ABSTRACT
Since Plato, one of the recurrent themes in western philosophy is that there is a fundamental contrast between appearance and reality. Philosophers have often insisted that though the world appears to us as one of blue skies and green grass, these appearances are systematically misleading; the ultimate nature of reality can only be grasped by turning away from the senses and consulting instead the deliverances of pure reason. This tendency to emphasize the misleading nature of appearances is already evident in Descartes, who insists that the physical world is strictly devoid of sensible qualities such as colour, odour, and taste. The tendency is far more marked in Leibniz’s theory of monads, which relegates even the physical world to the status of appearances.
