Because All Is One

These axioms were made more explicit and carried to their logical and extreme conclusions by Parmenides of Elea born c. There can be no motion either, for it would have to be a motion into something that is—which is not possible since it would be blocked—or a motion into something that is not—which is equally impossible since what is not does not exist. Hence, everything is solid, immobile being.

The familiar world, in which things move around, come into being, and pass away, is a world of mere belief doxa.

Cartesianism | philosophy | www.newyorkethnicfood.com

In a second part of the poem, however, Parmenides tried to give an analytical account of this world of belief, showing that it rested on constant distinctions between what is believed to be positive—i. It is significant that Heracleitus of Ephesus c. Parmenides had an enormous influence on the further development of philosophy.

Most of the philosophers of the following two generations tried to find a way to reconcile his thesis that nothing comes into being nor passes away with the evidence presented to the senses. Empedocles of Acragas c. But the elements are constantly mixed with one another by love and again separated by hate. Thus, through mixture and decomposition, composite things come into being and pass away. Because Empedocles conceived of love and hate as blind forces, he had to explain how, through random motion, living beings could emerge.

This he did by means of a somewhat crude anticipation of the theory of the survival of the fittest. In the process of mixture and decomposition, the limbs and parts of various animals would be formed by chance. But they could not survive on their own; they would survive only when, by chance, they had come together in such a way that they were able to support and reproduce themselves.

It was in this way that the various species were produced and continued to exist. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae c. In the beginning, all of these particles had existed in an even mixture, in which nothing could be distinguished, much like the indefinite apeiron of Anaximander. But then nous , or intelligence, began at one point to set these particles into a whirling motion, foreseeing that in this way they would become separated from one another and then recombine in the most various ways so as to produce gradually the world in which human beings live.

In contrast to the forces assumed by Empedocles, the nous of Anaxagoras is not blind but foresees and intends the production of the cosmos, including living and intelligent beings; however, it does not interfere with the process after having started the whirling motion. This is a strange combination of a mechanical and a nonmechanical explanation of the world. By far of greatest importance for the later development of philosophy and physical science was an attempt by the atomists Leucippus flourished 5th century bc and Democritus c.

There are, then, two fundamental principles of the physical world, empty space and filled space —the latter consisting of atoms that, in contrast to those of modern physics, are real atoms; that is, they are absolutely indivisible because nothing can penetrate to split them. On these foundations, laid by Leucippus, Democritus appears to have built a whole system, aiming at a complete explanation of the varied phenomena of the visible world by means of an analysis of its atomic structure. This system begins with elementary physical problems, such as why a hard body can be lighter than a softer one.

The explanation is that the heavier body contains more atoms, which are equally distributed and of round shape; the lighter body, however, has fewer atoms, most of which have hooks by which they form rigid gratings. The system ends with educational and ethical questions. A sound and cheerful person, useful to his fellows, is literally well composed. Although destructive passions involve violent, long-distance atomic motions, education can help to contain them, creating a better composure. Democritus also developed a theory of the evolution of culture , which influenced later thinkers.

The Cartesian system

Civilization , he thought, is produced by the needs of life, which compel human beings to work and to make inventions. When life becomes too easy because all needs are met, there is a danger that civilization will decay as people become unruly and negligent. All of the post-Parmenidean philosophers, like Parmenides himself, presupposed that the real world is different from the one that human beings perceive. Thus arose the problems of epistemology, or theory of knowledge. According to Anaxagoras, everything is contained in everything.

But this is not what people perceive. He solved this problem by postulating that, if there is a much greater amount of one kind of particle in a thing than of all other kinds, the latter are not perceived at all. The observation was then made that sometimes different persons or kinds of animals have different perceptions of the same things. He explained this phenomenon by assuming that like is perceived by like. If, therefore, in the sense organ of one person there is less of one kind of stuff than of another, that person will perceive the former less keenly than the latter.

This reasoning was also used to explain why some animals see better at night and others during the day. According to Democritus, atoms have no sensible qualities, such as taste, smell, or colour, at all. Thus, he tried to reduce all of them to tactile qualities explaining a bright white colour, for instance, as sharp atoms hitting the eye like needles , and he made a most elaborate attempt to reconstruct the atomic structure of things on the basis of their apparent sensible qualities.

Also of very great importance in the history of epistemology was Zeno of Elea c. Parmenides had, of course, been severely criticized because of the strange consequences of his doctrine: To support him, however, Zeno tried to show that the assumption that there is motion and plurality leads to consequences that are no less strange. This he did by means of his famous paradoxes , saying that the flying arrow rests since it can neither move in the place in which it is nor in a place in which it is not, and that Achilles cannot outrun a turtle because, when he has reached its starting point, the turtle will have moved to a further point, and so on ad infinitum—that, in fact, he cannot even start running, for, before traversing the stretch to the starting point of the turtle, he will have to traverse half of it, and again half of that, and so on ad infinitum.

