QUANTUM METAPHYSICS - E-thesis

eing is, and unbeing is not, there cannot be anything outside this being which articulates it or
can bring about changes. Since unbeing cannot be being, it was impossible for the Milesians to
justify change and multiplicity. Being must be conceived as eternal, uniform and unlimited by
space and time. 48
Parmenides considered the senses to be a poor witness when compared to logic. As perceived by
the senses, movement, change and multiplicity had to be virtual and subjective, since of
necessity, logic reveals true being to be one and unchanging. Specifically, Parmenides criticised
Anaksimandros for inconsistency when he treated apeiron as a substantial invariant: it was at the
same time both a natural law and a basic element out of which everything was composed. Also,
Parmenides was in strict opposition to Heraclitus. He did not approve of Heraclites’ practice of
making fire a changeable principle. Even though it was not, in Heraclites’ flowing worldprocess,
necessary for fire to be as it changed all the time, in Parmenides’ opinion, the fact that it
changed destroyed the main point in the search for the basic invariance. Invariance had to be
static, it could not be accompanied by change. 49
Parmenides’ conception that fundamental reality had to be static, one and unlimited had a
powerful influence on subsequent natural philosophy, whose central problems were questions of
the possibilities of change and the relationship between the real world and the world of
phenomena. 50 The sense-world revealed by sense perception was generally starting to be
accepted as something virtual, and at the same time the perceiving subject was excluded from
eternal objective reality. A change perceived by the senses did not signify a change in actual
reality. Empedocles (c. 495-435 BC), Anaksagoras (c. 500-428 BC) and at a later date the
Atomists attempted to solve the dilemma between Rationalism and Naturalism that was raised by
Parmenides by searching for sophisticated compromises. None of them, however, disputed
Parmenides’ contention that the most-fundamental and truly-existing reality could never be
visualised and could never disappear. 51
Parmenides’ unswerving logic was based on a dichotomy that closed out either one option or the
other. It typically applied the reductio ad absurdum type of argument: when some statement led
to a contradiction, the opposite was taken as true. Parmenides’ logic also included many crude
48
Heisenberg 1985, 56-57. Being was undivided and unlimited as Unbeing could not divide Being from Being.
Neither could Being make any divisions. There was only continuous Being.
49
Stenius 1953, 87-92.
50
Guthrie 1950, 49-50. Stenius 1953, 95.
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