‘Becoming’, understood as an endlessly scroll of reality, was one of the most important and complex philosophical concept that was opposed by ontological vision of static essence and dynamic one (like Heraclitus) (Wikipedia).
The term ‘becoming’ in philosophy involves a change not only in space, as in the original meaning, but also in time.
The problematic nature of the definition of ‘becoming’ arised initially from the consideration that the primordial substance had to be conceived as unique and immutable: but if it was so, how would you explain the origin from it of the multiplicity of things? If at the beginning, the unique essence was water, as such was to remain forever and not give rise to the multiplicity of beings.
But it is clear that talk about life of the substance amounted to a contradiction ‘in terminis’, as it always defines identical with itself, and therefore immutable, something which in effect becomes living and constantly changing.
Becoming is, according to Heraclitus, the essence of Being, because everything is subject to time and change. Even what seems static to sensory perception in reality is dynamic and constantly changing.
Everything flows into the thesis that identifies in the fire the symbolic beginning of all things. This element symbolizes quintessential movement, life and destruction.
Becoming is therefore the immutable law; ‘logos’ regulates the alternation of birth and death. It is the identity of the different, i.e. the element which unifies what in all the many things is constant. Becoming is in fact made up of opposites that coexist in things: the uphill road is the same as downhill. It appears for the first time a dialectic conception of reality.
But not everyone is able to recognize ‘logos’, the law that governs the world. Only a few are "awake" and can recognize the common law of logos, the others, the "dormant," living in a dream, are prisoners of the opposition, of struggle and the conflict, unable to rise to the unity of all :
The harmony of things, for Heraclitus, lies in its constantly changing and in continuous conflict between opposites. This concept is defined as ‘polemos’, which allows the existence of all things.
The Eleatics, contrary to Heraclitus, did not rely in senses that reveal the movement. The emotion generates the opinion of mortals who live in the illusion whereby it believed true the existence of ‘becoming’ as a mixture of being and not being. But not being does not exist nor can be thought.
Thinking and being are the same thing for which being is not and cannot be ‘not being’, while ‘not being’ is not and cannot be.
Moreover, how is it possible to think of birth as a transition from ‘non-being’ to being, and death as a go from being to not be? Birth and death are only appearances of being, not generated (nothing comes from nothing), eternal (nothing ends in nothing), still, unique (because if they were two, it should be separated from ‘non-being’), compact and well-defined ( similar to a perfect sphere).
This is Parmenides' belief that contrasts sharply with that of those who supported the thesis of Heraclitus.
The end of the paradoxes is to prove that to accept the presence of motion in reality involves logical contradictions superior to those who deny ‘becoming’ and is therefore better, from a purely rational point of view, rejecting the sensible experience and say that reality is still and ‘becoming’ does not exist.
To be out of the impasse of the two mystical theories of Parmenides and Heraclitus, appearing, despite contradicting both logically founded, pluralists philosophers, materialists have a solution more rationalistic and naturalistic, treating the ‘becoming’ as ‘being’, marking the conceptual severity of the first compared to the second.
For ‘becoming’ is essential to think that there is a multiplicity of edifying beings: beings, and pluralists argue that in fact at the beginning of world history there was a great variety of primeval elements with the faculties of Parmenides’ ‘being’, that is, eternity and immobility.
In this way, birth is not a transition from ‘not being’ to ‘being’, but an aggregation of the primitive entities that, for Empedocles are the four elements of earth, water, air and fire, for Anaxagoras what he calls seeds, for Leucippus atoms as indivisible and elementary building blocks.
Each of us is born with a changing association of these multiple primary elements, which are in themselves always identical to themselves and immutable. Death will be nothing but the separation of these elements that will go back each his own part of their being primary.
This apparent conciliation of being and becoming, went to meet a difficulty: if the multiple beings presented themselves at the beginning and remained immutable and then still to safeguard the requirements of the Eleatic being, as was explained later their aggregation and disintegration?
The problem is actually placed by monists in opposition to the pluralists, but has its own explanation. In fact, the pluralists did intervene from outside forces such as Love and Hate, for Empedocles, or Nous, for Anaxagoras, had been submitted clarifying the aggregation and breakdown of the primary elements.
The first to compete with the concept of non-existence of the vacuum were the Eleatics with their philosophy based on being as the only reality. Only ‘being’ can be thought, as ‘not being’ does not exist.
The difficulty for the ancient mind, which persists in the thought of Parmenides, to conceive the void (emptiness)seems to be related to the theory on the archaic Greek thought about a "mythical" age, understood as the transition from primitive thought to that rational adult, where word was not distinguished from thing. A sort of fusion of language, reality and truth for which the Greeks had a vision of reality as a "show", therefore not distinguishing between visibility, existence and thought: only what was visible really existed and could thus be thought of and hence the difficulty of thinking the ‘not being’, the void, that is not visible and which therefore does not exist.
