The unchanging universe or the constantly changing?
Justify your answers please.
not a valid question.
OK.
Imagine if all energy state exchange/change in the universe stopped… Would the universe cease to function and hence cease to exist?
I think so.
people packed in dry ice dont cease to exist do they ?
really the question is nonsensical, its like asking if crocodiles are longer thjan they are green or greener than they are long.
We can’t be too sure, it’s like you watching a 100hour film or something but you only manage to catch 10seconds of the film. How many little idea’s and different opinions do you think you will make? But how many of them do you think are actually true? Changing or unchanging Universe, it doesnt really matter. ‘‘something’’ is always.
The universe and external world is in constant flux.
The world of the individual conscious that makes use of memory, culture, history, and society is the still image of that constant flux.
you yourself are not even the same person after reading this post…
flux flux and more flux
-Imp
Ah yes, but I do preserve a memory of reading this post. There is something of experience that lingers, otherwise we couldn’t connect a past occurence with the now. Without sometype of unity, we could not organize experience as an ‘I’.
Not that it matters, but the idea that the universe is in perpetual flux without continuity, is not really Heraclitus’ position. Some of this comes from an over-simplified version offered by Plato of Heraclitus’ thought, and some from poor translation. For instance his famous saying,
“We can not step into the same river twice.” in the Greek is literally,
“As in rivers they the same enter, other and other waters flow on.”
The contrast is between the continuity and the flux. The adjectival “the same” can grammatically modify the rivers or the people. There is a sense in which Heraclitus is saying, even though other and other waters flow on, the river remains the same. And even though time flows on, the people entering the river stay the same. Actually, what Heraclitus suggests is that identity resists flux, which is the opposite of what people usually attribute to him.
Dunamis
I interpret Heraclitus’ notion of fire as resisting everlasting, firm forms. Here is a few fragments:
http://www.tesc.edu/~rprice/heraclitus.htm
Heraclitus’ god appears sort of pantheistic and it appears not pantheistic in terms of an unchanging One.
The use of taste is very interesting, Heraclitus uses smell in another passage:
Here is a passage that seems to address the unity of flux:
There is a resistance but it is maintained as a tension.
Here is another passage:
The one here is an interesting notion. I think you are right in to say:
There is continuity but it is in tension or harmony.
Nab,
Fragment 51 (which you have as 45) is even more subtle in the Greek,
“People do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.”
Literally,
"…at variance with itself it is in agreement; there is a back-turning harmony, like the bow or lyre.
Heraclitus could have easily used the word “palintonos”, which means “back stretching, or tensioned” with an association of “chord” or “pitch”, but instead he uses a slightly different, more distinct word, “palintropos”, which is “turning back upon itself”. In this way he equates all of the revolutions (tropoi)and circular transformations from sea, earth, air and aether to a kind of vibration of a string, in harmony, fitted together. The world is but a vibrating force and all oppositions are composites of a single tone. What is interesting to me is that the bow sends forth an arrow, the lyre sends forth a note. What does the universe send forth? Here he joins the two “tools” sacred to Apollo, the harp that soothes and the bow that attacks from a distance. The god of rationality and prophecy is condensed into this very beautiful metaphor of the vibrating string.
Dunamis
dang, I need to start learning Attic Greek!
Thank you for that explanation.
The “turning back upon itself” is a very interesting distinction. Do you think the single tone is the logos? I tried to find out what exactly the logos was for Heraclitus but I could only find a few passages referring to it. Perhaps the logos is the arrow but maybe not. I’m glad that you pointed out that it relates to the two sacred tools of Apollo, the god of rationality.
Nab,
Learn Attic Greek even a little bit, it is mind-blowing. The Greeks wrote with tremendous word-play and subtlety. They almost never said anything straight out, (at least until Aristotle).
As to “logos” in Heraclitus, there is some debate about whether he actually used the term to mean an over-arching rationality, or Mind. The word can mean such, but it is also a very common term for “account” or “telling” or “speech”, so one never knows for sure how Heraclitus was using it. The Stoics in effect believed that when he used it, he meant Rational Principle, and many of their beliefs stem directly from this interpretation, but scholars contest that meaning.
We find it in Fragment 1
“But of this account (logos), which holds forever, people forever prove uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it…(it continues)”
Fragment 2
That is why one must follow that which is common [that is universal. For ‘common’ means ‘universal’]. Though the account (logos) is common, the many live, however, as though they had a private understanding.
(That one does seem to have Logos, capital L, associations. In fact he seems to be playing with the two meanings of the word logos, its common everyday use and its universality.)
Fragment 50
“Not after listening to me, but after listening to the account (logos), one does wisely in agreeing with that all things are in fact one.”
Fragment 115
The soul possesses a logos which increases itself.
The problem comes with projecting later day meanings of Logos (like those of the book of John and Neo-Platonism) backward in time. For me Heraclitus though is very subtly touching both meanings of the word.
As to “palintropos” it also contains another meaning which is “to avert”, “to turn back from”, a kind of turning on one’s heels. With the associations of Apollo quietly placed in Fragment 51, -through the bow and the lyre-, I think there is a sense that, just as a string turns back from an extreme, so too the world swings back from the abyss of one particular direction. We have related words like the English cognate “catastrophe”, which in Greek is literally a “down-turning”. Rationality, everything in moderation, things that characterized the god Apollo, are a kind of “turning back” from extremes, just as the string of the harp and the bow turns back from maximum extension. There is also an artistic sense here. Poetry turns back (tropos) from the end of a line. In Greek chorus, the chorus would make tropoi, that is changes of direction that physically marked the portions of their song. In horse races the tropos was the half-way turn, a metaphor used for shifts in battle. All of this is somehow conveyed in the use of palintropos.
