What If Everything You See Is a Lie? Parmenides’ Mind-Bending Greek Philosophy

A integer practice of ancient Greek Elea successful confederate Italy, wherever Parmenides lived. Credit: Greek Reporter archive.

Picture yourself walking done a noisy marketplace quadrate successful an past Greek municipality successful confederate Italy perchance astir the twelvemonth 500 BC, erstwhile philosopher Parmenides lived.

It indispensable beryllium a buzzing community, right? The prima is out, donkeys are transporting each sorts of goods, and radical are haggling implicit olives oregon different products for sale. Everything is moving, shifting, changing. Then this well-respected thinker, Parmenides, wanders implicit simply to pass you that nary of this—not the movement, not the chatter, nor immoderate of the alteration you see, hear, and feel—is really happening.

Reality, helium insists, is conscionable 1 coagulated artifact of unchanging, eternal things. It does dependable wholly deranged, doesn’t it? However, this wasn’t conscionable an inane idea. Parmenides dropped a philosophical weaponry that sent ripples done Western thought, and these proceed to beryllium felt contiguous if you cognize wherever to look.

Bust of Parmenides. Credit: Sergio Spolti, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Who was Parmenides?

Parmenides lived successful Elea (modern Velia), a Greek colony successful confederate Italy. From what we gather, helium indispensable person been a beauteous noteworthy quality successful his city, and determination is grounds of his adjacent drafting immoderate of their laws. Unfortunately, each the accusation we person pertaining to him comes from tiny quotes preserved by aboriginal writers.

Nonetheless, we besides person important fragments of a poem called “On Nature,” which is Parmenides’ largest surviving assemblage of work. This was written successful the benignant of an epic travel successful which the quality gets whisked distant to conscionable a goddess who exposes the eventual Truth (with a superior T).

She draws a crisp enactment betwixt existent world (the “Way of Truth”) and the messy, confusing satellite of our senses (the “Way of Opinion”). Parmenides adjacent began a full philosophical question based connected this, the Eleatics, attracting students the likes of Zeno. You person astir apt heard of Zeno, the antheral down those perfectly fascinating paradoxes astir Achilles ne'er catching the tortoise and arrows freezing mid-flight. Zeno was so pulling retired each the stops to backmost up his teacher’s mind-bending ideas.

Parmenides and the question of what is Is?

Okay, we cognize this sounds weird. But what was the earth-shattering concealed this goddess shared? When you boil it close down, it comes down to thing simple: genuine reality, the worldly Parmenides called ‘What Is,’ exists. It conscionable flat-out is, and there’s nary mode for it not to be.

On the different manus though, ‘What Is Not’—pure nothing, implicit emptiness—doesn’t exist. You can’t interaction it, deliberation it, oregon truly adjacent speech astir it properly. It sounds astir similar communal sense, doesn’t it? Ah, but Parmenides took this seemingly elemental thought and, utilizing pure, acold logic, ran with it. If ‘What Is’ genuinely exists, helium figured, it couldn’t person conscionable sprung from thing (because thing isn’t determination to outpouring from), nor tin it conscionable dissolve into nothing.

Hence, the archetypal decision is that world is eternal. It besides can’t alteration due to the fact that changing means becoming thing different—it would person to impact becoming ‘what it is not’ close now, oregon gaining immoderate ‘not-ness,’ and we already established that ‘not-ness’ doesn’t exist. In different words, world has to beryllium unchanging.

Hyele, aboriginal changed to Ele and past Elea, the municipality of Parmenides. Credit: AIMare, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5

If you’re inactive following, past you should cognize that Parmenides besides argued that world indispensable beryllium conscionable 1 single, unified thing. If world was fragmented, what would abstracted the pieces? Nothingness? This wouldn’t beryllium possible, truthful we tin reason that world is indivisible, a coagulated whole. But what astir movement? To move, you request bare abstraction (nothingness!) to determination into. Another impossibility. Therefore, existent world indispensable beryllium perfectly still.

Just fto that absurdity descend in. The existent world, according to Parmenides’ logic, is this single, unchanging, eternal, motionless blob. A implicit contradiction is Heraclitus saying that”everything flows.” Parmenides fundamentally countered, “Nope, thing flows, my friend. Trust the logic, your senses are fibbing.”

Right astir now, you are astir apt thinking, “Okay, absorbing theory, but my toast did conscionable burn, things bash change!” And Parmenides would conscionable calmly record your burnt toast nether the “Way of Opinion,” oregon the unreliable info our senses provender us. It’s incredibly casual to conscionable accidental that Parmenides was talking rubbish. But that crisp part helium carved betwixt the information you fig retired with your encephalon and the “truth” you spot with your eyes? That stuck. That was big.

Plato was practically obsessed with this puzzle. His celebrated Theory of Forms—the thought of perfect, eternal blueprints for everything—feels a batch similar him trying to someway marque consciousness of Parmenides’ static world alongside the changing satellite we unrecorded in. And Zeno’s paradoxes? They inactive popular up everywhere, forcing america to question if question and part are arsenic straightforward arsenic they seem.

Parmenides successful the celebrated School of Athens coating (although, according to some, it could beryllium Epicurus oregon Zeno). Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

But is immoderate of this past Greek head-scratching applicable nowadays to america surviving successful the 21st century? Well, you could reason that it is successful definite ways. Some physicists fooling astir with ideas from Einstein’s relativity speech astir a “block universe” successful which past, present, and aboriginal each beryllium together, making our feeling of clip flowing conscionable a instrumentality of perception.
Doesn’t that dependable vaguely Parmenidean? Or deliberation astir basal laws specified arsenic the conservation of energy—it can’t beryllium created oregon destroyed; it tin lone alteration form.

This each benignant of resembles that aged thought that Being can’t travel from Non-being. Now, these are conscionable details, not nonstop lines, but they constituent to that aforesaid heavy question with which Parmenides was concerned: is the satellite we acquisition the existent thing, oregon is determination thing acold stranger, much unified, possibly adjacent much static, hiding underneath? Science perpetually shows america things that defy our mundane intuition, truthful who tells america that Parmenides wasn’t close aft all?