All of these paradoxes are derived from the problem of the continuum. Although they have often been dismissed as logical nonsense, many attempts have also been made to dispose of them by means of mathematical theorems, such as the theory of convergent series or the theory of sets. All of the philosophies mentioned so far are in various ways historically akin to one another. Toward the end of the 6th century bc , however, there arose, quite independently, another kind of philosophy, which only later entered into interrelation with the developments just mentioned: Pythagoras traveled extensively in the Middle East and in Egypt and, after his return to Samos, emigrated to southern Italy because of his dislike of the tyranny of Polycrates c.

At Croton and Metapontum he founded a philosophical society with strict rules and soon gained considerable political influence. He appears to have brought his doctrine of the transmigration of souls from the Middle East. Originally, this, too, was a very broad generalization made on the basis of comparatively few observations: But because the followers of Pythagoras tried to apply their principle everywhere with the greatest of accuracy, one of them— Hippasus of Metapontum flourished 5th century bc —made one of the most fundamental discoveries in the entire history of science: At first sight this discovery seemed to destroy the very basis of the Pythagorean philosophy, and the school thus split into two sects, one of which engaged in rather abstruse numerical speculations, while the other succeeded in overcoming the difficulty by ingenious mathematical inventions.

The speculations described so far constitute , in many ways, the most important part of the history of Greek philosophy because all of the most fundamental problems of Western philosophy turned up here for the first time. One also finds here the formation of a great many concepts that have continued to dominate Western philosophy and science to the present day.

In the middle of the 5th century bc , Greek thinking took a somewhat different turn through the advent of the Sophist s. Philosophically they were, in a way, the leaders of a rebellion against the preceding development, which increasingly had resulted in the belief that the real world is quite different from the phenomenal world. This is the meaning of the pronouncement of Protagoras of Abdera c. The Sophists were not only skeptical of what had by then become a philosophical tradition but also of other traditions.

On the basis of the observation that different nations have different rules of conduct even in regard to things considered most sacred—such as the relations between the sexes, marriage, and burial—they concluded that most rules of conduct are conventions. What is really important is to be successful in life and to gain influence over others. This they promised to teach. Gorgias was proud of the fact that, having no knowledge of medicine, he was more successful in persuading a patient to undergo a necessary operation than his brother, a physician, who knew when an operation was necessary.

The older Sophists, however, were far from openly preaching immoralism. They, nevertheless, gradually came under suspicion because of their sly ways of arguing. Although there is a late tradition according to which Pythagoras invented the word philosopher , it was certainly through Socrates—who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was striving for it—that the term came into general use and was later applied to all earlier serious thinkers. But he constantly engaged in conversations with everybody—old and young, high and low—trying to bring into the open by his questions the inconsistencies in their opinions and actions.

His whole way of life rested on two unshakable premises: He demonstrated his adherence to the first principle on various occasions and under different regimes. When, after the Battle of Arginusae bc , the majority of the Athenian popular assembly demanded death without trial for the admirals, Socrates, who on that day happened to be president of the assembly an office changing daily , refused to put the proposal to a vote because he believed it was wrong to condemn anyone without a fair trial.

He refused even though the people threatened him, shouting that it would be terrible if the sovereign people could not do as they pleased. When, after the overthrow of democracy in Athens in bc , the so-called Thirty Tyrants , who tried to involve everybody in their wrongdoing, ordered him to arrest an innocent citizen whose money they coveted, he simply disobeyed.

This he did despite the fact that such disobedience was even more dangerous than disobeying the sovereign people had been at the time of unrestricted democracy. Likewise, in the time of the democracy, he pointed out by his questions the inconsistency of allowing oneself to be swayed by the oratory of a good speaker instead of first inquiring into his capability as a statesman, whereas in private life a sensible citizen would not listen to the oratory of a quack but would try to find the best doctor.

But the most fundamental inconsistency that he tried to demonstrate everywhere was that most people by their actions show that what they consider good, wonderful, and beautiful in others—such as, for instance, doing right at great danger to oneself—they do not consider good for themselves, and what they consider good for themselves they despise and condemn in others.

Although these stands won him the fervent admiration of many, especially among the youth, they also caused great resentment among leading politicians, whose inconsistencies and failings were exposed. Although Socrates had survived unharmed through the regime of the Thirty Tyrants—partly because it did not last long and partly because he was supported by some close relatives of their leader, Critias—it was under the restored democracy that he was accused of impiety and of corrupting the youth and finally condemned to death, largely also in consequence of his intransigent attitude during the trial.

Many of his adherents—Plato first among them, but also including the historian Xenophon — c. Some founded schools or sects that perpetuated themselves over long periods of time: Eucleides of Megara c. The latter, through his disciple Diogenes of Sinope died c. Aristippus of Cyrene c. Although Aristippus renounced his son because he led a dissolute life, the school that he founded through his daughter and his grandson was hedonistic, holding pleasure to be the only good. By far the most important disciple of Socrates, however, was Plato, a scion of one of the most noble Athenian families, who could trace his ancestry back to the last king of Athens and to Solon c.

Contrary to his master, however, who always concerned himself with the attitudes of individuals, Plato believed in the importance of political institutions. In his early youth he had observed that the Athenian masses, listening to the glorious projects of ambitious politicians, had engaged in foolhardy adventures of conquest, which led in the end to total defeat in the Peloponnesian War — bc.

When, in consequence of the disaster, democracy was abolished, Plato at first set great hopes in the Thirty Tyrants—especially since their leader, Critias, was a close relative. But he soon discovered that—to use his own words—the despised democracy had been gold in comparison with the new terror. When the oligarchy was overthrown and the restored democracy, in bc , adopted a new law code—in fact, a kind of written constitution containing safeguards against rash political decisions—Plato again had considerable hope and was even inclined to view the execution of Socrates as an unfortunate incident rather than a logical consequence of the new regime.

Again, however, he found the much-vaunted dolce vita of the Greeks there, in which the rich lived in luxury exploiting the poor, much worse than in the democracy at Athens. But at Syracuse he met a young man, Dion c. On his return to Athens, Plato founded the Academy , an institution for the education of philosophers, and in the following years he produced, besides other dialogues, his great work, Republic , in which he drew the outlines of an ideal state.

Because it is the passions and desires of human beings that cause all disturbances in society, the state must be ruled by an elite that governs exclusively by reason and is supported by a class of warriors entirely obedient to it. Both ruling classes must have no individual possessions and no families and lead an extremely austere life, receiving the necessities of life from the working population, which alone is permitted to own private property. The elite receives a rigid education to fit it for its task. The opening words of Heraclitus' book DK22B1, quoted above seem to indicate that he will expound the nature of things in a way that will have profound implications for human life.

In other words, he seems to see the theory of nature and the human condition as intimately connected. In fact, recently discovered papyri have shown that Heraclitus is concerned with technical questions of astronomy, not only with general theory. There is no reason, then, to think of him as solely a humanist or moral philosopher. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think of him as a straightforward natural philosopher in the manner of other Ionian philosophers, for he is deeply concerned with the moral implications of physical theory.

To souls it is death to become water, to water death to become earth, but from earth water is born, and from water soul. If you went in search of it, you would not find the boundaries of the soul, though you traveled every road-so deep is its measure [ logos ]. Drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist, while a virtuous life keeps the soul dry and intelligent. Souls seem to be able to survive death and to fare according to their character. Speaking with sense we must rely on a common sense of all things, as a city relies on its wall, and much more reliably.

For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it will and suffices for all and overflows. The laws provide a defense for a city and its way of life. But the laws are not merely of local interest: Here we see the notion of a law of nature that informs human society as well as nature. There is a human cosmos that like the natural cosmos reflects an underlying order.

Heraclitus (fl. c. 500 B.C.E.)

The laws by which human societies are governed are not mere conventions, but are grounded in the ultimate nature of things. One cannot break a human law with impunity. The notion of a law-like order in nature has antecedents in the theory of Anaximander, and the notion of an inherent moral law influences the Stoics in the 3rd century BCE. Heraclitus recognizes a divine unity behind the cosmos, one that is difficult to identify and perhaps impossible to separate from the processes of the cosmos:.

God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and it alters just as when it is mixed with incense is named according to the aroma of each. Evidently the world either is god, or is a manifestation of the activity of god, which is somehow to be identified with the underlying order of things. God can be thought of as fire, but fire, as we have seen, is constantly changing, symbolic of transformation and process. Divinity is present in the world, but not as a conventional anthropomorphic being such as the Greeks worshiped. Heraclitus goes beyond the natural philosophy of the other Ionian philosophers to make profound criticisms and develop far-reaching implications of those criticisms.

1. Ubuntu philosophy.
2. Rolling Warehouse Blueprint (Vending for Profit Book 3).
3. Gluten Free for the Non-Cook [Article}..

