Our big think-piece for Christmas is a portrait of the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, by the doctor, writer and general polymath Raymond Tallis. Tallis believes that Parmenides’s model of a static, homogenous, undifferentiated universe—as described in a 150-line fragment of his 5th-century BC poem On Nature, which constitutes the entirety of his surviving works—went on to suffuse western thought and underlies much of modern philosophy and science. Parmenides’s achievement, writes Tallis, was extraordinary: “thought and knowledge encounter themselves head on for the first time… such a huge advance is self-consciousness that it is no exaggeration to call it an ‘awakening.’”
Yet, argues Tallis, with much of contemporary science running into dead ends—the search for a grand unified theory of everything, the attempt to understand the mysteries of human consciousness—it may be time to revisit the “Parmenidian moment,” to see if there might be an alternative “cognitive journey” from the one the pre-Socratic philosopher set us on 2,500 years ago.
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‘an entirely new cognitive journey’ has already started which both challenges and changes the existing intellecutual paradigm. I quote from an Op-Ed news article:
‘It is the first ever viable religious conception leading faith to observable consequences which can be tested and judged; a teaching able to demonstrate its own efficacy; the first ever religious claim of knowledge that meets the criteria of verifiable, evidence based truth embodied in action. For the first time in history, a religious idea exists offering access to absolute proof for its beliefs.’
Trials of this new teaching are under way and open to all. For those able to think for themselves and imagine outside the cultural box, who are prepared and willing to learn something new, the beginnings of an intellectual and moral revolution have already started with the most potent NVDA any human being can take for peace, change and progress.
http://www.energon.org.uk
http://thefinalfreedoms.blogspot.com
Dr. Tallis makes an egregious mistake in the following sentence: “All writing in major cultures since has been based upon the Greek alphabet.” China and Japan, to take just two cases, are ‘major’ cultures that do not use an alphabet-based writing system. Japan adopted Chinese ideograms, added two syllabaries for various purposes and then gave the kanji, as the ideograms are known in Japanese, both a Chinese and/or Japanese pronunciation. The specific semantic domain determines the pronunciation. The result is not only the most difficult of all writing systems to learn but one of great subtlety, compression and emotional nuance.
I should also have liked to see a more detailed discussion of Fr. 8 concerning the indivisible and self-identity and perhaps a stronger emphasis on Parmenides’ belief that he was carried on his intellectual journal by right (themis) and justice (dike), that is, on an essentially ethical quest. See especially Fr. 1.26-32 in David Gallop’s Greek text with commentary “Parmenides of Elea” (U of Toronto P, 1984).
But altogether an excellent piece.
Best regards,
Steve Willett (writing from Hamamatsu City, Japan)
Perhaps its an indication of how fragmented and divorced from a living well of True Wisdom that we have become, that we always have to return to the Wisdom, via their philosophy, of the elders.
The trouble is the mere doing of philosophy in the conventional sense as it done in the academy (or anywhere else), never really changes anything—and is really just a lot of superficial word games with no real depth. It may, or may not, make one more tolerant and ecumenical in ones disposition towards others.
But what if a Philosopher King was alive today whose “philosophy” and the Way of life that He offers says everything that the ancients from ALL cultures, not just those of the West, said, but even more so, and with extraordinary brilliance—impossible of course!!!
Please check out these references.
1. http://www.kneeoflistening.com
2. http://global.adidam.org/books/eleutherios.html
3. http://www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006.pdf
4. http://global.adidam.org/books/transcendental-realism.html
5. http://global.adidam.org/books/mummery.html
6. http://www.adidam.org/death_and_dying/index.html
7. http://www.adidam.in/eastwest.asp
For my $0.02 worth, I would point to the irony of opening with a quote from Whitehead and ending with a speculation on how we are to move away from the “Parmenidean Block” vision of reality. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism is precisely such an attempt. As a scientist himself, ANW had the “chops” (a theatrical term) to both do and understand science in its contemporary form. The philosophical underpinnings and motivations (if not the detailed mathematical exposition itself) of his alternative theory of space and gravity to Einstein’s (Parmenidean) general relativity remains alive today in the form of MoND and Bimetric theories — pity the scientists proposing these don’t know their own history.
Anyway, thanks to Dr. Tallis for this piece.
