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.
