What It Is

Post   : What It Is
URL    : http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2013/04/13/what-it-is/
Posted : April 13, 2013 at 3:40 pm
Author : Jon Awbrey

Re: Gil Kalai
At: http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/zeno-proof-paradox/#comment-35909

If I remember my long ago readings well enough, Jimmy the Ancient Greek could lay odds
as well as any latter-day bookmaker on the outcomes of Olympic contests, but that was
not really the point of Zeno’s humble homilies.  Read in philosophical context, they
really had to do with a contention between two schools of thought about the relation
of eternal being to secular becoming.  Followers of Parmenides like Zeno would say
that whatever it is that really is, is one, eternal, and unchanging.  They would
not be impressed that it took us a couple of millennia to “save the appearances”
of change, since the appearances are only illusions anyway.

1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/
2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zeno-elea/

-- 

academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey
my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/
inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey
oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey
facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache