This paper tends to use known facts and dialogues as the starting point from which to

draw inferences and solutions based on the philosophical arguments of Plato and
Aristotle.

THE PROBLEM OF CHANGE

ARISTOTLE

The basic notions of Aristotle’s philosophy of nature can be understood from his
analysis of change. When Aristotle undertook to explain how it is that things change, a
fact apparent to anyone, he had first to confront the seemingly iron-clad logic of
Parmenides.

According to Parmenides “All change is mere appearance; reality is One, and this One,
which only is, is unchanging.” Parmenides had argued that there are only two
alternatives for anything, being and non-being. No new being can come from non-
being since “nothing comes from nothing.” Nor can new being come from being since
what has being, already is and does not begin to be: “being cannot come from being
since it is already.”

The advance that Aristotle made over Parmenides consists in seeing that, although it is
true that “nothing can come from nothing,” it is not entirely true that “being cannot
come from being.” One must distinguish being-in-act from being-in-potency. While it is
true that from being-in-act, being-in-act cannot come since it would already be. The
alternative from which being can come is not non-being, but being-in-potency. From
being-in- potency there can come being-in-act.

Potency, in this case, is defined as the capacity for growth and development.

ACCIDENTAL CHANGE

In his analysis of change, Aristotle discovered that every change implies duality. It
implies a subject in potency which, by the action of some agent, pases into act, i.e.
receives some new perfection or actuality. Motion presupposes the acquisition of
something and the corruption of something else. The subject of change is what stays
the same through the change. However, through the change, it acquires something new
and loses what it previously had. Motion implies a passive principle and an active
principle, intrinsic to the thing that changes. This he described as accidental change.

Thus, there are three principles necessary for change to take place. There must be
something new that comes to be, something old that passes away, and something that
stays the same throughout. In the Aristotelian tradition, these principles receive the
names form, privation and matter.

Form is what comes to be

Privation is what passes away

And matter is what stays the same throughout the change.

In the case of a statue, the shape of the sculpture, Michelangelo’s “David” for instance, is
the form that comes to be when a formless block of marble becomes a statue. The
formlessness of the block is itself the privation of the statue shape, and the potency for
the statue shape. The marble, first in block shape, later in “David” shape, is what stays
the same throughout the change. The case of the coming to be of a statue is an instance
of an accidental change; what changes are the accidents of the marble. What stays the
same is the substance of the marble.

SUBSTANCIAL CHANGE

For Aristotle, motion is the technical name for changes in accidents. There are three
kinds of motion for Aristotle: a change in quality (which he calls alteration), a change in
quantity, size (called growth or diminution), and a change in place (called local motion).
In all cases, motion, as such, is defined as the act of a being in potency insofar as it is in
potency. Motion is the process that a substance goes through in which it loses one
accidental form or actuality and gains another.

Aristotle discovered these principles of nature (matter, form and privation) by analyzing
accidental changes. He found that they could also explain the more fundamental kinds
of changes, changes that involve the passing away and coming to be of substances.

Example; If one admits that sodium and chlorine are different substances (and they
certainly appear different – one is a white metal, the other a green gas), and that they
are each different from salt (also apparently so), then one can see that the change from
sodium and chlorine to Sodium chloride (salt) is a substantial change.

PLATO
Plato argued that both the material objects perceived and the individual perceiving
them are constantly changing; but, since knowledge must be concerned only with
unchangeable and universal objects, knowledge and perception are fundamentally
different.
In his theory of forms Plato meant to solve the ethical and intellectual problems as well
as that of change and permanence: How can the world appear to be both permanent
and changing? The world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing.
The world that we perceive through the mind, using our concepts, seems to be
permanent and unchanging. Which is most real and why does it appear both ways?
These are the arguments Plato sought to solve.

The general structure of the solution: Plato splits up existence into two realms: the
material realm and the transcendent realm of forms.

Humans have access to the realm of forms through the mind, through reason, given
Plato’s theory of the subdivisions of the human soul. This gives them access to an
unchanging world, invulnerable to the pains and changes of the material world. By
detaching ourselves from the material world and our bodies and developing our ability
to concern ourselves with the forms, we find a value which is not open to change or
disintegration. This solves the first, ethical, problem.

Splitting existence up into two realms also solves the problem of permanence and
change. We perceive a different world, with different objects, through our mind than we
do through the senses. It is the material world, perceived through the senses, that is
changing. It is the realm of forms, perceived through the mind, that is permanent and
immutable. It is this world that is more real; the world of change is merely an imperfect
image of this world.

