Danny Chai“Man’s character is his fate” – Heraclitus
That’s a great quote, right? One I completely jive with and believe. The type of person you are, more than the things you do, determine your ultimate destiny. Hmm, that actually kinda conflicts with the Harry Potter 2 quote I love so much. Oh well.
I decided to read a series on the History of Philosophy, borrowed from the church office. I may be in over my head. First of all, the first book, which only goes up to the Renaissance, is like 1600 pages. I haven’t read a book that long since Les Miserables the summer of ’95. What’s more, the guy sprinkles his prose with Latin, Greek and German with no translation. The reader is expected to be familiar with them. Nevertheless, I’m pressing on. I actually like big projects so we’ll see how this turns out.
Lee was saying how he doesn’t understand how I have the time or energy to read this kind of heavy stuff. But really, ideas to me are like people to extroverts. I personally can’t understand who extroverts have the energy to be with people all the time without being drained. But extroverts gain energy from being with people, so they don’t have my paradigm at all. I’m the same way with ideas – reading about and thinking about ideas invigorates me. It makes me feel alive.
Anyway, the book is completely fascinating, the parts I understand at least. Like, he says something interesting in the intro. Some people believe that there are never new ideas, that all ideas are at heart recycled themes, very Ecclesiastes and there’s nothing new under the sun. But that can’t be true; if you take it to the logical conclusion, the first man must have been the protophilosopher, who came up with every kind of idea that could be. That clearly doesn’t make sense, so at some point, someone must have come up with a truly original philosophical thought. So it makes logical sense that it’s at least possible that people still come up with truly original ideas even today. That’s an interesting idea to me.
What also fascinates me is how math and science change philosophy, even refute philosophic ideas. Like, when we learn calculus, the books frequently mention Zeno’s paradoxes. Like, if I’m walking toward a wall, at some point I’ll be halfway between my starting point and the wall. Then at some point I’ll be halfway between that halfway point and the wall. And so forth – wherever we are, no matter how close to the wall, there is always a point halfway between us and the wall. Therefore, we’ll never reach the wall.
What the math books never mention is why he had these paradoxes. He was a follower of a guy who believed that there is only Being, not Becoming. Things are, they cannot come to be, else they would have come from nothing, which is not possible, and if they came from Being, then they already were. Therefore, there is no such thing as Becoming, and he rejected change as being illusion.
The problem with that is that it’s not in line with what we see everyday, where we constantly see things changing in front of us. Zeno’s paradoxes are meant to show that other world views are no less paradoxical than his own; there are things that don’t make sense within those systems.
What’s interesting to me is that his paradoxes are refuted by math, which people typically don’t think of as having philosophical implications. Calculus shows us that infinite sums can have finite values. And that explains Zeno’s paradoxes.
I guess that’s only interesting to me. ανιαρός.