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| Change is not permanent and time does not flow | | | Sanjeev Sikri
The only thing permanent is change”, a truth universally accepted but seldom delved into. We all accept that the season changes, that a child grows old, a seed evolves into a tree. The evidence of change is ample in the daily life of a sentient man and requires no clarification to be a claim palpable. Such a thought was not however accepted by an Ancient Greek Philosopher who went by the name of Parminides. Change is when an entity either comes into being or goes out of being, for example when an apple seed turns in to an apple tree, the seed loses its existence and the apple tree comes into existence. For Parmenides this was a paradox, how is it that at a point a thing Is and at another point the thing Is not. The other kind of change is the change in character or quality, for example the same person was once a child, active and agile and then turns feeble and fragile, the identity remaining the same the qualities which once were attributed to him are no more attributed to him. This forced another paradox for Parminides. How was it that an entity can lose what was once part of their essence. How could the child lose his youngness and how could the elder procure their oldness, the thought baffled Parminides. Locke once said that “reason is a slave to passion” and Parminides was so passionate about the permanency of being that he reasoned the refutation of change. He ascertained that in order for there to be change, there ought to be distinction in time. Time of the past-present-future would be different, only then can change exist. Since it is in the past that the seedling was a seed and it is in the future that the seedling will become a tree. At this particular moment a seedling is nothing more or less than a seedling. Parminides held that the greater truth amongst the two that “change is permanent” and “only the present exists”, the latter is of greater bearing. If it is only that the present exists, then there is no distinction of time in states of past-present- future. Since time is not a continuous entity but rather instances of present states, change cannot occur at all. Rather than change being permanent, Parminides calls for the refutation of change in its entirety. The deception of the senses which compel the mind to cohere the variations over recrudescence of present moments call for change to be an essential aspect of being. Therefore he claims it necessary for the sentient species to involve themselves in logic and reasoning in order to arrive at a holistic understanding of being. Every time hence we come across the notion of times changing, governments succeeding governments, calendars moving from digit to digit. Recall the notion of there being a a greater truth that there exists only the present moment, in which one exists wholly as they are, unchanging and complete in themselves. Change necessitates a flow of time, and the stillness of time restricts change. |
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