A form- This is an abstract property or quality. Take any property of an object; separate
it from that object and consider it by itself, and you are contemplating a form.

Plato’s characterization of forms to explain permanence

and change:
The forms are transcendent- This means that they do not exist in space and time. A
material object, for instance a basketball, exists at a particular place at a particular time.
A form, the roundness, does not exist at any place or time.

Therefore a form such as roundness will never change; it does not even exist in time. It is
the same at all times or places in which it might be instantiated.

The forms are also pure- This means that they are pure properties separated from all
other properties. A material object, such as a basketball, has many properties:
roundness, ballness, orangeness, elasticity, etc. These are all put together to make up
this individual basketball.

But the form, Roundness, is just pure roundness, without any other properties mixed in.

In virtue of the fact that all objects in this world are copies of the forms, the forms are
the causes of all that exists in this world. In general, whenever you want to explain why
something is the way that it is, you point to some properties that the object has. That is,
you explain what forms the object is a copy of. The forms are causes in two closely
related ways:

The forms are the causes of all our knowledge of all objects. The forms contribute all
order and intelligibility to objects. Since we can only know something insofar as it has
some order or form, the forms are the source of the intelligibility of all material objects.

The forms are also the cause of the existence of all objects. Things are only said to exist
insofar as they have order or structure or form. Hence, the forms are the causes of the
existence of all objects as well as of their intelligibility. Plato uses the sun metaphor to
explain how the forms in general, and the form of the Good in particular, are causes in
these two ways. Just as the sun gives light which allows us to see objects, the form of
the Good provides order and intelligibility to allow us to know objects. Just as the sun
provides the energy for the nourishment and growth of all living things, so the form of
the Good provides the order and structure which is the source of the existence of all
things.

REASON WHY WE THINK ARISTOTLE’S ARGUMENT IS

MORE CREDIBLE:
In place of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas with a separate and eternal existence of their own,
Aristotle proposed a group of universals that represent the common properties of any
group of real objects. The universals, unlike Plato’s Ideas, have no existence outside of
the objects they represent.

Aristotle sought a general combined principal approach, unlike Plato who insisted that
the forms are the causes of the existence of all objects as well as of their intelligibility.
Not implying that Plato was wrong but that Aristotle’s attribution of change to 3
principals seems to be logically acceptable i.e He did not separate Form from Privation
nor from Matter. Form and matter, therefore, make up a substantial unity; one cannot
have form without matter, nor matter without some form. But, one can still distinguish
these principles, and also understand that these principles are real features of the things
that exhibit them.

Aristotle thought that Plato’s theory of forms with its two separate realms failed to
explain what it was meant to explain. That is, it failed to explain how there could be
permanence and order in this world and how we could have objective knowledge of this
world. By separating the realm of forms from the material realm, Plato made it
impossible to explain how the realm of forms made objectivity and permanence
possible in the material world. The objectivity and permanence of the realm of forms
does not help to explain the material world because the connection between the two
worlds is so hard to understand. Aristotle and the Aristotelian philosophers used logic to
criticize the theory. Gail fine went to an extreme to say:

The theory of form is an unnecessary proposal. There is no need to split the world up
into

two separate realms in order to explain objectivity and permanence in our experience.6

Aristotle elaborated this general criticism into two more particular objections:

1. The obscurity of the notion imitation:

According to Plato, material objects participate in or imitate the forms. It is in virtue of

this relation to the realm of forms that material objects are knowable and have order.
Yet, Aristotle argues, it is almost impossible to explain what exactly this participation or
imitation is. The properties that the forms have (eternal, unchanging, transcendent, etc. )
are all incompatible with material objects. How, for example, can a white object be said
to participate in or copy the form of whiteness? Is the form of whiteness white itself?
How can there be whiteness without any thingwhich is white? What can a white object
and the form of whiteness be said to have in common? It seems that the metaphor of
imitation or participation seems to break down in these cases because of the special
properties that Plato ascribes to the forms. The only link between the realm of forms
and the material world, then, breaks down. The forms cannot explain anything in the
material world.

