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contact Jeremy
contact Ellen
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All the inquiry of the Greek philosophers seems to have
this in common: it is rooted in the principle that a thing
cannot materialize from nothingness nor can it dissipate into
nothingness -- existence and non-existence cannot give rise
to one another. This is an interesting notion and I want to
go off in several different directions with it; for now
I will just list some of the ideas I see that could be
developed in this regard.
- It is the opposite of what the human experience of
cyclical birth and death might suggest.
- It is the same principle as modern physics' Law of
Conservation of Mass/Energy.
- It might be inherently monistic (Existence is all there
is) or inherently dualistic (There is Existence, and Non-existence);
or it might not have any bearing on this argument that I still
don't fully understand.
- Atomism (and by extrapolation, modern physics) is a way
of allowing things to come into being and pass away without
affecting the existential status of the matter that composes
the things. How does Plato's theory of ideas mesh with this?
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