The Ancient Greek Presocratic natural philosophers are some of my very favorite thinkers.(Can't get enough of that abstract metaphysics.)
Heraclitus; (get your mind out of the gutter - it isn't spelt like that,) introduced the notion of flux and unity of opposites just around the time Taoism was born. (Though there is no known proof the ideas were linked by inter-relation of the respective authors.) Amoung other things, Heraclitus believed that harmony existed through the dynamic force of opposites, (night/day, war/peace,) so that the true nature of the universe was one of constant, ever-changing flux and motion.
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM
Parmenides; Parmenides on the other hand, believed that change was impossible. To Parmenides, reality is complete as it is. It is unchangeable, immovable, singular and undivided.
http://www.abu.nb.ca/Courses/GrPhil/Parmenides.htm
Zeno; came up with the argument to support Parmenides theory that matter is continous and is composed of an endless collection of units or points. He formulates this idea on the premise that any three dimensional object can be divided endlessly into smaller and smaller parts. This affects time, space and motion. For instance; The famous Achilles and the tortoise paradox;
"Achilles gives the tortoise a head start. But before he can get to where the tortoise is, it will have moved a little farther on, and before he gets to that spot it will have moved further on again and so on indefinitely. Achilles can never catch the tortoise no matter how far he runs, for every time he moves, the tortoise moves too. " (Philosophy. 100 Essential Thinkers. Phillip Stokes. Arcturus. 2003.)
We all know on a practical level that Achilles can out run the tortoise in real life by increasing his own speed in relation to the slower speed of the tortoise, but Zeno's argument to support an unchanging and indivisible whole, has been hard to refute for philosophers down through the ages as any line or distance can be divided up into a smaller one. Atoms as we now understand them, can be divided up into smaller and smaller elements of matter. Apparently modern set-theoretic mathematics now has a satisfactory answer to Zeno's argument, but don't look at me -I"m a mathematics vegetable!!! (Although I did once read The Book of Nothing by John Barrow and not only surprised myself by enjoying it, but even understood most of it.)
http://www.iep.utm.edu/z/zenoelea.htm
The first time I contemplated Parmenides' idea that change was impossible, (in the light of Zeno's argument,) I sat for hours looking up at the leaves rustling in the wind above me and wondered if it were possible that they were moving so infinitely, that they weren't even moving at all. That really blew my mind!
Democritius; made the first prediction of modern science's understanding of atoms. To Democritius, atoms were solid matter and indivisible, and it was only the space around them that could be divided up into infinite parts. This theory lead to unity between Hereclitus and Parmenides' own theories because it encouraged the idea that change and motion were necessary, and simultaneously the idea that non-being was impossible.
http://www.thebigview.com/greeks/democritus.html
The first time I really thought about atoms, I had to go around hitting everything with the palm of my hand or tapping on the surfaces of things with my fingers, saying to people around me, "that's made up of atoms you know ... of course you know, but you know what that means? Well if atoms are really made up of two-thirds empty space as they now say, then all that hard matter around us, doesn't exist the way we think it does. Think about that, we're living in a world that's more space than it is hard matter, it's more not here than it is here.! What does it mean? What does it all mean for mind and spirit then?" Now that really, really blew my mind and it's ideas like that which keep me fascinated in metaphysics, quantum physics and philosophy.
Anyway, I could go on forever about this stuff, but that was a basic introduction to, or reminder of, depending where you are on the subject, the philosophers of Ancient Greece. But why did I put that up?
Because of this;
"Alice could never quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and the Queen kept crying 'Faster!' but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath to say so.
The most curious part of the thing was that the trees and other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. 'I wonder if all the things move along with us?' thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried 'Faster! Don't try to talk!'
Not that Alice had any idea of doing that. she felt as if she would never be able to talk again, she was getting so out of breath: and the Queen cried 'Faster! Faster!' and dragged her along. 'Are we nearly there?' Alice managed to pant out at last.
'Nearly there!' The Queen repeated. 'Why we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!' And they ran on for a time in silence,with the wind whistling in Alice's ears, and almost blowing her hair off her head, or so she fancied.
'Now! Now!' Cried the Queen. 'Faster! faster!' And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through the air, hardly touching the ground with their feet, till suddenly, just as Alice was getting quite exhausted, they stopped, and she found herself sitting on the ground, breathless and giddy.
The Queen propped her against a tree, and said kindly, 'You may rest a little now.'
Alice looked round her in great surprise. 'Why, I do believe we've been under this tree all the time! Everything's just as it was!'
'Of course it is,' said the Queen: 'what would you have it?'
'Well, in our country,' said Alice, still panting a little, 'you'd generally get to somewhere else - if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'
'A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. 'Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that."
And you thought it was just a children's story! (More Alice philosophy coming up in future posts.)
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