ALL meanings of monad
mon·ad
M m - noun monad Biology. any simple, single-celled organism. any of various small, flagellate, colorless ameboids with one to three flagella, especially of the genus Monas. 1
- noun monad Chemistry. an element, atom, or group having a valence of one. Compare dyad (def 3), triad (def 2a). 1
- noun monad Philosophy. (in the metaphysics of Leibniz) an unextended, indivisible, and indestructible entity that is the basic or ultimate constituent of the universe and a microcosm of it. (in the philosophy of Giordano Bruno) a basic and irreducible metaphysical unit that is spatially and psychically individuated. any basic metaphysical entity, especially having an autonomous life. 1
- noun monad a single unit or entity. 1
- noun Technical meaning of monad (theory, functional programming) /mo'nad/ A technique from category theory which has been adopted as a way of dealing with state in functional programming languages in such a way that the details of the state are hidden or abstracted out of code that merely passes it on unchanged. A monad has three components: a means of augmenting an existing type, a means of creating a default value of this new type from a value of the original type, and a replacement for the basic application operator for the old type that works with the new type. The alternative to passing state via a monad is to add an extra argument and return value to many functions which have no interest in that state. Monads can encapsulate state, side effects, exception handling, global data, etc. in a purely lazily functional way. A monad can be expressed as the triple, (M, unitM, bindM) where M is a function on types and (using Haskell notation): unitM :: a -> M a bindM :: M a -> (a -> M b) -> M b I.e. unitM converts an ordinary value of type a in to monadic form and bindM applies a function to a monadic value after de-monadising it. E.g. a state transformer monad: m `bindS` k composes these two state transformers into one while also passing the value of m to k. Monads are a powerful tool in functional programming. If a program is written using a monad to pass around a variable (like the state in the example above) then it is easy to change what is passed around simply by changing the monad. Only the parts of the program which deal directly with the quantity concerned need be altered, parts which merely pass it on unchanged will stay the same. In functional programming, unitM is often called initM or returnM and bindM is called thenM. A third function, mapM is frequently defined in terms of then and return. This applies a given function to a list of monadic values, threading some variable (e.g. state) through the applications: 1
- noun monad A single unit; the number one. 1
- noun monad any fundamental singular metaphysical entity, esp if autonomous 0
- noun monad (in the metaphysics of Leibnitz) a simple indestructible nonspatial element regarded as the unit of which reality consists 0
- noun monad (in the pantheistic philosophy of Giordano Bruno) a fundamental metaphysical unit that is spatially extended and psychically aware 0
- noun monad a single-celled organism, esp a flagellate protozoan 0
- noun monad an atom, ion, or radical with a valency of one 0
- noun monad a unit; something simple and indivisible 0
- noun monad any simple, single-celled organism, specif., a simple type of flagellated protozoan or protist 0
- noun monad any of the four nuclei formed at the completion of meiosis 0
- noun monad a monovalent atom, element, or radical 0
- noun monad an entity or elementary being thought of as a microcosm or ultimate unit 0
- adjective monad of a monad or monads 0