed and Typeset by A&R
This book is produced sustainably using plantation timber, and printed in the destination market reducing wastage and excess transport.
CONteNtS
Afterword: tarde’s Pansocial Ontology
v
trANSLAtOr’S PrefACe
The text used for this translation is the 1895 edition of Monadologie et Sociologie, in Gabriel Tarde (1895) Essais et mélanges sociologiques, Lyon, A. Storck / Paris, G. Masson, pp. 309-389. This text is a re-worked and expanded version of an article published in 1893 as
‘Monads and Social Science’ (‘Les Monades et la Science Sociale’),
Revue Internationale de Sociologie, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 157-173 and vol.
1, no. 3, pp. 231-246. The earlier version corresponds to chapters I,
IV, V and VI of the 1895 text. A small amount of material is in the
earlier version of the text but not the later version; this is given in
the notes to this translation (minor stylistic variants between the
two are not noted).
Two modern editions of the original text are available: Éric
Alliez (ed.), Le Plessis, Institut Synthélabo, 1999; M. Bergeron
(ed.), Québec, Cégep, 2002, available at http://classiques.uqac.ca/
classiques/tarde_gabriel/monadologie/monadologie.html).
These editions give no sources of Tarde’s citations; J. Sarnes and
M. Schillmeier’s German translation (Gabriel Tarde, M onadologie
und Soziologie, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 2009) gives a few but not
all. I have attempted to trace all the citations, without complete
success; however, it is likely that some passages marked as cita-
tions in the text are paraphrases rather than verbatim quotes.
References given are to English translations where available.
Tarde uses the masculine gender throughout when referring
to persons in general; the translation conforms to this usage.
I would like to thank Isaac Marrero-Guillamón and Dan Cryan
for their assistance.
1
MONADOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
MONADOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY
Hypotheses fingo 1
I
The monads, children of Leibniz, have come a long way since their
birth. By several independent paths, unremarked by scientists
themselves, they slip into the heart of contemporary science. It
is a remarkable fact that all the secondary hypotheses implicit in
this great hypothesis, at least in its essentials if not in its strictly
Lebnizian form, are now being proved scientifically. The hypoth-
esis implies both the reduction of two entities, matter and mind,
to a single one, such that they are merged in the latter, and at the
same time a prodigious multiplication of purely mental agents in
the world. In other words, it implies both the discontinuity of the
elements and the homogeneity of their being. Moreover, it is only
on these two conditions that the universe is wholly transparent to
the gaze of the intellect. Now, on the one hand, as a result of hav-
ing been sounded a thousand times and judged unfathomable, the
abyss which separates movement and consciousness, object and
subject, the mechanical and the logical, has at length been called
once more into question, relegated to the status of an appearance,
and finally denied altogether by the bravest souls, who have been
echoed from every quarter. On the other hand, the progress of
chemistry leads us to affirm the atom and to deny the material
continuity which the continuous character of the physical and liv-
ing manifestations of matter, extension, movement and growth
1. [Trans. Note: The epigraph references Newton’s famous tag ‘ hypotheses non fingo’ (I make no hypotheses), in the General Scholium to the Principia Mathematica.]
5
6
Monadology and Sociology
seem superficially to reveal. There is nothing more profoundly
surprising than the combination of chemical substances in defi-
nite proportions, to the exclusion of any intermediate proportion.
Here there is no evolution and no transition: the dividing lines are
clear and stark; and yet hence arises everything which is supple
and harmoniously graduated in phenomena, almost as if the con-
tinuity of nuances were impossible without the discontinuity of
colours. The path of chemistry is not the only one which seems to
lead us in its progress to the monads; so too do physics, the natural
sciences, history, and even mathematics. As Lange says: ‘Of great
importance, not only for this demonstration, but also especially for
its far-reaching consequences, was Newton’s assumption that the
gravitation of a planet is only the sum of the gravitation of all its
individual portions. From this immediately flowed the inference
that the terrestrial bodies gravitate towards each other; and fur-
ther, that even the smallest particles of these masses attract each
other’.2 With this viewpoint, which was much more original than
it seems today, Newton broke, and indeed pulverized the individu-
ality of the celestial body, which had until then been regarded as a
superior unity whose internal relations bore no resemblance to its
relations with other bodies. Great strength of mind was required
to resolve this apparent unity into a multiplicity of distinct ele-
ments linked to each other in the same way as they are linked to
the elements of other aggregates. The beginning of the progress
of physics and astronomy can be dated to the day when this view-
point replaced the contrary prejudice.