2. The third man argument:

This argument was first given by Plato himself in his later dialogues. It is related to the
first objection, but is a more technical way of getting at the main problem with the
theory of forms. The resemblance between any two material objects is explained by
Plato in terms of their joint participation in a common form. A red book and a red
flower, for example, resemble each other in virtue of being copies of the form of
redness. Because they are copies of this form, they also resemble the form. But this
resemblance between the red object and the form of redness must also be explained in
terms of another form. What form does a red object and the form of redness both copy
to account for their similarity? Whenever someone proposes another form that two
similar things copy, we can always ask them to explain the similarity between the form
and the objects. This will always require another form. The notion of imitation or
copying used in the theory of forms, then, runs into logical difficulties. The theory of
forms really explains nothing about the similarity of objects; another form is always
needed beyond the one proposed. Thus to explain the similarity between a man and the
form of man, one needs a third form of man, and this always requires another form. The
explanation of the original similarity is never given; it is only put off to the next level.

This criticism paved the way for further criticism. As there was no logical connection
between the transcendent forms and the material world, so many critics raised a
question about the epistemological dimensions of this theory. Plato was of the view that
real knowledge was knowledge of form and the ideal destiny of a man was to reach the
realm of forms. But he didn’t mentioned how to reach that realm. As it was above this
material world, so whether there was a way to reach that realm in one’s life or only
death could take a man in that ideal realm. The idea of forms was very abstract and it
wasn’t clear enough to be accepted, un criticized.

Plato didn’t write much about his theory of forms and most of the written work was also
not preserved. Pheodo was the first book to have this theory and later on in republic he
explained it a bit. But this explanation was too little to make the theory clear. So the
explanation was mostly rendered by the commentators of the theory. This became the
major source of criticism on this theory.

CONCLUSION:

The criticism of Aristotle and Aristotelian philosophers, on this theory, is mostly of

explanatory type. Had Plato written more or his books had been preserved, there might
not have been that strong criticism on this theory. Even then the theory was powerful
enough to split the philosophy and philosophers in two parts. Though a group of
philosophers don’t agree with the content of the theory but even they accept that this
theory provided human beings with s new way to think and perceive the universe.
Home ›› Reflections – Change and Permanence

Reflections – Change and Permanence

Wed, 02/21/2018 - 13:04 — Anonymous

March 2018
CHANGE AND PERMANENCE

ne of the topics C.S. Lewis addressed in The Screwtape Letters was the natural enjoyment people have fo
can twist this into something very different. In this book, Lewis is writing from the devil’s perspective — show
the letters, senior devil Screwtape counsels his nephew Wormwood:
 The horror of the
valuable passions we have produced in the human heart — an endless source of heresies in religion, folly
inconstancy in friendship. The humans live in time, and experience reality successively. To experience much of
different things; in other words, they must experience change. And since they need change, the Enemy (bein
pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, a
has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes togethe
union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm. He gives them the seasons, each season different y
always felt as a novelty yet always as the recurrence of an immemorial theme. He gives them in His Church a s
feast, but it is the same feast as before.

Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural
demand for absolute novelty. This demand is entirely our workmanship.

This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The
more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the d
or both… But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate his horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so th
corruption in the will… The Enemy loves platitudes. Of a proposed course of action He wants men, so far as I c
righteous? is it prudent? is it possible? Now if we can keep men asking ‘Is it in accordance with the general m
reactionary? Is this the way that History is going?’ they will neglect the relevant questions. And the questions t
for they do not know the future, and what the future will be depends very largely on just those choices which th
make. As a result, while their minds are buzzing in this vacuum, we have the better chance to slip in and bend the

Do you find contentment both in the routine pleasures of life as well as in exciting new experiences? How does
considering proposed courses of action?

