Is Matter a Concept? - An Old Approach to a New Problem:
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Implications of Ancient Philosophy for the Modern Physicist and Cosmologist
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                     Jerome E. Whitcroft

                  Psycho/Logic Technologies
                Bendigo, Victoria, Australia
                   spectrum@bendigo.net.au
    (received: January 9, 1997 - revised: January 28, 1997 )

Abstract
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	Are the foundations of Physics rock solid? Do we really understand 
the cosmologies of the Ancients upon which the development and integrity 
of modern thought rests? Has the Truth been obscured? It is widely held 
that Democritus was an Atomist, but what did his concepts "atom and void" 
and "reality" mean in those times? Have "atoms" and "matter" become "reified" -
that is, originally concepts, have they been objectified as real things?
This essay attempts to portray the tradition to which the pre-Aristotelean
philosophers were dedicated - the primacy and indubitability of Being - and
thereby bring into question the aptness of the fundamentals of modern
Physics to comprehend the world. The philosophy of Parmenides, a
fore-runner to and major influence on Democritus, is examined through a
reevaluation of the opinions of his reviewers. A distinction is made
between Parmenidean ontology - Actuality, and Parmenidean cosmology -
Reality, by arguing that a relation exists between Being and Reality. It is
contended that this relation has not been represented faithfully, thereby
misrepresenting the Tradition to which Parmenides and Democritus were
aligned. It is suggested that modern cosmologies are based on the
presumption of Pluralism - Separateness - not Materialism.

It is all one to me where I begin, for there I shall come back again.
                                - Parmenides of Elea

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        Parmenides' On Phusis  is divided into two integral parts
representing an ontology and a cosmology. The first part on Being and
Truth; the second about appearances and the apprehension of Truth -
Becoming. To Parmenides, Being was primary, fundamental and absolute.
Parmenidean ontology precludes the notion of non-being; as Burnet[1]
translates: 'The only two ways of search that can be thought of, the first,
namely, that It is,  and that it is impossible for it not to be, ...The
other, namely, that it is not , and that it must needs not be, - that I
tell thee, is a path that none can learn of at all.'

        Parmenidean Being is a continuous and unchanging irreducible
wholeness, to which space, substance and time are abstractions - concepts.
His ontology does not preclude the existence of a reality: that is
elemental to it. But it does allude to the appearances of reality being
superficial and illusory; the 'way of seeming' is unreliable. If 'seeming'
is Reality, then Being is Actuality in Parmenidean doctrine. The
distinction is outwardly semantic, but serves to distinguish the role of
the notion of Reality being the epiphenomenon of the Actuality - Being.
That distinction is fundamental to understanding the profoundness of
Parmenides' wisdom. From my investigations I find that no emphasis has been
given to this crucial issue: it has been rolled into one, although Adam[2]
does suggests that, '...reality,' in the Parmenidean sense, 'is clearly
something material [objective], it is not apprehended by the senses, but
only by thought, it is the changeless unity that is hidden by the deceptive
appearance of plurality and change.' However, Burnet does not distinguish
that important principle satisfactorily. In fact he confuses ontology with
cosmology which has the effect of confounding the notion of 'reality'. He
stated,[3] 'Parmenides is not, as some have said, the "father of idealism";
on the contrary, all materialism depends on his view of reality.' But
doesn't Burnet mean, ...Parmenides' view of Being ? In Burnet's context,
'reality' does not reflect the true meaning of 'Being'.

        Notwithstanding, the topic of Burnet's remark is misleading in the
sense that it portrays Parmenidean ontology and cosmology on an equal
footing, that is, as a monism; an assumption that has no place in
pre-Aristotelean philosophy. I suggest that Idealism, if such a concept is
fitting, was the over-arching monism of the pre-Aristoteleans.

        Further problems with Burnet's treatment of Parmenides' ontology
are, firstly, the inference of 'body'[4] where Parmenides "sums up," What is,
is[5] which foreshadows the "separation" between the correspondences of "The
Way of Truth" and "The Way of Belief". Burnet's antithetical translation,
which is more in the Aristotelean tradition, attributes qualities to
'being': body, spatial extension, spherical shape. In my view it would be
more apposite, because of the realisable effect stemming from the location
of that excerpt, to clarify it as analogous and metaphoric; devices for
perceiving quality-less Being. That interpretation would be more faithful
to Parmenidean doctrine.

        Secondly, his notion of the universe being a plenum[6] is
defective. A matter-filled universe, that is, a universe with no space
between the things that constitute it, is inconsistent with the Reality of
Parmenides. The plenum relies, firstly, on 'things' existing independently
of 'Being', and secondly that 'things' exist in a separated place from
Being: notions that are materialistically based and anti-Parmenidean.