Dr Tallis’ attribution of “a fundamental error” to Parmenides rests on willful neglect of subsequent interpretations. It makes sense to interpret Fragment 3, “Thinking and the thought ‘it is’ are the same”, as saying that it is impossible to think of something that does not exist. I prefer to interpret this passage more cautiously with Plato, whose Eleatic Stranger challenges Theaetetus to try with might and main to say something correctly about not-being, without attributing to it either existence or unity or plurality. (Sophist, 239b) This reading agrees with the tradition inaugurated by the Megarians and the Stoics, and recovered by the founder of modern logic Gottlob Frege and his foremost exponent Alonzo Church, in a concise formilation that “nothing can be said truly about that, which does not exist.” This critically qualified reading of Eleatic doctrine in no way contradicts the commonsensical observation that we are always thinking of things that have no reality outside of our thought, for want of demonstration that we are, or can be, thinking about them truly. Even beyond that, truthful entertaining of explicit possibility can be readily reconciled with Dr. Tallis’ austere interpretation of Parmenides by following the Stoics and their philosophical heirs. Under their account, the same terms that denote things and express their concepts in their ordinary use, denote the same concepts and express concepts of these concepts within the contexts of propositional attitudes. Such contexts arise whenever our thought turns away from warranted realities to contemplate what might be the case, rather than what is the case. And since concepts exist eternally and unchangeably, suffering neither becoming nor extinction, all objects of our thought inherit their warrant for being.
I would like to point out that the translation of Parmenides’ expression “to gar auto…” is best rendered as “the self-same thing can be said of Being and Thinking.” Fragment 3 thus points us to the wonderful affinity between Being (what is ) and our ability to grasp it in thought. Hegel’s fundamental insight about the identity of the rational and the actual is what makes Parmenides’ primal thought so key to the history of philosophy and to the victory of the Western project.
The concluding words of the article
“Precisely because Parmenides was our great beginning, we should try to reimagine his thought and its consequences, in the hope of awakening out of his awakening to one more closely answering to our need for wholeness of understanding.”
have the flavor (pardon the metaphor) of a prayer, rather than a logical argument. It expresses what is often called “a pious hope”
It is questonable whether any prayer gets answered; it is more likely that not every question has an answer.
Nice article that unfortunately gives too much credit to Parmenides and does not highlight the narrow domain of logic used by the Eleatics (recall Zeno’s popular demonstration of the impossibilty of motion)as in Parmenides ‘Being’.To quote Santayana Being exists and nothing else does;whereby every relation and variation in experience is reduced to a negligible illusion….
Read Greek history and I think you’ll have a very different understanding of the rise of the ancient importance of reason.
Internal to cities: wealth, intermarriage and force held far more importance than reason. But the ancient Greek historians recount again and again how critical reason and rhetoric were as a military force multiplier amongst diverse city states without permanent alliances. Conflicts in such multiplayer games were won by those who could persuade others to temporary alliances of interest, faith, heritage, or anything else that seemed appealing.
Reason was a desperately important survival skill.
“But what if a Philosopher King was alive today ..”
Actually, there exist examples of philosopher-scientists whom to compare with such antique figures could be interesting, e.g.:
http://www.math.jussieu.fr/~leila/grothendieckcircle/biographic.php
When Parmenides pronounces that “thinking and the thought ‘it is’ are the sameâ€, he does not at the same time have in mind either Newton’s universe of space and time or Einstein’s block universe of spacetime. He did not need these. Dr. Sallis thinks (p. 4) that “Without a distance between the thought and its objects, so that the thought can exist in the absence of its object, thought would not be about anythingâ€, and thus Parmenides’ pronouncement invalidates thought itself. And thus he is guilty of a “fundamental errorâ€. Undoubtedly, Parmenides provides for no space (distance) between thought and ‘it is’. But why should he? The philosopher-poet merely speaks about the two (thought and thinking about ‘it is’) as being the same, i.e. inseparable and complementary in thought. Things can only be real in thought, not by themselves. Hence, “real†things not inherent in our thought can only be illusory. These make up the ever-changing Heraclitian “reality†of the senses. Plato subsequently elucidates, as a kind of a most important “footnoteâ€, the situation with his Forms or Ideas, which he enthrones as the only reality.
Hello Raymond
I can prove Parmenides thoughts through the complexity reduction theory.
Please conatct me via e-mail.
Regards
Holger Hans Friedrich Schnaak
Melbourne, Australia
Yet, argues Tallis, with much of contemporary science running into dead ends—the search for a grand unified theory of everything, the attempt to understand the mysteries of human consciousness—it may be time to revisit the “Parmenidian moment,†to see if there might be an alternative “cognitive journey†from the one the pre-Socratic philosopher set us on 2,500 years ago.
A most thought-provoking article. More a question than a comment: what is the reference for Aristotle’s calling Parmenides’ worldview ‘near to madness’?
Thanks and BW
Parmenides was a mystic. His Poem is based on a vision enabled by a goddess. The subsequent philosophical disdain of mystecism has blocked access to realities and non-realities (denials of reality) as anything but insane, which of course they are, for to reality, being is impossible; and to being, reality is its whole existence to deny and if possible destroy.
We have so little of Parmenides that knowing him is difficult. But even if we had all of him, standing before us, we would not comprehend. The notion of two realities, one illusory and one unknowable (what is, is and what ain’t, ain’t), is fundamentally repugnant. Only a Pamenidean mystical event can destroy enough of us to allow such contradictions to stand hand-in-hand, forgiving eachother.