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Parmenides believed, in Russell's paraphrase, "that nothing changes." He started from the premise that it is impossible to think, without thinking of something -- something that exists. Since we think of things in the future and things in the past, they must exist; not "they existed" or "they will exist." You can probably see where this is headed -- everything that ever was, is now; likewise, everything that ever will be. Thus there is no motion; any motion that we perceive is illusory

Well, I want to talk here about a notion I had while I was taking physics in high school. I was very taken with the idea of four dimensions; I had read Robert Heinlein's short story "And He Built a Crooked House", about the house that was a tesseract, and Flatland, among other things. And I really dug the idea that time could be considered as a fourth dimension.

What does it mean, to say "time can be considered as a fourth dimension"? Well, in the equations that describe objects moving in space, the three spatial dimensions are each represented as a variable, x, y, and z, usually. (Well, actually in high school physics we were only dealing with motion along a single physical dimension x; I was extrapolating...) But you also need a variable for time, t. So, if I were mathematically competent enough to deal with equations in four variables, I would be able to map out, say, the arc of a cannonball on a graph with four axes, if I had access to such a thing.

So there I was in my physics class, thinking about this hypothetical four-dimensional graph of a cannonball's path; and I thought, a three-dimensional being (say, me) moving along the t axis of that graph (like a flatlander moving through 3-space), would see the cannonball be fired, arc through the air, and land, destroying whatever happened to be in the way. but the "real" motion would be that of the observer; the four-dimensional cannonball would be fixed in place.

So I came up with a sort of Parmenidean notion (also greatly influenced by Kurt Vonnegut, now that I think of it) that the whole world could be thought of as a three-dimensional space moving at a constant rate through four-dimensional reality, where all of our past and future actions are "still there"; the present moment is the intersection of this 3-space with "reality".

What really interests me at the moment is the question, is the world-view I've just described dualistic or monistic? (or monastic? is it any of those?) I'm looking at it, and I think it fits under the heading of "dualistic" cosmologies. Because that big four-dimensional "reality" is a Thing. And the slice of three-dimensional space that we're in is another Thing. Two Things; dualism. Am I misleading myself? Because five minutes ago I was certain it was an example of monistic thinking. Ah well, back to Plato...