        It is worth noting that Parmenidean idealism is not antagonistic to
other forms of monism: materialism, pantheism or supernaturalism and,
ironically, pluralism - for monism is the philosophical theory that reality
may ultimately be assigned to a primary category: "ideas", "matter", "God"
and "separateness" respectively. I argue that the construct of pluralism
relies on the human being's psychological state of separation from Being,
in the way that "ideas", "matter" and "God" are constructs - currency - of
a psychological disposition. The pluralist's cosmology 'separates' the
conceptual elements of Parmenidean Reality into different "things", thereby
conferring "them" with attributes: "qualities" that distinguish them in an
apparently heterogeneous reality. This stepping down into the "material" or
"real" through hypostatising the construct - ideas, matter, God,
separateness - is the wandering of the lost through a multiplicity of
worldly appearances which the goddess alludes to, and warns against. This
should alarm us to the polemic that shatters the cornerstone of
non-Traditional thought: Does the thing belong to its qualities? or, Do the
qualities belong to the thing?[7] The process of reification leads only into
the infinite regression of reductio ad absurdum  that we are warned against
by Parmenides,[8] '...you must not assume ...that 'X is ' and then go on to
examine the consequences of your assumption, you must also assume that 'X
is not .' An issue revived by Thomas Kuhn[9] and many others this century.

        The Pythagoreans, prior to Parmenides, had conceptualised the
existence of the void, according to Aristotle[10]. He suggested: "The
Pythagoreans, too, asserted the existence of the void ...which vacancy
'distinguishes' natural objects, as constituting a kind of separation and
division  between things next to each other, its prime seat being in
numbers, since it is this void that delimits their nature."[11] In this quote
we see the seeds of pluralism emerging into philosophy through the concept
of space. Archytas in the Pythagorean tradition also asserted, according to
Simplicius, that, "Space differs from matter and is independent of it." We
see from these quotations the need to separate the "things" of Reality in
order to justify "their" relations and discern "their" qualities. Space,
place, distance, extension, multiplicity, length, breadth, dimension,
quantity, mass, form, body, matter, light, energy, photons and qualities
are a few of the constructs that have developed the bewildering complexity
of the "modern" cosmology of Materialism. Those constructs are all induced
on the fallacious premise of action at a distance.

        However, the concept of undifferentiated "place and thing" is in
fact the foundation of Parmenidean Reality: the elements are not mutually
contrasting. Fragment nine tells us that, '...when all things are named
[reduced to concepts, for example...] light and night, and these two
according to their powers are attributed to different things, then all is
at once full of light and obscure night, of both equally, since there is
nothing not shared by both.' As Roger Sworder[12] offers in his commentary on
Parmenidean Reality, 'Though we think of each physical object, event and
experience as distinct from all others, it is not so.' And further, 'The
passing of all things which seem through each other and everything else,
the homogeneity of seeming, is realised...'.  Place and thing are
contingent in Parmenidean Reality. That construct's elements are not
separable; it is a concept, a way of thinking which contributes to an
awareness of Actuality through the process of Mind and its intelligent
discourse.

        The philosophical problems associated with separateness, the basis
for pluralism, are well revealed in Plato's Parmenides[13] where, not only,
is the distinction between Actuality and Reality made more positively, but
the presumption of plurality in pre-Aristotelean thinking is revealed and
debunked; Parmenides suggested, "ex hypothesi it is one, and not many"[14]
while Zeno, the protagonist, said, "that reality is not many." Socrates[15]
compares Parmenides' and Zeno's seemingly disparate argument which appear
to have nothing in common but, "come to very much the same thing ...[Zeno]
states the same position as your own; only by varying the form he tries to
delude us that his thesis is a different one," exposing the futility of
using concepts and hypotheses that are based upon separateness exclusively.
Plato's Socratic arguments unveil Pluralism for what it is: an
inductively-reasoned way of understanding Reality, not apprehending Being
(Plato does not waste the opportunity to expose that through the dialectic,
reinforcing the role of intelligent discourse in Parmenidean philosophy).
That, of course, equally applies to other cosmological constructs. In John
Penwill's interpretation, the goddess alludes to and anticipates the
popularity of "new" paradigms and their falling short of a real
apprehension of Being: 'This then is how, according to opinion, these
things came-to-be and now are; and how, having grown, they will eventually
come to finish. And for each one have human beings established a name as a
marker.'[16]

         The illusion, from the Idealist's perspective, of separated
"place" and "thing" is brought clearly to our attention by the paradoxes of
Zeno. Zeno's puzzles, in my view, are not developed to discredit the
pluralist's cosmology solely, but to allude to something far more
deceptive: the action-at-a-distance paradox upon which all cosmologies,
except Idealism, are conceived. Zeno's arguments undermine the proposition
of action at a distance and the "effects" induced through the delusion of
separateness, or as Bailey[17] puts it, 'the Heresy of Separateness.' The
goddess too reminds us of the certainty of mentation, the power of
imagination and the primacy of ideas, '...things which are absent [from
reality] are firmly present to the mind nonetheless.'

