Is Change Real? | Heraclitus vs Parmenides | Philosophy for Sleep

Fall asleep to the oldest quarrel in philosophy, whether all things flow or nothing ever moves at all.Twenty-five centuries ago, two Greek thinkers gave opposite answers to the same question, and nearly every philosopher since has stood somewhere between them. This episode follows the quarrel from its beginning. We meet Heraclitus, the lonely riddler of Ephesus who hid his one book in a temple and taught that everything flows, that the world is a river and a living fire held in tune by a hidden measure. We cross the sea to meet Parmenides, the calm lawgiver of the Greek west who used pure reason to argue that change is impossible, and that whatever truly is must stand motionless and one. We follow their collision through the famous paradoxes of Zeno, through Plato's daring attempt to give each thinker a world of his own, through Aristotle's quieter answer, and into our own age, where the same argument lives on in physics and in the felt passing of time. It is a slow, patient walk through the two deepest things we feel, that everything changes, and that nothing is ever truly lost.Please listen only in safe, restful contexts.Chapters:0:00:00 Chapter 1: The Riddler0:12:58 Chapter 2: The Man from the West0:21:03 Chapter 3: Into the Same River0:26:40 Chapter 4: The Bow and the Lyre0:35:38 Chapter 5: The Hidden Account0:47:03 Chapter 6: The Gates of Night and Day0:53:18 Chapter 7: What Cannot Not Be1:05:20 Chapter 8: The Well-Rounded Sphere1:14:14 Chapter 9: The World of Seeming1:19:55 Chapter 10: Achilles and the Tortoise1:28:20 Chapter 11: Becoming Against Being1:34:51 Chapter 12: The Two Worlds1:47:52 Chapter 13: How Change Was Saved1:55:01 Chapter 14: The World Flows Again2:04:43 Chapter 15: The Stubborn IllusionIf this helped you rest, follow Sleepy Philosophy Radio on Spotify, and become a member to unlock member only episodes and help keep the show going.Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Tracks used: Anguish, Blue Feather, Evening Fall (Harp), Gregorian Chant, Heartbreaking, Lightless Dawn, Lone Harvest, Magic Forest, Mesmerize, Mourning Song, Oppressive Gloom, Promising Relationship, Quinn's Song: A New Man, Relent, Smoother Move, Sunset at Glengorm, Trio for Piano Cello and Clarinet, Wounded