Dear Pierlorenzo,
thank you for your message.
I would like to quote the words of Galileo, who in his methodological work : “Il Saggiatore” (the assayer) a strictly scientific treatise, observed: "Infinite is the multitude of fools, that is, those who know nothing; many are those who know very little about philosophy; few are those who know some little thing; very few people who know some particles; one, God, it is the one that knows all ".
Best regards,
Gianrocco
Binghamton University
But if man is to find his way once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the nameless. In the same way he must recognize the seductions of the public realm as well as the importance of the private. Before he speaks man must first let himself be claimed again by Being, taking the risk that under this claim he will seldom have much to say. Only thus will the preciousness of its essence be once more bestowed upon the word, and upon man a home for dwelling in the truth of Being.
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/symploke/v013/13.1spanos.html
There are two important philosophers that think otherwise, Democritus (460-370 b.c.) and Lucretius (99 - 55 b.c.). Both believed in the atomic structure of nature: everything is composed of a diverse number and proportion of four types of atoms: fire, water, earth and air. They proposed that it is the infinite arrangement and proportion of atoms of the four elements that explains why there are so many different objects in nature.
Neither Greek nor Roman philosophies were monolithic in their way of understanding nature. Not everyone agreed with the idea of a single primordial substance. Lucretius' De rerum natura or On the nature of things is the first scientific book in the West. It is impeccably writen in extraordinaryly aesthetic verse and even contemporary scientists and mathematicians like Michel Serres have proved that some of the theories of Lucretius anticipated aspects of thermodynamics. It seems Democritus and Lucretius were better prepared to anticipate contemporary science.
De rerum natura is one of the most engaging science books I have read in my life. I recommend it to you. :-)
Best regards
Archibald Wheeler (1911-2008) tried to understand why all the electrons are identical and why there should not be an identical number of the corresponding antiparticles, called positrons. He also wondered why the world was neutral and had the same number of protons as electrons,The solution he offered was extremely simple: there is only one electron which moves forward and backward in time. The backward moving electron is the positron which hides in the proton. The one is (the noumenon of) the many and the many are the phenomena of the one. May be this ONE is even more elementary than the electron and performs a more complex dance. Note that the equations of motion are symmetrical with respect to the direction of time. This was not known in ancient Greece. Similarly the existence of entities more elementary than water or air was also unknown.
If we believe that the primary substance was conceived and created, we must believe in the variety of its transformation for the same reason.
Hesiod (Theogony)
Orphic theogony is purely Oriental and Indian in its Spirit. The successive transformations it has undergone, have now separated it widely from the spirit of ancient Cosmogony, as may be seen by comparing it even with Hesiod’s theogony. Yet the truly Aryan Hindu spirit breaks forth everywhere in both Hesiod’s and the Orphic theogony. Thus the original Greek conception of primordial Chaos is that of the Secret Wisdom Religion. In Hesiod, therefore, Chaos is infinite, boundless, endless and beginningless in duration, an abstraction at the same time as a visible presence. Space filled with darkness, which is primordial matter in its pre-cosmic state. For in its etymological sense, Chaos is Space, according to Aristotle, and Space is the ever Unseen and Unknowable Deity in our philosophy.
the primordial Aether of the Ancients is universal Fire, may be seen in the injunctions by Zoroaster and Psellus, respectively. The former said: “Consult it only when it is without form or figure,” absque forma et figura, meaning without flames or burning coals. “When it has a form heed it not,” teaches Psellus; “but when it is formless, obey it, for it is then sacred fire, and all it will reveal thee, shall be true.” This proves that Ether, itself an aspect of Akasa, has in its turn several aspects or “principles.”
All the ancient nations deified Aether in its imponderable aspect and potency. Virgil calls Jupiter, Pater omnipotens Aether, “the great Aether.”The Hindus have also placed it among their deities; under the name of Akasa (the synthesis of Aether).
If the solution to understand how the things, such as the life, have arisen, is due to the creation made by a God. Then the logic is to ask who has created God, because self creation seems to be discarded as solution.
A substance exists absolutely and necessarily and as such its existence depends only on itself.According to Spinoza, God is the only substance. He has an infinite number of attributes. For instance, in the Bible He is bofh masculine and feminine. The world does not necessarily or absolutely exist . Its existence is an existence of phenomena, appearances: Maya, according to hindu tradition, vanity according to the Ecclesiastes
One might almost be tempted to conclude that men and women aren’t merely different people, but different species. Deborah Tannen’s book, You Just Don’t Understand (1991) reinforces largely on informal and anecdotal observations—that men’s and women’s styles of communication differ in kind rather than degree. In Tannen’s words, “Women speak and hear a language of connection and intimacy, while men speak and hear a language of status and independence”
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/50-Great-Myths-of-Popular-Psychology.pdf
Dear Krishnan , would you agree to call man and woman opposites, not in the sense of antagonists but of complementarity.The species Man is composed irreducibly of man and woman.
