The MONAD Paradigm

MONAD – A New Paradigm of Time.

According to Wikipedia, a paradigm shift is defined as “a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline; [and often includes] a profound change in a fundamental model or perception of events.” The MONAD Calendar-Clock app represents A New Paradigm of Time, presenting a fundamentally new model of planet-centered space & time. Now, before we consider this new paradigm of time, let’s re-consider:

The Current Paradigm of Mechanical Time.

Marshall McLuhan said that only the alphabet was a more important invention then the mechanical clock. Mechanical time has been around for 100’s of years. The first gravity driven mechanical clock was described in 1335, almost 7 centuries ago. In 1370, equal hours (measured by mechanical clocks) replaced seasonal hours (measured by sun dials) in Paris by Royal decree, a good indication that mechanical time was becoming more important than so-called natural time. The first spring driven mechanical clock was invented in 1410.

The year 1543 is considered the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, when Copernicus published Concerning the Revolution of Heavenly Bodies. In 1589 Galileo started systematically studying falling bodies, marking the beginning of Experimental Science, and half a century later, in 1641, Galileo designed the first pendulum-regulated clock. He died the next year, the same year Isaac Newton was born. By 1660 the pendulum-regulated clock mechanism was regular enough to include a minute hand. The second hand wasn’t far behind, with shorter and shorter intervals of time being accurately measured and considered, and it is no coincidence that Newton discovered calculus (based on infinitely shortened intervals) just a few years later, in 1665.

Newton released his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy in 1687. In it, he utilized the concept of a universal force of gravity to explain, among other things, exactly why the Sun is at the center of the solar system. He made it clear that the solar system and universe move according to fundamental laws of force, like any physical mechanism. Since the time of Newton, our main model of the universe is known as the “clockwork universe,” which compares the universe to a mechanical clock. It continues ticking along forever, a perfect machine, its gears governed by the laws of physics, making every aspect of the machine predictable.

In the Preface of his great book, which made possible the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of mechanical invention which soon followed, he defined two types of time: 1) mathematical or “true” time which “flows equably without relation to anything external” – mechanical time. And 2) relative time which is “some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time . . . .” The solar day, lunar month and seasonal year are all examples of relative time, which can also be thought of as natural or biological time. (When Newton says that relative time is commonly used instead of true time, he is acknowledging that the vast majority of people still didn’t have access to mechanical clocks in his day.)

Newton focused all of his attention on true or mathematical time, the type of time measured by mechanical clocks. It was clear to him that the more accurately you could measure elapsed time between events (duration), the more effectively you could predict and control outcomes. From this time on, accurately measuring time intervals became more and more important, and the relationship of time to “anything external” in nature was seemingly forgotten.

In 1714 Gottfried Leibniz, who independently discovered calculus, wrote the first book describing hologramic reality, called The Monadology. A monad, (from the Greek monas, “unit”), is an elementary individual substance that hologramically reflects the order of the world around it, and from which material properties are derived. A monad is a centered object. Atoms are monadic. Celestial bodies like planets and stars are monadic. Chakras are monadic. The celestial sphere is the skin of a monad. Molecules are micro-scale monadic (composite) structures. Solar systems are macro-scale monadic (composite) structures.

In 1781 James Watt improved the steam engine, the first prime mover (motor), signalling the start of the Industrial Revolution. Lewis Mumford, the famous philosopher of technology, named the mechanical clock – not the steam engine – as the crucial invention that launched the Industrial Revolution.

In 1905 Albert Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. As far as I can tell, Albert Einstein, who supposedly knew a lot about time, never talked much about biological or natural time. Here is how Einstein defines a clock in The Evolution of Physics: “What is a clock? The primitive, subjective feeling of time flow enables us to order our impressions, to judge that one event takes place earlier, another later. But to show that the time interval between two events is 10 seconds, a clock is needed. By the use of a clock the time concept becomes objective. Any physical phenomenon may be used as a clock, provided it can be exactly repeated as many times as desired. Taking the interval between the beginning and the end of such an event as one unit of time, arbitrary time-intervals may be measured by repetition of this physical process. All clocks, from the simple hourglass to the most refined instruments, are based on this idea.”

For Einstein, the most important quality of a clock was its regularity. Einstein imagined three dimensional space filled with mechanical clocks placed at strategic locations, measuring local time. But if the solar system is itself a cosmic calendar-clock, where time exists hologramically throughout the system, this radically changes the way you think of and measure time.

A New Paradigm of Time

Since the Industrial Revolution, there are two types of time – mechanical time & natural or biological time. Most people, including most scientists, have forgotten all about natural time and think that only mechanical time exists. Without a clock or watch, most people couldn’t tell you what time it is. This is a very strange state of affairs because natural time existed long before mechanical time.

Our bodies are biological calendar-clocks. You can measure the passage of time by counting heart beats or your pulse, or your breath. It’s not highly regular like a mechanical clock; biological time is subjective, not objective. But that doesn’t make it wrong. Just different.

