ok today imma try smth different cuz yesterday i kinda went back to quoting the book. imma try j reading first and then write notes down w minimal referring back to the book

the presocratic philosophers

parmenides

parmenides wrote his philosophy in a hexameter verse. in his poem, split into two parts “truth” and “opinion”, a young man is taken up in a chariot to meet a goddess who promises him that he will learn all things from her. kinda reminds me of 离骚 but ig the latter is not philosophical in nature? not sure. need to actually finish reading that poem oops

in the “opinion” part of parmenides’s poem, the goddess says that the plural and changing world we perceive with our senses is deceptive and we must judge by argument. his reality is one and unchanging. nor is it what was nor will it be – it is the present, perhaps compending all time (since it’s supposedly unchanging). what is is all that is possible and what is not does not exist and cannot be thought of, by way of tautology. i think there’s a russell’s paradox in there somewhere though. the larger consensus is parmenides viewed what is as physical, he may have mentioned that what is is a sphere – then space must be finite to fit it, according to grayling

zeno

zeno attempted to overthrow the tyrant but failed. his last moments produced a multiplicity of legends – he bit off the tyrant’s ear; he bit off the tyrant’s nose; he proclaimed “you, the curse of the city!” when the tyrant told him to reveal who was behind the coup, and subsequently got thrown into a mortar and pounded to death (damn)

zeno defended parmenides’s thesis that reality is one: if things are many then they must be exactly as many, i.e., finite. but then there are things between the many things, then there must be infinite of things. zeno argues in the form of reductio ad absurdum, showing that contradictions can be deduced from an initial hypothesis – except his absurdums ended up being not that absurd ig? including achilles vs. tortoise; arrow in the air; plurality is false because there must be infinite things but the infinite things must have no size but things cannot have no size. but it was his arguments that prompted the later rigorous mathematical discussions by leibniz, newton, dedekind, and cantor