[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Re: 20 years ago

[Peter Gammie]

On 28/07/2009, at 12:59 PM, Richard O'Keefe wrote:

> On Jul 28, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Peter Gammie wrote:
>>
>> But Richard (or am I arguing with Kay?) - monads don't interact.
>
> You're arguing with Alan Kay here:  the reference to Leibniz
> was his.  The key link here is (Wikipedia): " Leibniz allows
> just one type of element in the build of the universe" (sic.).
> In precisely the same way, Alan Kay allowed just one kind of
> 'thing' in his computational universe: object.  Just as in
> the lambda calculus, everything is a function and in set theory
> everything is a set, so in Smalltalk _everything_ (including
> classes and the number 42 and anonymous functions) is an object.

Yea gods, that's the thinnest use of monads ever. The concept that  
lead to idealism, away from mind-body dualism is reduced to ...  
monism. Awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism

He could've cited just about any of the major philosophies for that -  
and I'm not going to talk about religions.

>> How are you going to relate Leibniz's monads and Haskell's? I can't  
>> find my way, neatly or otherwise. :-P
>
> Verbally.

Sure, but I was hoping you'd explain why Wadler uses the pineal gland  
allusions in his COMPREHENDING MONADS (capitals denoting paper title).  
That structure was *exactly* what Leibniz was doing his best to avoid  
in his monadology.

I think Wadler was making a joke.

cheers
peter