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 Riddler
0:12:58 Chapter 2: The Man from the West
0:21:03 Chapter 3: Into the Same River
0:26:40 Chapter 4: The Bow and the Lyre
0:35:38 Chapter 5: The Hidden Account
0:47:03 Chapter 6: The Gates of Night and Day
0:53:18 Chapter 7: What Cannot Not Be
1:05:20 Chapter 8: The Well-Rounded Sphere
1:14:14 Chapter 9: The World of Seeming
1:19:55 Chapter 10: Achilles and the Tortoise
1:28:20 Chapter 11: Becoming Against Being
1:34:51 Chapter 12: The Two Worlds
1:47:52 Chapter 13: How Change Was Saved
1:55:01 Chapter 14: The World Flows Again
2:04:43 Chapter 15: The Stubborn Illusion
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Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
creativecommons.org
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