He suggests the first metaphysical foundation for philosophical speculation, anticipating process philosophy. And he makes human values a central concern of philosophy for the first time. His aphoristic manner of expression and his manner of propounding general truths through concrete examples remained unique. Heraclitus's paradoxical exposition may have spurred Parmenides' rejection of Ionian philosophy.

Empedocles and some medical writers echoed Heraclitean themes of alteration and ongoing process, while Democritus imitated his ethical observations. Influenced by the teachings of the Heraclitean Cratylus, Plato saw the sensible world as exemplifying a Heraclitean flux. Plato and Aristotle both criticized Heraclitus for a radical theory that led to a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction.

The Stoics adopted Heraclitus's physical principles as the basis for their theories. Life and Times Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, an important city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus, the birthplace of philosophy. Theory of Knowledge Heraclitus sees the great majority of human beings as lacking understanding: DK22B1 Most people sleep-walk through life, not understanding what is going on about them. What Heraclitus actually says is the following: On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. DK22B12 There is an antithesis between 'same' and 'other.

But if we look closer, we see that the unity in question is not identity: DK22B88 The second sentence in B88 gives the explanation for the first. Criticism of Ionian Philosophy Heraclitus' theory can be understood as a response to the philosophy of his Ionian predecessors. Heraclitus observes, All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods. DK22B90 We can measure all things against fire as a standard; there is an equivalence between all things and gold, but all things are not identical to gold.

Physical Theory Heraclitus' criticisms and metaphysical speculations are grounded in a physical theory. He expresses the principles of his cosmology in a single sentence: DK22B30 This passage contains the earliest extant philosophical use of the word kosmos, "world-order," denoting the organized world in which we live, with earth, sea, atmosphere, and heavens. Heraclitus explains the order and proportion in which the stuffs change: DK22B31a Sea is liquefied and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth. DK22B31b Fire is transformed into water "sea" of which half turns back into fire "firewind" and half into earth.

For Heraclitus, flux and opposition are necessary for life. Aristotle reports, Heraclitus criticizes the poet who said, 'would that strife might perish from among gods and men' [Homer Iliad DK22A22 Heraclitus views strife or conflict as maintaining the world: DK22B80 War is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some as men, who made some slaves and some freemen. DK22B53 In a tacit criticism of Anaximander, Heraclitus rejects the view that cosmic justice is designed to punish one opposite for its transgressions against another.

Heraclitus observes, The road up and down is one and the same. DK22B60 Here again we find a unity of opposites, but no contradiction. Moral and Political Theory There has been some debate as to whether Heraclitus is chiefly a philosopher of nature a view championed by G. Heraclitus views the soul as fiery in nature: DK22B36 Soul is generated out of other substances just as fire is. But it has a limitless dimension: DK22B45 Drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist, while a virtuous life keeps the soul dry and intelligent.

The laws of a city-state are an important principle of order: The people [of a city] should fight for their laws as they would for their city wall. DK22B44 Speaking with sense we must rely on a common sense of all things, as a city relies on its wall, and much more reliably. DK22B The laws provide a defense for a city and its way of life. Heraclitus recognizes a divine unity behind the cosmos, one that is difficult to identify and perhaps impossible to separate from the processes of the cosmos: In the beginning I could not believe myself, but yes, there is such a term as featuritis.

The diseases was identified in , but I am sure that it goes back to earlier technologies. The diseases has an official definition:. Let me explain this. Suppose we follow all the ideal scenarios of a human-centred design process. We create a product that people want to use and buy. It is perfect on all levels: It has a mission, fulfils peoples lives with meaning, and as a result, the product becomes successful.

Existentialism

Everybody has one or wants one. Unfortunately, after a while since the product was available on the market, some factors will influence its next steps: Harvard professor Youngme Moon argues that it is the desire to match our competition that makes all the products look the same. Usually, companies try to increase sales by matching product features of their competitors. Do they have a notch on the phone? No problems, now everyone has a notch.

This is called competition driven design. And sadly, even when the first versions of a product is done well, and there is a human-centred design behind it, very few companies leave it untouched without doing something as their competitors do. Sometimes you will even have to lose time to create something great and exceptional. Or even come third or fourth to the market.

• Ballan;
• Ubuntu philosophy - Wikipedia.
• How Not to Design a Product Like Everyone Else’s – UX Planet.
• To Die For: Number 1 in series (Blair Mallory).
• The Glastonbury Connection.

Are you willing to do that? We all have heard of first mover advantage. But at what price does it come? You decide to write a book on design or business and are willing to hit the bestselling charts. You have this fantastic idea that nobody wrote about, and you decide to write it hastily before anyone else. A couple of months in and you are ready to hit the market.