The Solar System is also a natural clock. You can measure the passage of time by counting solar days, lunar months and seasonal years. You can determine the time of day by considering the length and direction of shadows cast by the Sun, or when certain birds are singing. Once again, these astronomical, planetary events are not highly regular like a mechanical clock, but they are perhaps even more important because of it.

It may not be obvious, but the solar day, lunar month and seasonal year are units of biological time, involving the variable distribution of light, emanated from the Sun and reflected off of the Moon, to photosynthetic plants growing on the surface of Earth. These astronomical, planetary rhythms are biological rhythms of the living Earth.

Now, you may be wondering, Is it a new paradigm to shift back to an older model? According to the definition, a paradigm shift can only take place within a scientific discipline. Galileo is considered the Father of Science so the original shift from natural, biological time to mechanical time was not a shift from one scientific model to a new and different scientific model. There was no scientific model of biological time in place before mechanical time became the predominant model (paradigm) of time.

A Profound Change in a Fundamental Model.

MONAD does make use of “an older model,” specifically it features planet Earth at the center of a celestial sphere, which has been around forever. But the celestial sphere employed by MONAD is highly modified. One modification is that the north and south “ends” of the celestial sphere have been removed, leaving a celestial ring centered on the celestial equator. (This is only possible because this celestial ring is a virtual object.) In addition, four very significant, never-before-described Components have been added to the model:

1. A time zone-spanning Hour Hand, which is automatically placed at the User’s location on the globe, marking the time zone (longitude) & latitude of the User. This Hour Hand tells mean solar time, and points at:
2. A 24 Hour Time Dial, which is located in the plane of the celestial equator, where clock time is measure. [This 24 Hour Time Dial is one of two temporal coordinate system used by MONAD. The other is the 12 Signs of the Zodiac, which are 30º segments measured along the ecliptic, and serve as the months of a seasonal year. The Sun appears to make a complete circle of the ecliptic over the course of a seasonal year, passing through one sign after another. MONAD also uses 2 spatial coordinate systems: longitude & latitude marking the terrestrial globe, and declination & right ascension marking the celestial sphere.]
3. A Calendar Band, marking the months of the year and the days of the month, is applied to the north and south ends of the celestial ring. And
4. A celestial meridian passing through the Sun is given the form of an indicator arrow, which serves as the Date Indicator, which points at the day of the month marked on the Calendar Band. This Date Indicator (passing through the center of the Sun) is fixed at noon at the top of the 24 hour Dial. The Date Indicator translates time of year, measured by the apparent progression of the Sun along the ecliptic, into time of year measured along the celestial equator, where clock time is measure.

And of course what is really new about MONAD is that all of the astronomical activity (the movement of the Earth, Sun, Moon and planets), is driven by computer generated, highly accurate Astronomical Algorithms, created by Jean Meeus. The complexity of all this interconnected activity is such that it is extremely unlikely that a mechanical model of MONAD will ever be built, although a very simple mechanical model showing just the Earth, Sun, Moon and stars can be built.

Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, describes how “The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgement leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.” So let’s do that, let’s compare mechanical time and natural time with nature, and see which is better.

Comparison With Nature

This hardly seems fair, but let’s do it anyway. Mechanical time, as measured by mechanical clocks, is highly regular or invariable, linear, abstract, artificial, over-fragmented and mostly dead. Which is not to say that it’s not useful. In fact, it is useful precisely because it doesn’t compare to nature. The invariable nature of mechanical time allows us to better understand the variable nature of nature.

A solar day as measured by a Sun dial is a variable length of time, due to the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit (i.e. the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, meaning that the Earth–Sun distance varies throughout the year), and the fact that the Earth’s axis is not perpendicular to the plane of its orbit (the so-called obliquity of the ecliptic). In September the Sun takes less time (as measured by an accurate mechanical clock) to make an apparent revolution around the Earth than it does in December; a solar day can be 21 seconds less or 29 seconds more than 24 hours of mechanical clock time.

A mean solar day is the average length of a day over the course of a seasonal year. A mean solar day is the most important unit of time, which is divided into 24 hours, with each hour divided into 60 minutes and each minute divided into 60 seconds. So one second is equal to 1/86,400th of a mean solar day. And it’s fairly easy to make a mechanical clock, especially a quarts clock or an atomic clock, reproduce this precise one second interval indefinitely.

Also, we have discovered that the rotation of Earth, and its orbit, changes slightly over time. Earth’s rotation is slowing ever so slightly. So measuring a second based on rotation of the Earth would mean that a second would get slowly longer over time. Ultimately, we couldn’t accurately compare the second of today to the second of yesterday.

Modern scientists would like a truly timeless (abstract) measure of a second, one which “flows equably without relation to anything external.” So in the 1950s scientists created a “better” second, one based not on astronomical processes but on the movement of fundamental bits of matter — atoms — whose subtle vibrations are, for all intents and purposes, locked in for eternity. Today, one second is defined as “9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom”. This new second will now remain permanently fixed. Current atomic clocks are so accurate that they won’t lose a second for more than 300 million years.

