I had a conversation with a friend recently about Aristotle and our class discussions, and he mentioned some examples from his class that related to motion and rest, and the ability to change. Some of this may seem a bit unrelated, but I enjoyed the metaphors and wanted to share.
The first idea posed in his class was that, if one day you happen to experience something, like seeing a rainbow, if you were to experience that same event the next day, you would be as different of a person as that new rainbow is different from yesterday's. You are never the exact same person from one day to the next, or even between the morning and evening of one day. Experiencing, learning, living, everything breaks down and molds who and what you are, so that you are essentially continuously creating a new being. Although you, much like the rainbow, consist of the same basic materials, the way those materials come together is in a constant ebb and flow.
The second example is simply further interpretation. Viewing 2 rainbows as 2 different people is much like standing in a river as the water and creatures flow around you. Much as you can't say that you are ever standing in the same water, because everything is in a constant state of movement and change, the water is also not flowing around the same being from one moment to the next. As a part of nature and capable of movement and rest, you are both physically and mentally changing as you stand there. Ideas flow in and out of your mind, just as much as skin cells leave your body as the water rushes past. You are never the exact same person that you were the moment before or the moment after.
I don't agree that everything is one, or that all is nothing. Certainly those are vast overstatements that generalize and leave out too much. But I think what I can take from these ideas is that everything is at least equal in its use of change, motion, interpretation. As I stated before, the constant ebb and flow of life encompasses everything, all of nature, all of its constituents. We are not all the same thing, as what is changing inside us is different from what changes in the river or the rainbow, but we are all having the same general innovation and experience of becoming something different, and having that experience repeat itself in new ways constantly throughout life.
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I also enjoyed the ideas discussed in your friend’s class. It is intriguing to think about nature as not one or all, but as an ever changing collection of things that are transforming themselves from one moment to another. Just as humans, water, and a rainbow are never the same from one day to the next, nature (and the earth) are shaped by new influences all the time. Even if Aristotle had proved somehow his claim that nature is either one or all, that would not apply today, or even in a hundred years because the state of nature is continuously being altered.
ReplyDeleteYour examples are very insightful. I agree, changes that are not as apparent still constitute as legitimate change. While the mechanisms that rejuvenates our bodies may not be as obvious as a streams' flow, our physical bodies still experience as much change a body of water. Of course we do not experience profound change daily. We will not wake up 30 pounds heavier than we were the day before. But the changes that we experience can be best observed in a wound that has begun to heal or fine hairs that have begun to sprout after a shave. These examples, just like the ones you mentioned above, support the ideas surround continual motion and change.
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