In this respect the founders of cellular theory have shown
themselves to be Newton’s true heirs. In the same way they have
broken apart the unity of the living body, they have resolved it into
a prodigious number of elementary organisms, isolated and egois-
tic, eager ( avides) to develop themselves at the expense of the exterior, where the exterior includes their neighbouring brother cells
as well as the inorganic particles of air, water, and all other sub-
stances. Schwann’s3 position on this point has been no less fer-
tile than Newton’s. Thanks to his cellular theory, we know that
‘there is no vital force, as a principle distinct from matter, either
2. [Trans. Note: Ludwig Lange (1863-1936), History of Materialism: And Criticism of its Present Importance, vol. I, trans. E. C. Thomas, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1925, p. 311.]
3. [Trans. Note: Theodor Schwann (1810-1882) was one of the key early proponents of the theory that all living organisms are made up of cells.]
Gabriel tarde
7
in the entirety of the organism, or in each cell. All phenomena of
vegetable or animal life must be explained by the properties of atoms
[let us say of the ultimate elements from which atoms are com-
posed], whether these be the known forces of inert nature or forc-
es hitherto unknown’.4 There is surely nothing more positivist or better conformed to a healthy and serious science than this radical negation of the vital principle, against which vulgar spiritual-
ism likes to protest. However, it is clear where this tendency will
lead us, if drawn to its logical conclusion: to the monads, which
fulfil the most daring promises of Leibnizian spiritualism. Like
the vital principle, illness, which was treated as a person by the
ancient medical writers, has been pulverized into a great number
of infinitesimal disorders of the histological elements. Moreover,
thanks primarily to the discoveries of Pasteur, the parasitic theo-
ry of illness, which explains these disorders by means of the in-
ternal conflicts of miniscule organisms, finds more general appli-
cation every day, and indeed excessively so, to the point where it
should provoke some reaction. But parasites, too, have their para-
sites. And so on. The infinitesimal again!
The new theories in chemistry have been formed along anal-
ogous lines. As Wurtz says: ‘This is the new and essential point.
The properties of the radicals are referred to the elements themselves.
Formerly they were considered as a whole. To the radical regarded
as a whole was attributed the power of combining with or of being
substituted for simple bodies. This was the fundamental point of
view of Gerhardt’s theory of types. We now go further. To discov-
er and define the properties of radicals we go back to the atoms of
which they are composed’.5 This eminent chemist’s thought goes
further than our remarks above. The examples which he cites
demonstrate that, among the atoms of a radical, there is one in
particular on whose atomicity and as yet unsatisfied avidity, out-
lasting the saturation of all the others, the combination which is
produced ultimately depends.
Like stars, like living things, like illnesses, like chemical radi-
cals, nations are nothing more than entities which have long been
4. [Trans. Note: These two sentences are marked as a citation in the text, but appear to be not a verbatim quote but a summary paraphrase of the final section (‘Theory of the Cells’) of T. Schwann, Microscopical researches into the accordance in the structure and growth of animals and plants, trans. H. Smith, London, Sydenham Society, 1847.]
5. [Trans. Note: A. Wurtz, The Atomic Theory, trans. E. Cleminshaw, London, Kegan Paul, 1880, pp. 265-266 (Tarde’s emphasis).]
8
Monadology and Sociology
taken for true beings in the ambitious and sterile theories of so-
called philosophical historians. Has it not, for example, been suf-
ficiently repeated that it is foolish to seek the cause of a political or social revolution in the influence of writers, of statesmen, or of any
kind of instigator, and that it rather springs spontaneously from
the genius of the race, from the bowels of the people, that anony-
mous and superhuman agent? But this convenient point of view,
which consists in mistakenly seeing the creation of a new being
in a phenomenon generated by the encounter of real beings (albe-
it a genuinely new and unforeseen phenomenon), can be upheld
only provisionally. Having been rapidly exhausted by the literary
abuses it has suffered, it is conducive to a serious return towards a
clearer and more positive form of explanation, which accounts for
a given historical event only by individual actions, and particularly
by the action of inventive men who served as a model for others
and reproduced thousands of copies of themselves, like mother-
cells of the social body.
This is not all: these ultimate elements which form the final
stage of every science, the social individual, the living cell, the
chemical atom, are ultimate only from the point of view of their
particular science. They themselves, as we know, are composite,
not excepting the atom itself which, according to Thomson’s hy-
pothesis of the ‘vortex atom’,6 the most plausible or the least un-
acceptable of the conjectures which have been attempted on this
subject, would be a whirling mass of simpler elements. Lockyer’s7
studies of solar and stellar spectra have led him to suppose—and
the conjecture seems probable—that certain weak lines observed
by him are due to the elements of which are composed certain sub-
stances that on our planet are regarded as incomposite.
Scientists who live in daily contact with the so-called elements
have no doubt of their complexity. While Wurtz shows himself to
be favourable to Thomson’s hypothesis, Berthelot says for his part:
‘The deeper study of the elementary masses which, on our cur-
rent understanding, constitute the simple bodies leads every day
more and more to an understanding of them not as indivisible at-
oms, homogenous and admitting of movement only as a whole,
6. [Trans. Note: J. J. Thomson’s ‘nebular’ or ‘vortex atom’ theory, prior to the discovery of the electron, posited that the atom consisted of nebular ‘vortices’ in the ether. As of the writing of Monadology and Sociology, little was known of the internal structure of the atom.]
