What do you think? Why?
Feeling Heraclitian? If so, you may enjoy a few of his cryptic sayings.
"Death is all things we see awake; all we see asleep is sleep."
"Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child".
"The way up and down are one and the same."
I don't like this one--
"The same... living and dead, and the waking and sleeping, and young and old."
I really like this one for it's masterful brevity--
"It is disease that makes health sweet and good, hunger satiety, weariness rest."
What do you think? Why?
What about Parmenides. Anthony Gottlieb says "He (Parmenides) held that one cannot meaningfully think or say anything about 'what is not'. In his view, this would amount ot speaking of nothing, and a man who speaks or thinks of nothing does not succeed in speaking or thinking at all." (The Dream of Reason, p. 26).
Ok, that is his hypothesis, ready yourself for some wild (but very logical) conclusions.
1. Everything is Eternal.
2. Nothing can Change.
3. Nothing Moves.
Now before you dismiss this as nonsense (as it evidently is to our common sense), address his hypothesis. What do you think? Why?
For dessert, some Zenian paradox.
In loyal defense of his teacher Parmenides, Zeno came up with some ingenious paradoxes which seem to deny the reality of motion. The passage of the ages, and the development of the Calculus have brought a few issues to light, but the paradoxes continue to be what they originally were, "paradoxical".
1. Zeno approached the famous runner Achilles at a national greek tournament before the start of a foot-race. Beginning to reason with him, Zeno seems to pursue the following line of reasoning. Before Achilles can run the full distance, he must run half, and before he can run half, he must run 1/4, and before he can run that distance, he must run 1/8 the distance ad infinitum. Achilles is in trouble. He evidently must cross an infinite number of distances before he may reach the finish. How is motion even possible?
2. The second paradox imagines an arrow in flight. For the sake of theory, imagine the arrow frozen in a particular moment, and in a particular section of space exactly the length of the arrow. As you analyze each instant in the flight of the arrow, you realize that in each moment, the arrow occupies a different space. When does the arrow have time to move?
What do you think? Why?
posted by Jonas at 12:34 PM
5 Comments:
More on this post later, (I should be studying for and accounting test)
Since the Greeks, we have become more comfortable talking about nothing. What Parmenidies claimed was impossible is now (apparently) only a semantic trick. Nothing has a very real identity. Without it, our thoughts would amount to nothing!
These claims are like fingers on chalk to our finite minds, but that's paradox for you. Maybe we havn't solved the Greek paradoxes--we've just welcomed their usefulness with open arms.
Indeed, Plato would have agreed with you. He destroyed Parmenides' notions with the semantic scalpel, differentiating between the various types of "nothing".
The paradoxes are still masterful, although the concept of a "limit" has done something for our understanding. Maybe johonn or some other math wizz can clarify.
we need more words to describe life.
indeed.
but that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep struggling to find the words, or the combination of words, which fit best.
Words wouldn't be a problem if we were capable of better conceptualization. We don't need more words. We need more brains.
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