Paradox

32 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PARADOXfloodgate to countless negative facts. These negative facts arehard to distinguish from one another. At this moment, thereis no earthquake in Elea. Is that nonearthquake the samenonearthquake that is now transpiring in Ionia? There is nodeterminate answer to such a question. Reality must bedefinite.If “Pythagoras is not fat” is meaningless, then we cannotmake sense of Pythagoras changing from being fat to notbeing fat. Accordingly, Parmenides denies that any thingchanges over time.Can things change over space? According to geographicalsurveys, the island of Crete extends for 257 kilometers andthen ends. But to have an ending, Crete would cease to be ata certain point in space. Ceasing to be is failing to exist.Parmenides concludes that no object can be limited in size.Wouldn’t this unlimited size make for intolerable crowding?No, because Parmenides denies that there is more thanone thing! If there were two distinct things, then there wouldbe a statement that is true about one but not about the other.A statement such as “Pythagoras is not Anaximander” cannotbe true because nothing can be a non-Anaximander. A non-Anaximander is a nonexistent thing.For Parmenides, an argument is not a cab that can bedismissed when it has taken you as far as you wished to go.You must go all the way. Parmenides concludes that there isexactly one changeless thing. For all its unity and simplicity,this oneness is difficult to picture. Parmenides tends toenvisage it as a big, round sphere. The sphere is without gapsor variations in density or movement.If reality were literally a sphere, then we could distinguishbetween the surface of the sphere and its core. Parmenideshas already argued against there being objects with