Parmenides' Folly

July 29, 2002
 

            Anaxagoras had a theory that everything had a little bit of everything mixed in, and all things, while infinitely divisible, always contained all things in the exact same proportions.  He adopted Anaximander’s idea of the Apeiron, changed it around a little bit, and used it as an explanation for the source of the cosmos.   (Anaximander said the Apeiron had no qualities, and all qualities sprung from it when it was set into motion.  Anaxagoras, on the other hand, believed that the Apeiron theory was accurate, but rather than having no qualities, as Anaxagoras claimed, the Apeiron contained all qualities.  The presence of all qualities only made the Apeiron merely appear to have no qualities.  Again, the Apeiron was set into a vortex motion, and all qualities separated off and apart from it.)  Democritus took a different approach.  He, like his predecessor, Leucippus, believed the world to be composed of tiny little particles that no one can see.  These particles, or atoms, were all kinds of shapes, and they moved around in a void.  Both the atom theory and the everything-in-everything theory were direct responses to Parmenides’ idea of Being and non-Being.

            Parmenides believed that the senses were not necessary for philosophical thought.  In fact, the senses were deceptive, a hindrance to discard.  Anything that can be known can only be known through reason.  Because he dismissed all sensory knowledge, Parmenides used the idea that Non-Being can in no way exist to explain away the entire universe with one exception, Being.  Being was, of course, a great singular cosmic bowling ball that no one could sense because the senses were unreliable, and no one existed.  Being was unmoving, unchanging, and indivisible due, of course, to the necessity of Non-Being in all three concepts.  (For change, things would have to come out of and pass into Non-Being.  For movement, things would have to pass through Non-Being.  For divisibility, the only thing that could separate Being would be Non-Being.)

            Anaxagoras and Democritus countered Parmenides’ school of thought with their respective theories as well as their assertions that the senses were indeed reliable.  Anaxagoras first conceded that Non-Being can in no way be.  He surmised that Non-Being is not necessary for change, motion, or divisibility.  Being could conceivably be divided by other kinds of Being.  Being could also move through other kinds of Being.  Lastly, Being could, in theory, change.  The theory behind the possibility of change is, of course, the everything-in-everything theory, which says that all things contain at least a little bit of everything else.  A block of gold, for example, is mostly gold, but never pure gold.  It also contains bone, water, paper, hot, and everything else.  When divided, the gold still contained bits of all things.  No matter how small the gold becomes, it is never pure.  Change occurs when one of the smaller bits of paper, for example, becomes the most prominent quality.  The gold does not pass into Non-Being, but instead recedes back into what is now called the paper.

            Because of his theory, Anaxagoras said that the perceptible macrocosm is a reflection of the imperceptible microcosm.  All things are divisible into smaller, yet otherwise identical, things.

            Democritus agreed with Anaxagoras that the senses were reliable.  He believed, however, that instead of infinitely divisible objects containing pieces of all other things, things could only be divided to a certain point, and that all things are composed of these tiny indivisible atoms.  The atom, a sort of miniature version of Parmenides’ Being, was also a reasonable solution to Zeno’s riddles about infinite divisibility.  According to Democritus, atoms were very small, invisible to the naked eye, in fact, always moving, and came in all different shapes, like pieces of a puzzle, allowing the atoms to come together and attach to one another.  The atoms also moved through a void, rejecting Parmenides’ idea of Non-Being’s inability to be.

            While similar to Anaxagoras’ microcosm in some ways, Democritus’ microcosm was vastly different.  Anaxagoras believed that a block gold was actually many portions of gold combined with small portions of water, hot, yellow, soft, and so on, while Democritus’ version of gold contained millions of tiny gold atoms running around through a void.  While Anaxagoras’ microcosmic gold looked just like a miniature piece of gold, Democritus’ did not.  His microcosmic gold was, at its smallest, a single atom of gold, containing no features aside from its distinct atomic shape.

            Anaxagoras and Democritus built their explanations of the cosmos as a direct result of Parmenides and Zeno’s philosophy.  The atom theory and the everything-in-everything not only proved that change, motion, and divisibility could indeed exist without Non-Being, but that the senses were reliable.  The senses were not, however, as finely tuned as the mind.  Anaxagoras and Democritus agreed that the senses could only detect things in a large macrocosm.  Anaxagoras differed from Democritus, saying the senses can see the gold, but cannot distinguish individual gold particles, but if they could, they would all resemble the larger chunk of gold.  The macrocosm the senses perceive is a reflection of the microcosm that the mind can only think of.  Democritus claimed that, like in Anaxagoras’ theory, no one can see the individual atoms, but they could see the larger object the atoms made.  While the atomic microcosm did not resemble the macrocosm in any way, and while the individual atoms could not be perceived, the mind knew they were there.