Greek Metaphysics – Change

and Permanence
MARCH 1, 2015 BY ADMIN

One of the earliest metaphysical problems concerned permanence and change. To the early
thinkers, the world contained things that appeared to change; yet, these very same things also
possessed a certain endurance and permanence.
These changing and permanent qualities seemed to give the world a sense of inconsistency. If
everything changed, then nothing was permanent, and if nothing were permanent, nothing could be
studied or understood. But if the world contained a permanent entity, then it could not change or
account for any change that took place in the world.
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus argued that everything in the universe changes (everything, that
is, but the principle that everything changes). He was the oft-quoted philosopher who claimed that it
is impossible to step into the same river twice because by the time one steps into it again, the river
has changed; it’s a different river entirely.
This argument was stretched to the limit by Cratylus, who went so far as to claim that one cannot
even step into the same river once because by the time the step is taken, the river has changed!
Cratylus even refused to engage in conversation because by the time the speaker had finished his
sentence, the words, the speaker, and the listener had all changed. He allegedly used to wiggle his
finger to acknowledge that he’d heard something. If everything is in a constant state of change,
however, then there is no way to make any sense of the world because there is nothing lasting to
investigate. Viewing change as a fundamental characteristic of the universe was, therefore,
problematic, but the notion that everything remained the same also posed some serious challenges.
Parmenides argued that everything in existence is permanent and unchangeable. Needless to say,
anything that is unchangeable is not subject to the impact of happenings.
The only property that unchangeable entities can have is that of existence. The single thing that can
be said of the permanent is that it is. Anything that is subject to change, Parmenides argued, goes
through the cyclical stages of not existing, existing, and then, not existing again. A student of
Parmenides, Zeno of Elea, devised some well-known paradoxes that supposedly demonstrated the
contradiction of motion. I shall address this in more detail later.
A kind of resolution was made between the two schools of thought — permanence and changeability
— when Democritus proposed the concept of the atomistic universe. Previous arguments had been
concerned with whether the matter that makes up the world is infinitely divisible. People wondered if
units of matter can be divided in two forever or if there is a smallest possible size — an indivisible
unit. Democritus debated in favor of smallest possible units. This allowed him to argue that the world
is both permanent and changeable.
The atoms are permanent, Democritus argued, because there is always the same number of atoms
in the universe.
The relation between atoms does change, and it is this flux in relation and distribution that accounts
for changeability.
Ultimately, however, Democritus chose to side with Parmenides and claim that the world is basically
unchanging; the movement of atoms merely explains the change apparent in human perception
while, in reality, the universe is fixed.
This is a good example of a metaphysical position offering a solution to a problem, reconciling the
apparently contradictory views of permanence and change by introducing atomicity. Having a theory
of atoms helped Democritus give an account of the universe that had both permanent and
changeable features. Although the atoms were small, fixed objects, the movement between them
was a changeable feature.
Democritus adopted a position on one metaphysical feature of the universe—claiming atomicity was
correct over infinite divisibility — and then used this position to explain how the world could be
permanent and, thus, capable of investigation while still being able to account for the changing
features of the world. The reason why this should be thought of as a metaphysical argument is
because there was no way for the Greeks to go out and test this idea. It would be two thousand
years before man had the technical ability to test whether such an idea was true or false. We would
now class an atomic theory as a scientific theory, but when there was no means by which an
empirical investigation could be performed, such a theory would have to be considered
metaphysical.

I assume you are asking about two philosophical views describing the nature of the world:
permanent vs. changeable.

If this is the case, it goes back to antiquity and what it comes to my immediately to my mind
are the Greek philosophers. This is because I have studied them in different periods of my
life, the first one being the school period. We also have a lot of information on the subject
from the Eastern philosophers, but not so clear and direct as with the Greek ones. So, there
were two main “schools” regarding this subject:

Pro permanence: Parmenides argued that everything in existence is permanent and

unchangeable. It was the very principle of existence. Something exists (it is) because it is
permanent. Anything that is subject to change it passes from existence to non-existence on
a circular basis.

Pro changeability: Heraclitus was absolute and very clear about change: “Everything
flows” he said, and he claimed that “you can never step in the same river twice” since the next
time you step in it, it would have changed. Cratulus, another Greek philosopher, argued
that you cannot step to the same river even once, because from the moment you stepped in
it, it would have already changed. Which I find more plausible than Heraclitus’ argument!
These two views are totally contradictory and, since they could not be both true, we could
safely say that one of the schools and the philosophers who were representing is wrong.
Well, they couldn’t be that wrong! Philosophy in those days was a full-time job and
philosophers passed their whole life searching for the truth. Indeed, as I see it, the
explanation is very simple. Permanence and changeability are two aspects of the same
thing. Two faces of the same coin. It depends from what angle one looks at the world.

In fact, here came Democritus to the rescue. He talked about atoms, which have both
permanent and changeable features. I won’t go further on that, of course! :)) Only to say
that this guy has been vindicated in our times by the quantum theory! (Mass vs. energy, two
states of particles. etc.)

This is a apparently a little more than what the question asks about, i.e. permanence, but
one cannot talk about it without its opposite, don’t you agree?

Now, what about the concept of permanence today? Well, I believe it is connected to
concepts such as universal Oneness, consciousness, awareness, the Self (I), all of which are
talked a lot about and considered as permanent. In fact, they are more than permanent:
they are static. They don’t even have a location in space. You just have to think yourself in
the course of time from when you were a kid to the present. You are the same entity: You.
This can never change. You cannot be more permanent than that!