Cosmic Connections

Tracing the Thread of the Debate (Part One)

Heraclitus it seemed was right when he claimed

That the only permanent thing in this world is change.

You cannot step twice on the same river,

For the water you step on for the second time is

No longer the same water you have stepped on before.

Everything flows.

But consider this, thundered old Parmenides.

The water sure is flowing but is not the river the same?

Do not confuse the river with the water on it.

The river would still be river without water.

How can you call it a river if there is no water flowing?

Retorted feisty Heraclitus. It is precisely called a river

Because of the water that defines its contour and it always

Flows downward for whatever reason it may have.

I still would call it a river though water is not there.

Call it a waterless river, dried up river but river just the same.

So to say that nothing is permanent only refers to the water

And not to the river itself, so nothing has changed.

And they all died like all men do keeping close to their hearts

Whatever reason they might have had that made then navigate a river,

 A river with or without water.

Plato and Aristotle picked the fragments where the

Old and wizened men left off. Plato was openly sympathetic

With Parmenides while Aristotle thought that there was more point

To what Heraclitus observed. Plato hammered into the mind of

Aristotle that it is only in an unchanging world that truth, beauty and goodness

Maybe found. The master of course should be given due respect. But when

The time came when the broad shouldered one was finally summoned to the world of pure forms,

The student made up his  mind and made his own personal statement.

He agreed more with Heraclitus and put premium to the role of the senses

Without which nothing would be understood. And so down through the labyrinth

Of the ages the great debate showed no sign of reaching its end,

For somehow somewhere, somebody would take the cudgels

To defend one side or the other.

The medieval scholars immersed in it so that it did not take long

That a pitch battle was waged between the supporters of Augustine

 Who could not countenance the likes of an Aquinas.

And exactly as before the battle remained undecided

As who had bested the rest of the participants, partakers and stakeholders.

They all have their entrances and exits on center stage but the drama moves on.

Tracing the Thread of the Debate (Part Two)

Descartes tinkered with the treasure chest which legend said

Came from Atlantis as reported by Plato. Leibnitz probed into

The inner chambers and saw monads quietly swirling around

In miniature vortices. A little while after Spinoza thought of geometric

Zings and thought this is for easy undertaking.

Locke could not restrain himself and said that Descartes was still in his

 Usual dreaming state. Leibnitz’s intellectual fantasizing landed him in the

 Best of all possible worlds while Spinoza agonized and found

Consolation by looking at reality sub specie aeternitatis. Venerable George Berkeley

Cringed in the possibility of the imminent eviction of God from the discussion, so he thought of

A way to convince his friends and enemies alike that everything is actually just in the mind of God

And would have all melted into nothingness were it left to its own nothingness.

The affable Hume laughed off the claim that reason could with all its power prove that what the Ancients and the schoolmen have been so sure about is nothing but wistful thinking and useless passions.

Strange indeed are the ways of men but stranger still

The man of means for as we see right down to where we are,

 The world has changed not by anybody’s plan but purely by human hands.