        The work of Democritus, which is persistently heralded by the
modern scientist as the cornerstone of Materialism, has not been understood
in the spirit that would be consistent with a comprehensive cosmology that
he was committed to. It has been widely suggested that the 'atomist theory'
is in some way antithetical to Parmenidean Reality. I can find no evidence
to support such assertion. The world of seeming is consistent with a
Democretian Reality. Barnes[18] shows us that reality as far as Democritus is
concerned is illusory; things are not real  but only known by their
"qualities" which are perceived by the senses, determined by convention,
and labelled by consensus; hot, cold, bitter, sweet, coloured: 'in reality
atoms and void.' But how are we to interpret that reality? as "thing and
place" in the Parmenidean tradition, or from a separated and
correspondingly materialistic perspective? Has Democritus' "atom," his
conceptual unit for understanding reality - a reality more likely based
upon Parmenidean cosmology - become reified into the indivisible unit of
matter through latter-day values, beliefs and conventions? The question may
be put another way: Was Democritus a pluralist? And did he really believe
in action at a distance? Was there any point to "saving the phenomena of
the senses?" As Barnes suggests, Democritus condemned reliance on the
senses,[19] strengthening the argument that Democritus' cosmology was not
antithetical with that of Parmenides. I suggest that his legacy too has
been misunderstood through the dubious hand-me-down process of subjective
translation and reinterpretation resulting in what we have today: an
incomprehensible and bewildering cosmology.

        As I have suggested elsewhere,[20] "...there are just a few
cosmologies to have survived antiquity. They are the foundations of modern
scientific and matter-based theories. Their legacies, strangely, have
survived regardless of being grossly misinterpreted. It may surprise you
that they also form the foundation of the materialistic Western culture and
our social relations. It has been suggested that Democritus was responsible
for developing the atomist theory although this seems unlikely in view of
his diminished reliance on sense-based perceptions. However, it is
extraordinary to think that 2,400 years of human endeavour have been
conditioned and stultified by the erroneous translation and
reinterpretations of Democritus' knowledge. It has been suggested, I
believe falsely, by translators that Democritus contended that, 'the atom
is the indivisible unit of matter'. Democritus knew that "being" is
fundamental, and the apparently extrinsic reality upon which the concept of
"matter" is based is an illusion - Mind creates a reality which mirrors
one's consciousness. It is evident in his writings that he understood that
if one is to live in response to a perceived reality then the concepts of
Space and Matter - "place and thing" - could be employed to meaningfully
interpret the "ideas" at root of an apparently external world. These
concepts for understanding our changing consciousness, our Being, are not
actual things. We should never lose sight of that. They are the models
developed to understand one's place in the world. By using them as intended
we may uncover the Truth.  But, because we have lost the Word, the symbol
of our spiritual heritage and our true identity through an overwhelming
dependency upon the apparent realism of a sense-driven world, these
superficial modes of understanding existence and "being" have been induced
into Western thought as "real" things. The reification of "thing"  and
"place" has its correspondence in the psychological condition of
self-consciousness and of spiritual separation in the sense-based
"individual". The unchecked process of reification has separated us from
each other, nature and true identity."

Acknowledgement
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I am thankful for the generosity of resources and the insightful comments
of Clifford Carrington, Carrington's Classical Library.

Footnotes
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[1] Burnet, J. Early Greek Philosophy. A. & C. Black: London 1892/1971 p. 173.
[2] Adam, J. The Religious Teachers of Greece. Clark: Edinburgh, 1908, p. 243.
[3] Burnet, J. Early Greek Philosophy. A. & C. Black: London 1892/1971, p. 182.
[4] Burnet, J. Early Greek Philosophy. A. & C. Black: London 1892/1971, p. 178.
[5] ibid, p. 176.
[6] ibid, p. 179.
[7] Stewart, J. A.  (1909/1977) Plato's Doctrine of Ideas.  Oxford:
	Clarendon Press. p. 131
[8] Cornford, F.M. In Hamilton, E. & Cairns, H. Eds. (1980) The Collected
	Dialogues of Plato.  Princeton University Press. p. 931 [137]
[9] Aristotle, Metaphysics,  1080 b 33. cited in Jammer, M. Concepts of
	Space, p. 7
[10] ibid
[11] Sworder, R. In Parmenides of Elea. p. 52.
[12] Cornford, F.M. In Hamilton, E. & Cairns, H. Eds. (1980) The Collected
	Dialogues of Plato: Parmenides.  
	Princeton University Press. p. 931 [136]
[13] Warrington, J. in Plato: Parmenides. 
	J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.: London. [137] p.14.
[14]  ibid [128] p.3.
[15] Penwill, J., (1996). The Fragments of Parmenides, Bendigo: Latrobe
	University.
[16]  Bailey, A. A., Esoteric Psychology, Volume 1. (1936) New York: Lucis
	Press, p. 378.
[17]  Barnes, J. (1987). Early Greek Philosophy.  London: Penguin. p. 253 ff
[18]  ibid
[19]  Whitcroft, J. (1996). Dear Mr. Weinberg, you don't know who I is!

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