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Notes -
Read the first five books of Mike Hockney’s The God Game series and started on R. Scott Bakker’s Second Apocalypse series.
The God Game is a fascinating but nutty and somewhat repetitive nonfic books that present a theory of everything based on Leibniz’s monadology. In fact, the author(s) claim to be Illuminati members who have access to Leibniz’s actual beliefs on monadology that he Christianized slightly when he published. Whether or not you believe this should be mostly irrelevant to your enjoyment of the series I think. It’s a good overview of the history of ideas across philosophy, physics, and mathematics. The basic theory they present is a dual-aspect monist idealism where numbers alone have a real ontological status. Monads are basically zeros that contain infinities within them. Some are linked to animals (souls), but there are an infinite number of them. Hockney basically identifies “mind” as the realm of non-extension (0 and infinity) and “matter” as the realm of extension (all the other numbers including imaginary numbers). Space is associated with the real numbers and time with the imaginary ones. Presents a teleology that’s nearly identical to Hegel’s The series is not very well-organized overall but most of the books so far stick with a theme (except for the 2nd). You do have to get past the constant rants about “Abrahamism” and how it’s the stupidest thing humanity ever invented, but overall still really interesting and obviously written by people who have more than a surface-level understanding of the history of ideas.
I'm only 100 pages into Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before. It has been on my list for years and I’m finally getting around to it. Fascinating world so far, and interesting exploration of determinism. Also beautiful prose that's much heavier on people's internal monologue and relatively light on description, just my taste. Might post a longer review when I finish the series, I know it's a Motte/SSC favorite.
Ahh hell yes Second Apocalypse is incredible. Make sure to appreciate my boy Kellhus.
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