Friday, September 25, 2009

Philosophically speaking...

My professor said something interesting in class yesterday... we're talking about the Eleatic philosophers and their conception of the universe. My brain died midway through Parmenides' discussion of "what is" is bound by something... but I'm reading over Melissus (meh-lee-sus) and what he says makes a lot of sense.

"Whatever was, always was, and always will be. For if it came to be, it is necessary that before it came to be it was nothing. now if it was nothing, in no way could anything come to be out of nothing. Now since it did not come to be, it is and always was and always will be, and does not have a beginning or an end, but is unlimited."

Basically, the source of everything (chaos, apeiron, arche, etc.) is unlimited because if there was ever a time where it did not exist, nothing could conceivably come out of it since it itself could not come out of nothing.

Whether you believe that "what is" is God (I do) or just the universe, it is interesting to point out that quantum physicists and astronomers are writing, "yeah we've just discovered in the last 20 years that the universe is potentially limitless" when Greek philosophers 2600 years ago already knew it.

Think about that.

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