Parmenides

Parmenides

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

The first physicists and cosmologists to use the new geometric method of deductive reasoning from self-evident starting positions found that their logical conclusions clashed with the real world experience they had. The problem of perception was born.

Parmenides was consumed with the problem of change.

Parmenides started with monism and added two tautologies:
1) What is, is
2) What is not, is not

What is not, is not means that there is no nothing. 'Nothing' is essentially a meaningless word. His reasoning for claiming that there is no nothing is that it is impossible to think of nothing.

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - The Parmenides - An Oxygen Like Bar where the users imbibe on a vapor that allows them to conceptualize nothing. It often drives its users to depression, madness and suicide. But, occasionally genius is borne out of using. Not recommended for persons on their first few cycles of birth and death.

From his two self-evident tautologies he deemed that what is, is uncreated, indestructible, eternal and unchangeable.
- It is uncreated because it was either created out of nothing or something. It can't be created out of nothing because nothing does not exist. It can't be created out of something because as a monist he assumed that there is only that one something.
-It is indestructible because to destroy it would make it become nothing. There is no nothing. Therefore it is indestructible.
-It is eternal because it is uncreated and indestructible.
-It is unchangeable because there is nothing it can change into in a monist system. Also, if it did change the old thing it was would become nothing. There is no nothing, so change is impossible.

History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1974

Heraclitus: everything changes
Parmenides: nothing changes

-From Elea, Southern Italy
-flourished circa 5th century BC
-Met with Socrates circa 450 BC
-Invented metaphysics based on logic
-believed the senses to be deceptive
-believed that the multitude of things was illusionary
-had two strands of thought: the way of truth and the way of opinion

Way of Truth: can't think about nothing, there is no nothing. there is no becoming and no passing away.

"Parmenides maintains that not only must George Washington have existed in the past, but in some sense he must still exist, since we can use his name significantly" (Russell, 49).

Parmenides' argument: if a word can be used significantly it must mean something and not nothing. Therefore, the meaning of the word must have some existence. This argument relies on the notion that the meaning of words is unchanging.

Because of the continual 'existence' that words guarantee, there really is no past. Since there is no past, there is no change.

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

"What can be said and be thought of must be; for it can be, and nothing cannot" (Barnes, 81).

He warned against the senses and extolled man not to let habit and experience force you to trust the deceptive senses.

What is, is un-generated and indestructible. No past, no future, always is.

"Thinking and a thought that it is are the same thing" (Barnes, 83).

FUTURE MODERN ANCIENT GREEKS - This is the basis for the Parmenides Engine. Think of the place that you are going and you are there. This allows for the space explorer to travel the vastness of space in short periods of time without massive amounts of fuel. The problem is that it can only be piloted by someone able to focus their mind completely on a single object. Distracted pilots have had disastrous results with this type of engine. Sometimes they end up half in one place and half in another. Sometimes they end up somewhere as something else. Sometimes they end up nowhere, if they have recently imbibed on the Parmenides vapor. This is actually the origin of black holes.

"[Parmenides] was the first to declare that the earth is spherical and lies in the middle [of the universe] - Diogenes Laertius" (Barnes, 89).