These permanently fixed, highly regular seconds are very useful to modern science, especially since the Computer Revolution, which started in 1947 with the invention of the transistor. They make it possible to calibrate computers and GPS systems, among other things. And to get faster processors and better positioning systems, we’ll need even more accurate systems of time-keeping. But if the rate of rotation of the Earth ever significantly changes, we will still define an hour as 1/24th of a mean solar day and a second as 1/86,400th of a mean solar day.

So mechanical time is useful, no doubt about it, but the relative, natural time based on astronomical, planetary events also has an incredibly important role to play in our lives and human society. Time is not just some arbitrarily agreed upon construct useful for accurately measuring intervals between events. It has huge meaning to us as living beings. A solar day has immense significance to all beings living on the Earth, especially plants, which are photosynthetic. A solar day is an agricultural, ecological biorhythm which our human lives, in fact all animal lives, depend on.

Sun light is as important to plants as oxygen is to the cells making up our bodies. All of our agreed upon units of time and date (the solar day, lunar month and seasonal year) are actually planetary biorhythms, involving the variable distribution of light, from the Sun and (reflected off the) Moon, to photosynthetic plants growing on the surface of Earth. The repeating solar day (night followed by day) is equivalent to the beating of our heart. Refer to this page, Heart of the Solar System, for more information.

These planetary biorhythms (the solar day, lunar month and seasonal year) are so important to our biological survival that we use to celebrate them with world wide seasonal festivals, joyously celebrated all around the globe. But now we mostly ignore them, as we ignore the pollution which is spreading all around the globe, the destruction of the rain forest and other hugely important ecosystems, along with the ongoing destruction of biological diversity, and the impact all of this is having on climate.

This is the value of the MONAD Calendar-Clock, featuring planet Earth (with a time zone-spanning Hour Hand) at the center of a time- and date-telling celestial ring; it restores the Earth, it’s biorhythms and biosphere, back to the center of our collective attention and awareness. MONAD measures and demonstrates these planetary biorhythms, and reminds us all of what is important – that thing we all share in common, at the center of all of our lives: planet Earth and the planetary biosphere, which sustains all life. One last comparison:

MONAD vs. the Ordinary (Mechanical) Clock & Calendar

There’s really no comparison. And by the way, a paradigm shift doesn’t invalidate and disprove the prior model. It incorporates and expands on the previous model. And this is what MONAD does. It tells the time and date just like a regular, mechanical clock and calendar – you could set your watch by it, but it also demonstrates the natural, astro-biological rhythms that our clock time is based on: the solar day, lunar month and seasonal year.

There is no downside to using MONAD. Well, maybe a little bit. It does require you to get used to a 24 hour dial (don’t worry, it’s a lot better once you get used to it), and if you live in the northern hemisphere of Earth, then you have to get used to the fact that the Hour Hand advances in a counter clockwise fashion. And the Calendar Band is also different. Most calendars you are familiar with show a full calendar year, which starts January 1 and ends December 31, with either 365 or, on leap years, 366 days in a year. The MONAD Calendar Band, by comparison, always shows about 6 months of past dates and 6 months of future dates, exactly 365.24219 day blocks, which is the precise number of mean solar days in a seasonal year.

But is that really such an imposition? Isn’t it worth it for you to be able to see your unique place in planet-centered space and time? That little green sphere at the base of the Hour Hand; that represents your location on the globe. You see all 24 time zones, all around the globe, all at the same time. You see how we are all interconnected, all the time. Natural time is the type of time told by nature and natural processes. It is cyclic, variable, biological and astronomical. Natural, biological time is always slightly irregular and variable, because it is part of a network of interconnected events that are mutually interdependent.

The model we have of reality determines to a large extent how we see and interpret everything around us. Now because we use a mechanical, non-living clock and calendar to model the universe or “reality,” we’re desperately searching for life “out there” and so far we haven’t come close to finding it. And we never will as long as our model of reality is a dead, mechanical clockwork universe. But if we change our model to the biological rhythms demonstrated by MONAD, then all of a sudden you start to see life everywhere.

A new paradigm always emerges to meet the changing needs of society, and at this time, one of our greatest needs is for the integration of opposing views that are seemingly at war with each other. East vs. west. Black vs. white. Democrat vs. Republican. Man vs. woman. If we don‘t find some way to integrate these opposing viewpoints, it feels like we’re going to kill each other, and maybe wipe out the planetary biosphere at the same time. So let’s start this reintegration process by re-integrating mechanical time with natural, biological time. It’s time for MONAD.

Key Words & Concepts Defining The New Paradigm of Time:

• ChronoBiology. ChronoAstroBiology.
• Chakras. Earth is heart planet, or heart chakra. Heart of the Solar System. (When searching for life on other planets, it’s not enough to search for a single planet. What you need is a Solar System of planets, forming a chain of chakras.)
• Scientific Astrology and planetary magnetospheres, part of the solar system magnetoform. A morphogenetic field of information.
• Polarity. Ida & Pingala. Swara Yoga. Autonomic Alternation.
• MetaGaia: an important expansion of the Gaia hypothesis. Earth is not an organism but an organ system within the body of the solar system; a photosynthetic, cosmic-scale organism.
• Monadic structures at various scales: molecules, solar systems.
• Integration of space and time utilizing spatial and temporal coordinate systems.