Re:Ask HN: What is a monad?
by samstokes on Sunday December 12, 2010 @01:25PM
(#1997546)
Unfortunately "monad" gets used in a few contexts unrelated to the sense the OP is asking about. Similarly, the (cancelled) TV series Caprica recently started using "monad" to mean "monotheist".
[ Parent
| on HN ]
On the other hand, it seems that if one is willing to propose a similarity between one of the cornerstones of rationalism and the misuse of "monad" by a fictional character on a canceled television series, one might be more open to seeing more direct lines of intellectual descent from an inventor of the calculus to functional programming.
The embedded type system of a programmatic monad remains unchanged despite the monad's combination into higher level structures - a somewhat Leibnizian characteristic.