I do think this is Logos, but I don’t’ think that Heraclitus had developed it into the abstract principle it would later become. Rather there is an absolute physicality to this Logos, a mysterious holding together in all things. It is an account, the true account of the world. Apollo was not only the god of rationality, but also of ‘oblique’ prophecy (Loxos). He was not only the god of healing, but of plagues (the far-shooter). The Logos here almost strikes one as a kind of Tao. Really quite beautiful.
Dunamis
Dunamis, thanks for the logos explanations. I’m currently reading Derrida’s Of Grammotology and there is much discussion of logocentrism. I will have to keep this discussion in mind in my reading.
This is very interesting passage. What do you think this means? When he writes “as though they had a private understanding” does he intend to mean there is no private understanding?
Is this turning back from extremes related to sophersyne (I think that is how it is spelled, sorry if it is wrong) that is mentioned by Plato and Aristotle? I just finished Foucault’s History of Sexuality volume II, the Use of Pleasure. Foucault analyzes the Greek notion of moderation in Sexuality and contrasts it to christian ideas of sexuality.
This is a notion of Logos that I can admire. I’ve heard Heraclitus referred to as a materialist, I think this absolute physicality lends itself to that interpretation.
Thanks for the information, you should bring out some Parmedides next.
Nab,
First with
[i]Fragment 2
That is why one must follow that which is common [that is universal. For ‘common’ means ‘universal’]. Though the account (logos) is common, the many live, however, as though they had a private understanding.[/i]
The more literal interpretation would be:
That’s why one must follow what’s common, for that is shared. The common is the shared. Though the logos is common, many live as if they have a distinct mind.
I don’t think that it means that there is no private understanding, but it does question the supremacy of private understanding. The word here for understanding/mind is phronesis which is often connected to practical action, so I think that this fragment has heavy societal overtones. It for me refers to the wisdom of common understanding and individual people who do not go along with it. One has to understand that the “polis†of the Greek world was under continual conceptual upheaval, and there was a constant pulling apart and pulling back together again. I think that here Heraclitus is trying to find both political and philosophical threads of commonality. Because it is a fragment though, we have no direct sense of what he could be referring to. There seems an interesting Proto-Platonic eventually Kantian call to reason here though.
Commentators link it to Fragment 94
Helios (the sun god) will not overstep measure. If he does the Erinyes (avenging Furies) of Justice will find him out.
The physical laws of the universe, how close the sun comes to the earth, has to be kept in proportion, or else there are dire consequences. Interestingly, Aeschylus in his The Eumenides, puts this same argument in the mouth of the Furies. They suggest that if the sun goes wherever it wished, the trees would burn up. Commonly this is what was thought to be threatened in Summer. The rise of Summer heat was equated with the rise of desire and the risk of going out of bounds. The customary laws of the people, the ancient gods of the earth (as opposed to the new young gods of Zeus, Athena and Apollo), kept things in place. The challenge of the new gods was to acquire the wisdom of the ancients, yet crystallize it somehow.
The political associations of commonness are also found in Fragment 114
Those who (could) speak with insight (noos) must base themselves firmly on that which is common to all, as a city does upon its law – and much more firmly. For all human laws are nourished by one law, the divine law. For it holds sway to the extent that it wishes, and suffices for all, and is still left over.
Here we have one of Heraclitus’ rhymes. To speak with insight (mind) is to base oneself in what is common. “Kzun noeo/ toe Kznoeâ€. Something like: “To speak with mind is to share in kind.†As you can see the intricacy of political overtone with almost cosmological, ontological meaning reduced to a rhyme is really challenging. The truth is, Heraclitus means both and intertwines them.
As to sophrosyne, (I only know the Greek spelling), really I think is best translated as “sobrietyâ€, even though it has a strong sense of self-restraint and moderation. For me, beneath all of that is the clear perception of the real which naturally leads to moderation. There is within all of Greek thought the mystery of the revelation, the uncovered truth, an object appearing naked before you. Mixed with this is the mysterious sense that intoxication may reveal truth to you. The sophrosyne is another path. Through absolute sobriety, that is stimulated awareness. You see things plainly. I think that this is behind the “commonality†of Heraclitean logos.
In The Eumenides again there is a beautiful phrase used by the Furies when they say,
“It bonds together to suffer in the straights.â€
It is really impossible to translate, but there is the sense that things are brought into coherence, they congeal, they harmonize through the experience of being pressed together, passing through narrowness. This is Greek “wisdomâ€. It is the sobriety that full contact with life and exposure to its laws, grants. This maxim reminds me of a sword exposed to fire and pounded and then bathed in water, somehow. Perhaps if you marry this to Heraclitus’ image of the string that is pulled to the extreme, that then in tending to the center creates both the force that propels and the lasting note, you get the full picture.
As to Parmenides, he really is difficult. He writes very abstractly, in that he appears to be making formal arguments, but also very poetically, as he is re-telling a prophetic dream, things told to him by a goddess.
Dunamis
What is change? Have you ever changed only my opinions ever change.
But would not your opinions, or rather, your interpretations, define who you are? To change would be to move from one interpretation to another. Personal thought serves as the basis for personal image, thus a change in interpretation changes the whole self.
Do your ideas reflect your actions? Are your actons embodiement of opinion. Understanding and application are not all that similar.
In answer to the question of change:
Change is an alteration from a previous instant, I could say that I may do the exact same thing twice, but they would not be exact for one took place after the other.
this is a little off topic but I have a question about Parmenides. If he defines being as finite which he does, how exactly is that possible? Anything which is finite is bounded by something by definition yet if there is no non-being then what is surrounding being? Similarly if being is a sphere of finite size, what’s it’s diameter- 23.56 cm? 200,000 miles? It seems kind of absurd.