7. [Trans. Note: Norman Lockyer (1836-1920), astronomer and pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy.]
Gabriel tarde
9
but as highly complex constructions, furnished with a specific ar-chitecture and animated by highly varied internal movements’.8
Physiologists, for their part, do not maintain that the protoplasm
is a homogenous substance, and judge only the solid part of the
cell to be active and truly living. The soluble part, almost in its en-
tirety, is nothing but a storehouse for fuel and nourishment (or a
mass of excrement). Moreover, a better understanding of the solid
part itself would doubtless lead us to eliminate almost everything
from it. And, where will this process of elimination finish if not
at a geometrical point, that is, at pure nothingness? Unless, as we
will explain below, this point is a centre. And, in fact, in the true
histological element (which is designated only improperly by the
word ‘cell’) what it is essential to take into account is not its limit
or envelope, but rather the central focus whence it seems to aspire
to radiate indefinitely until the day when the cruel experience of
external obstacles obliges it to close in on itself in order to preserve
its being; but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
There is no way to call a halt to this descent to the infinitesi-
mal, which, most unexpectedly, becomes the key to the entire uni-
verse. This may explain the growing importance of the infinitesi-
mal calculus; and, for the same reason, the stunning and rapid
success of the theory of evolution. In this theory, a specific form
is, as a geometer would say, the integral of innumerable differen-
tials called individual variations, which are themselves due to cel-
lular variations, whose basis consists of a myriad of elementary
changes. The source, reason, and ground of the finite and separate
is in the infinitely small, in the imperceptible: this is the profound
conviction which inspired Leibniz, and continues to inspire our
transformists.
But why should such a transformation, which is incomprehen-
sible if presented as a sum of definite and discrete differences, be
readily understood if we consider it as a sum of infinitely small
differences? We must show first of all that this is a real contrast.
Suppose that, by some miracle, a body disappears and is annihilat-
ed from the place A where it was, then appears and comes back into
being at the place Z a metre away from A, without having traversed the intermediate positions: such a displacement is beyond the power of our mind to grasp, while we would never be astonished to see
this body move from A to Z along a line of juxtaposed positions.
8. [Trans. Note: Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907), chemist. The citation has not been traced.]
10
Monadology and Sociology
However, note that in the first case, we would have been no less
amazed had we seen such an abrupt disappearance and reappear-
ance take place over a distance of half a metre, or of 30, of 20, of
10, of 2 centimetres, or of any perceptible fraction of a millime-
tre. Our reason, if not our imagination, would be just as struck
in the last case as in the original example. In the same way, if we
are presented with two distinct living species, be they very distant
or closely related, a fungus and a labiate herb, or two herbs of the
same genus, in neither case will it be comprehensible that one
could suddenly and with no transition turn into the other. But, if
we were to be told that by hybridization the fertilized ovule of the
one had undergone a deviation, extremely slight at first and then
gradually increasing, from its habitual pathway, we would have no
difficulty in accepting this. It will be argued that the inconceiv-
ability of the first hypothesis is due to a prejudice which has been
formed in us by the association of ideas. Nothing could be truer,
and precisely this proves that reality, the source of the experience
which gave birth to this prejudice, conforms to the explanation of
the finite by the infinitesimal. For pure reason, and still more rea-
son alone, would never have guessed at this hypothesis; it would
even, perhaps, be more inclined to see in the large the source of
the small than in the small the source of the large, and it would
gladly believe in divine forms which are complete ab initio, which could envelop a clod of earth all at once and penetrate it from the
outside to the inside. It would even willingly agree with Agassiz9
that, from the outset, trees have been forests, bees hives, men na-
tions. Science has been able to eliminate this point of view only by
the rebellion of contrary facts. To mention only the most obvious,
it is the case that an immense sphere of light spread through space
is due to the unique vibration, multiplied by contagion, of one cen-
tral atom of ether,10—that the entire population of a species origi-
nates from the prodigious multiplication of one unique first ovu-
lary cell, in a kind of generative radiation,—that the presence of
the correct astronomical theory in millions of human brains is
due to the multiplied repetition of an idea which appeared one day
in a cerebral cell of Newton’s brain. But, once more, what follows
9. [Trans. Note: Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), palaeontologist. Tarde’s reference is to Agassiz’ defence of special creation––the position that animal species and human ‘races’ were separately created by God––and of the fixity and unchangeabil-ity of the species thus created.]
10. [Trans. Note: The ether, in the physics of Tarde’s time, is the all-pervading substance which serves as the medium through which light propagates.]
Gabriel tarde
11
from this? If the infinitesimal differed from the finite only by degree, if at the basis of things as a