All is Flux

All is flux, change, impermanence.

In the debate between the mutability of all things and the immutability of all things three possible positions exist. All is unchanging. All is change. Somethings change while others remain unchanged.

The first position is patently absurd. We are constantly surrounded by change and movement. To maintain that change is unreal it is necessary to maintain that all that one sees is unreal, to postulate a separate reality more real than the one in which all knowledge and experience occur and forever inaccessible to any faculty but the imagination. This separate reality is unchanging by definition and for that reason and that reason alone must be un-effected by the constant change which characterizes the experience of everyday life. This reality is actually by its nature beyond experience because experience requires change, all human senses require change for their function, sight relies on the movement of light through space between subject and object, hearing the movement of sound waves, touch the coming together of object and subject, taste and smell the transfer of molecules from the object to sense receptors in the the subject... In order for all things to remain unchanged one must first eliminate from the category of all things, all things, and instead populate the set with mental object conceived specifically to be unchangeable by definition and therefore unconnected to the world outside of themselves and the imagination.

To jump to the third proposition, that somethings may remain unchanged while other things are changed will quickly prove the truth of the second proposition, for when any one thing changes all others are inherently changed, if only in their relation to that which has changed. A simple thought experiment will make this clear. Imagine a universe consisting only of 2 things, one a rock “immune to change” the other a river of constant flowing change in which this rock sits. The rock supposedly unchanging in the midst of the changing river is itself inherently changed by its relation to the river around it. One instant it is a rock of dimension x sitting in the midst of a river with flow state y, the next instant it has become a rock of dimension x sitting in a river with flow state y+1. In order for the rock to truly remain unchanged it would need to be defined as having no relation to the universe around it, and in so doing with have removed the rock from the universe and relegated it to the imaginary world required by the first proposition of a universe without change. In this way we have discovered the truth of the second proposition, that all is in fact change. A universe in which 1 thing changes is a universe in which all things change, and a universe in which no thing changes is a universe in which we clearly neither do live nor could conceivably live. Heraclitus stands triumphant Parmenides weeps and we all move on to contemplating the existential implications of our living in a world of constant change.