Dear Harry, Frankly I dont know.
In my earlier responses I had enclosed some relevant research findings, to which i dont side on their conclusions. To me, I see people are more situation based rather than on any ideal classifications.
You may be right, Krishnan, however, if man "learns to exist in the nameless" and lets hlmself be claimed by Being" then the "basis of the situation" ceases to be his basis.
Before time was created.
It is difficult enough to imagine a moment, roughly 13.7 billion years ago, when the entire universe existed as a singularity. According to the big bang theory, one of the main contenders vying to explain how the universe came to be, all the matter in the cosmos -- all of space itself -- existed in a form smaller than a subatomic particle.
http://readingroom.concordia.ca/pdf/primordialsubstances.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/01/what-happened-before-the-big-bang-the-new-philosophy-of-cosmology/251608/
The immobility and mobility can coexist at once.
0= +1-1+2-2+3-3.........+n-n..... Up to infinity.
Here the left hand side remains immobile but, the right hand side expresses itself with its multitude of forms, possibly infinite in number while remaining immobile at once.
Here you may regard the apparent mobility as an illusion too, which is in tune with some concepts of Indian philosophy.
Some points according to Greek mythology
The primordial deities, sometimes called the Protogonoi are the first gods ... Aether (Light) (male) and Hemera (Day) (female).
AIEHER was the primordial god (protogenos) of light and the bright, blue ether of the heavens. His mists filled the space between the solid dome of the sky (ouranos) and the transparent mists of the earth-bound air (khaos, aer). In the evening his mother Nyx drew her dark veil across the sky, obscuring the ether and bringing night. In the morn his sister and wife Hemera dispersed night's mist to reveal the shining blue ether of day. In the ancient cosmogonies night and day were regarded as elements separate from the sun.
Aether was one of the three "airs". The middle air was aer or khaos, a colourless mist which enveloped the mortal world. The lower air was erebos, the mists of darkness, which enveloped the dark places beneath the earth and the realm of the dead. The third was the upper air of aether, the mist of light and blue of the heavenly ether. The aether enveloped the mountain peaks, clouds, stars, sun and moon.
Aether's female counterpart was Aethra, Titaness of the clear blue sky and mother of the sun and moon.
For Eastern philosophies HINDU
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/brdup/brhad_I-02.html
Dear all! Let me repeat what was said in the Bible. It is informative to this discussion.
God created human from the dust. Consequently, the hand of the Creator in every human being. Human was created for the development and improvement.
The Bible does not seem to have all the answers: see Psalm 8, 4 :
":what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?[":
Please note, that were created as a result of work of the Creator with his hands (the human), and as a result of "the power of thought" (firmament of heaven).
The difference is significant.
The primordial substance had to be conceived unique and immobile, but if they were so, how it is explained the birth of the multiplicity of things? (G.Tucci).
The primordial substance had to be conceived unique and immobile, but if this was so, why did It give birth birth to the multiplicity of things?
":what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?":) Psalm 8,4).
The reformulation of Prof. Tucci's question follows from the assumption that the creation of the multiplicity of things is not a problem for an infinite primordial substance.
1. Those who are philosophically referred to as the rational human soul can not express their existence without their body, body. Without the body, the same person loses its identity. The mind can not imagine the identity of something that does not have an image that expresses its existence. Even the ether has a picture that distinguishes it from other things. If we say that the soul wears an ethereal body at death, what distinguishes the soul from the ether? Simply, the soul did not exist to fade as a gentle air. Their existence in the body at all can not be a passing thing, but a divine law that is found to remain. It is illogical to ignore this law in our concepts of life and stages of renewal after death and the laws of reward and punishment and paradise and fire and divine justice ...
2 - It is obvious that the souls differ from each other in their nature as different people in their manifestations, and this conclusion is the simplest of what can be drawn through our experience sensory, hardly meet two things until they disagree on something else. To achieve individual identity, each soul must possess a physical form or, in other words, fill a gap in time and space. Without such a existence, the soul loses its being and thus its individuality and its role in time and space.
3. Knowledge of any kind is not made or obtained without existence in the physical world. Knowledge can not be about nothing. Even the ether (the closest we can imagine if we want to visualize nothing) remains something that can be distinguished from other things. So "knowledge" requires the existence of "arif" and "known". Without the spirit in a machine that allows it to experience these two situations (ie to be in the position of the knowing and others in the position of the known), the soul becomes not interested in something known as knowledge.
