I find that statement intriguing in many ways..
Once things get broken down to that level, are 'things' 'made' of 'anything'?
Made? - context is important - since we are not talking of something actually being made, such as by a human, perhaps we are talking about the resulting observation result of some 'cause and effect'.
So if a particle cannot be broken down beyond simply its observable existence, need its existence be required to have a property in the - cause and effect principle of the term 'made'. Perhaps, when that particle does something - goes somewhere - that is fundamental to the larger picture of 'matter' and cause and effect.
uwot wrote: ↑Sun Oct 26, 2014 9:29 amAs with the conclusions of Pythagoras, Parmenides’ conclusions aren’t so very compelling with hindsight:
“[Being] is universal, unique, immovable and complete;
Neither was it ever nor will it be, since it now is, all together,
One, continuous. For what birth would you seek of it?
From what and how did it grow?
I will not allow you to say or think that it came from nothing;
For it cannot be said, nor even perceived by the intellect
That not-being exists. And what would have stirred it into action
Later rather than earlier to arise from nothing?
So it must be absolutely or not at all.”
What makes Parmenides’ treatment so strange to us is that he appears to have had no concept of ‘being’ as anything other than material, in the way that the elements or the apeiron were supposed to be. To Parmenides, ‘being’ is some sort of ‘stuff’.
It also seem Parmenides is touching on consciousness itself. It would be great to go back in time and ask something like, 'so when you are dead, is there 'being'?'
I guess the answer would be, the fact that one was alive is testament to his belief that 'things' exist, always have and always will (unless I am misunderstanding) - it appears he is talking of 'being' this stuff we tend to call matter as eternal, since his opinion, nothing can come from nothing.
uwot wrote: ↑Sun Oct 26, 2014 9:29 amA key point in his argument is that there can be no such thing as ‘not-being’; that the very idea of ‘not-being being’ is contradictory. Given the materialistic sense that Parmenides has of ‘being’, this means there is no such thing as empty space. As a result, change is impossible, because for any change to happen one bit of being would have to move into an unoccupied space, that is, somewhere there is ‘not-being’, but this is impossible, as there exists no ‘not-being’. Accordingly, ‘being’ is unified (‘one’), flawless, infinite, and eternal; hence reality is very different to most men’s opinions, and certainly to their experiences.
He is accurate though, no? - no contradiction if materialism includes particles? (sorry for my lack of philosophical terminology, and its defining boundaries.)
uwot wrote:As Thales’ followers discovered, different stories can account for the same facts. In the intervening centuries, there have been any number of theories about what it’s all about. Some are demonstrably untrue – the Earth isn’t the centre of the Solar System – but others are harder to dispel. One response is to accept that there are things that science alone simply cannot tell us, and if we wish to make sense of all the phenomena we experience, we have no option but to gather the most accurate data and try to create a narrative that fits with this data.
Purely empirical science doesn’t need such stories – it doesn’t need philosophy. But we are storytellers, and what are facts without a context?
I've gone through the thread and see this last line has pretty much been the most debated statement. I have read your replies and it makes sense to me, in as you state, purely EMPIRICAL science.
Can we observe it? No? Then let me get on with the math of what I can observe and stop jibber-jabbing!!
Of course and see that you have clarified, philosophy is still a worthy pursuit for the sciences if not to the degree it was in antiquity - where it certainly was the ground base to start that thing we tend to do, fink!
I may be wrong, but to me philosophy includes imagination for setting goals\targets, perhaps even reading science-fiction where a goal can be conceived. Teleportation for example. Ok, so someone thought of it - that's the goal, how do we achieve it?
To me philosophy at this point of time is like designing a computer program. It is lunacy to just start writing the code (science - doing the maths etc..).
Logical steps need to planned out first ensuring nothing is overlooked, things need to be looked at philosophically - especially with something as wacky as teleportation for example.
Anyway, as already discussed with you, the history of man's pursuit for knowledge is fascinating, I hope you keep knocking out more of this type of literature.