Daily Linz 12 - Fundamental Stuff 3

Daily Linz 12 - Fundamental Stuff 3
by Lindsay Perigo

How to make sense of a world where everything keeps changing on us?! Step into a river and before you can say “Heraclitus” the thing is different. New water, ageing foot. Everything changes, nothing abides. There was a stable force underlying all this mayhem, Heraclitus taught, but it was impenetrable to the senses, accessible only to our collective reason. Thinkers must come to grips with the fact that the world we perceive is a chaos of flux riven with strife driven by contradiction.

Heraclitus’ younger contemporary, Parmenides begged to differ. Prominent some two decades after Herclitus (480 BC-ish), Parmenides founded what we remember as the Eleatic school of philosophy, named after Elea, in southwest Italy, where he spent most of his life.

Parmenides scoffed at the Heracliteans’ preoccupation with change, at the notion that nothing had a fixed identity, that contradictions were ubiquitous. Parmenides was on a mission to rescue reality from change.

"That what is, is, and that it is impossible for it not be, is the way of belief, for truth is its companion. That what is, is not, that I tell you is a path that none can learn of at all, for you can neither know nor utter what is not—that is impossible." The Heracliteans, he said, were "mortals knowing not who wander two-faced. Helplessness guides the wandering thought in their breasts and they are borne along stupefied like men deaf and blind, undiscerning crowds who hold that it is and is not, the same and not the same and that all things travel in opposite directions."

So what was the real skinny on the world, then?

"One path only is left for us to speak of—namely, that It is."

Note the capital 'I.'

Parmenides figured Heraclitus and the Milesians had got it right about there being a “fundamental stuff,” but they were wrong about what it was. It was one thing, but it was everything. As the Musketeers might have put it, all was one and one was all. Contrary to appearances, there are no discrete entities—everything is One. Reality is one solid, undifferentiated, solidly-packed, unchanging plenum. The hell with this Heraclitean “unity-in-diversity” nonsense—there is no diversity, only the Unity.

How did he get to this conclusion? Well, use your scone, says Parmenides. What is, always was, because you can't get being from non-being—you can't get something out of nothing. What is cannot come from what is not. The world, reality, is uncreated—it is eternal. (Equally, you can't get nothing from something. Reality is indestructible.) Now, if you can't get that which is out of that which is not, it follows that change isn’t real. If you confront an oak tree—that which is—you can't say it came from an acorn, because the acorn isn't there—it is that which is not. And you can't get what is from what isn't!

“How, then, can what is be going to be in the future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going to be in the future. Thus is becoming extinguished and passing away not to be heard of.”

But hey, wait a minute, Parmenides! We see acorns becoming oak trees. We see change taking place! What’s the matter with you?! What gives?

Hehehehehe, says Parmenides. What’s the matter with you, more like it! What gives is that change is an illusion. Didn’t I just demonstrate that logically it has to be?! If your senses tell you that change is occurring, then that just goes to show that your senses are deceiving you! Reason tells you change can’t be occurring!

Parmenides drives a wedge between the senses, appearances and what he calls mere opinions based thereon, on the one hand, and reason and reality on the other.

Heraclitus has said in effect—there is one reality but its expression is constant flux governed by laws from that reality. Human senses are trapped in the flux, but human reason can tap into the underlying reality. Parmenides says in effect—that's right, apart from the flux part. Reason tells us there is only one thing that cannot change; reason tells us our senses must be deluding us.

As Objectivists we might say that with Heraclitus the reason/senses reality/appearance dichotomy-virus is incipient; with Parmenides it becomes full-blown.

It is said that Einstein held a Parmenidean view of the universe. Bryan Magee cites Karl Popper having a conversation with Einstein in which he actually called him “Parmenides,” with Einstein not demurring. I’ll leave it to the scientists in our midst to have fun with that. For present, purely philosophical purposes, we should simply note how early the above-mentioned dichotomies that dog us to this day were kicking in.

Parmenides wasn’t getting it all his own way, however. There were other kids on the block.

Next week—the Pythagoreans.

To be continued ...

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