"Knowledge" may be tested in a state of consciousness different from vigilance. In other words, one can remember his childhood through a dream or attempt to know future through vision, but such knowledge can not be understood if it is not connected to the dreamer as a "human" It exists in time and place in a world that believes in the continuity of what allows this dream or vision to be part of it and of its life.
4. Without being in a material form, the soul can not experience any knowledge of good or evil. Any knowledge of good or evil. Any such knowledge requires continuity in the material world that provides the mind with the opportunity to distinguish and compare things and sensory experiences to derive a complex concept such as the concept of good or evil. The mind does not imagine evil independent of its perceptions of its physical existence in time and space or events related to this existence.
5 - self if it does not exist in a world that believes in the continuity can not be judged, in other words, can not judge one depends on the random plucking of knowledge experienced in the ethereal worlds. What kind of judgment is appropriate only in a world where there is a story in development. Moreover, that judgment does not mean anything to any individual and does not achieve anything unless it is the result of a story that he knows and participates in making.
Thus the spiritual identity, expression and judgment of any kind depends on the presence of self in the world of continuity. It is through such a world that the soul can test its individuality, acquire knowledge and judge its actions.
In some cases, the possibility of self-promotion rises to the level of consciousness, so that the dresses of ignorance are removed and the intensity of dark thoughts and feelings is dispelled. The soul may experience moments of purity, losing its awareness of the presence of joy and swimming in the world of the absolute sunrise, the world of eternity. , There is no escape from its awareness of the dualism of human nature, which is the awareness that distinguishes between man and God (ie, between the old and the modern and the manufacturer and the workmanship). Whatever the self achieves in its proximity to the achievement of unity with the self, it maintains its being and its role in time and space so that it will never remain conscious of its own, otherwise it will no longer be a breath. This is the simplest right granted by God to man and is the right to exist and continuity.
Therefore, the fact of reincarnation is based on the fact that the relationship of the gentle and intense (and each of us have evidence of his health) is that the soul and the body are indispensable to each other. A body without a dead body spirit and a spirit without body is nothing. Since the existence of the soul is eternal and since this eternity is not realized and is part of knowledge only through the machine of expression of existence (the body), the soul must become a new body at death and take a new machine after the old machine can not continue for one reason or another.
The philosophy of monotheism is like light, simple but overwhelming. If God wills, to create a human soul abstract, immortal living in a fantasy world free of material and dimensions or create a body mechanically working instinctively spiritual vacuum. But he created him spirit in the body, and wanted to live in our world and acquire science and knowledge through which there must be the wisdom behind his will, and the dualism of man (that is both material and spirit) serve the divine goal of this supreme creation is knowledge. Thus the pronunciation of the book and what created the jinn and mankind only to worship (ie to know)
However, if this dualism serves the ultimate purpose of knowledge of God through knowledge of the soul, and even calculation on the basis of this knowledge, as in most of the heavenly religions, one must ask:
The primordial substance had to be conceived unique and immobile, but if they were so, how it is explained the birth of the multiplicity of things?
In other words, this is the dream of the unification in Physics, that is to say, an only expression from which can find the rest of the reality. Instead of having four fundamental interactions we could reduce them to only one.
Is this a common paradigm between science and religium?
Dear Daniel! Unfortunately, some complex paradigms lead to an infinity of reasoning.
Can we reject emergence? Can we reject ΠΑΝΤΑ ΡΕΙ ?
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simo_Koppe/publication/226769498_Explaining_Emergence_Towards_an_Ontology_of_Levels/links/00463535620c403661000000.pdf
Article Explaining Emergence: Towards an Ontology of Levels
The one unified fiels has the property of breaking into parts by symmetry breaking. Thus the many arise from the ONE, as in (monotheistic) religion. Emergence can be understood as the reverse of the symmetry breaking process.
Dear Harry,
The problem of your reasoning is that the spontaneous breaking of symmetry assumes that you have such symmetry and an action exists. The group of symmetry implicit for giving all the subgroups is very high. This is one problem in the superstring theory they have found that there a at least 101000 different forms of compactifying the different dimensions. And this is only a simple alternative model to the "standard model" of the fundamental particles.
Another problem is that every change of symmetry means a change of entropy and this is against to get very ordered matter as can be the life beings.
Dear Vladimir,
I fully agree with you. If we only use the reasoning for finding the explanation of the world that surrounds us, this means that we are going to fail. This is well known for our experience, for instance the Physics of Aristote that assumed the man as the center of the universe and needed people as Galileo for proving that this was not true at all. Fortunatally, other people as Newton could find how the gravitation law allowed to explain, at least, the structure of the solar system.
On the other hand, from the pure logic itself, people as Gödel showed in his two famous theorems that any logic system is inconsistent because it cannot demostrate its own consistency (second theorem), in the first use the natural numbers.
The reasoning is a fundamental tool for finding the truth but needs more things for explaining our existence and how nature works!
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