The roots of philosophy, or the Greek Tradition, can be traced back to one of the most profound questions posed by mankind: what is the quintessential characteristic of all things in this world? What is the common trait that we can identify in any object, creature, element or force? That has been a persistent question throughout our history, all the way back from the naturalistic explanations proposed by Thales of Miletus, and is still the driving force of scientific inquiry today.

What Is The Quintessential Characteristic Of Everything?

Many different answers have been proposed throughout history, and two of these answers were very prominent during the pre-Socratic period in Ancient Greece: the flux of Heraclitus and the stasis of Parmenides.The confrontation of these two great minds and their theories, and the conclusion of this confrontation was immeasurably important to philosophy as a whole.

Flux Vs Stasis

In order to fully understand the discussion between Heraclitus and Parmenides, it is important for us to understand the pre-Socratic period as a whole.The pre-Socratic period, or early Greek philosophy, encompasses all the philosophers between Thales of Miletus (c. 624/623 – c. 548/545 BC) and Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC). It was a period marked by an intense interest in cosmology, that being the study of the origin and substance of the universe.

Heraclitus and Parmenides: Pre-Socratic Philosophers

Many philosophers from the pre-Socratic period made their own cosmological systems and theories, and their work was foundational for Western philosophy, paving the way for the development of what we now call the scientific method, therefore leading to the creation of science as we know it today.Some of the most influential minds of the pre-Socratic period were the aforementioned Thales and his fellow Milesians Anaximander and Anaximenes; the Ionians Heraclitus, Xenophanes and Pythagoras; the Eleatic of Parmenides, Melissus and Zeno, among many others.

Pre-Socratics And The Creation Of The Scientific Method

Heraclitus, born in the year of c.535 BC, was a native of a city called Ephesus, which was located inside the territory of the Persian Empire, and not much is known about his life. Some of the stories and registered recollections about him are now proven to be fabricated; however, it is believed that he was a man who gave up on his privileged life in order to become a misanthrope hermit and self-taught philosopher. He was a scholar in the matters of materialism, cosmology, empiricism, rationalism, metaphysics, mysticism and logic.

Heraclitus and the Doctrine of Flux

Heraclitus wrote only one work, a scroll of papyrus that has been lost, although many fragments of said work have been quoted by a plethora of other authors, proving his undeniable influence not only on contemporary thinkers (notably Plato and Aristotle), but also to the philosophic tradition as a whole, being extensively mentioned by authors such as Nietzsche and Montaigne.

Heraclitus: Fragments

Τὰ πάντα ῥεῖ  (ta panta rhei, everything flows) is an ancient Greek phrase that summarizes “the philosophy of flux” proposed by Heraclitus. Otherwise called “the theory of impermanence” and illustrated by the element of fire, the philosophy of flux is a system that seeks to explain how the nature of all things is precisely change. In other words, the common trait which we can universally identify in all things is the fact that they are subject to constant transformation, as exemplified by the process of aging in living beings, or the ever flowing nature of a river.

The Nature Of All Things Is Impermanence

It is not possible to step into the same river twice. (No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he’s not the same man.)

Parmenides was a pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Elea in Magna Graecia. It is believed that he lived during the late sixth or early fifth century BC, and he is considered the father of metaphysics, having founded the very prominent Eleatic school of philosophy. He originated from a wealthy family, being a well known and influential person in Elea.

Parmenides and the Philosophy of Stasis

Such as Heraclitus, Parmenides only wrote one known work, often referred as On Nature, and only some fragments of this work have survived the test of time as well. The writings of Parmenides are credited for containing the first sustained argument of philosophy and one of the first digressions into the concept of being. The influence of Parmenides is undeniable, his views are still relevant to this day, and the rivalry between him and Heraclitus is still brought up in many philosophical discussions and studies.

Parmenides: On Nature

The philosophy of Parmenides is based around the concept of stasis, which means that the universe is in constant balance, that things either exist or do not exist, and they cannot change. Everything exists as part of an unchanging nature, and what we may observe as transformations are merely illusory appearances. The nature of the universe is, therefore, permanence.

The Nature Of All Things Is Permanence

Whatever is is, and what is not cannot be.

The direct confrontation between the two opposite lines of thought happened in a dialogue recorded by Plato called Sophist.This dialogue’s objective is to define through dialectic the difference between sophists and philosophers, being and not being, and to determine the nature of all things through the juxtaposition of the ideas of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Sophists were pre-Socratic teachers who were criticized by philosophers because they earned money for their teachings, while philosophers believed that knowledge should be spread for free.

Heraclitus And Parmenides’ Face-Off In Plato’s Sophist

After presenting both the philosophy of flux and the philosophy of stasis, Plato then claims that they are, in fact, not mutually exclusive at all. If according to Parmenides everything has an innate and immutable essence, and according to Heraclitus all things are subject to constant change, we may conclude that the immutable essence of all things is change itself.

Illusory Appearance And True Form, Imperfection And Perfection

This conclusion became the origin of Plato’s philosophy of Forms or the Theory of Ideas, which explores the concept that the world exists in two separate spheres: The Physical Realm and the Realm of Forms. The Physical Realm is how we perceive things, constantly changeable, imperfect. On the other hand, the Realm of Forms is perfect, its nature is immutable and unchangeable.

The Physical Realm And The Realm Of Forms

Whenever we see a river, taking the example from Heraclitus, it is never the same river, because the water keeps ever flowing, changing, moving. However, our perception of that river is guided by the unchangeable concept of a river. Our changeable perceptions are guided by the unchangeable forms of what we perceive. The nature of the universe is both immutable and ever changing.

Changeable Perceptions And Unchangeable Forms 

The juxtaposition between the views of Heraclitus and Parmenides and its later conclusion marks a transition in the ancient Greek tradition, from the pre-Socratic period to the Platonic era, and offers a bridge between cosmology and metaphysics.It provides us with two incredibly insightful explanations about the nature of the universe and an even smarter synthesis of these two apparently opposite systems.

Cosmology And Metaphysics, Science And Philosophy

To philosophy’s oldest question, Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides answered with opposing views. Or did they?

Heraclitus and Parmenides: What is the Nature of the Universe?

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Clarke's Third Law

This concept opened my mind to the possibility that "witchcraft" is just misunderstood science and changed the perspective of my religious views. 

My Ideas

Clarke's three laws - Wikipedia

A few years back, a government science agency did a poll to try to understand the public’s perceptions of the work they funded. One of the biggest surprises was how people felt about public funding for “basic research.” Most people felt the government should not be spending tax money on “basic research” at all. Instead, those funds should go into “advanced research”. The results showed a clear gap between what scientists mean by basic research, and what almost everyone else thinks it means.

Non-Scientists Misunderstand What Basic Research Is

For scientists, basic research really means fundamental research. But to understand its meaning even better, we need to contrast the idea of “basic” with that of “applied.” There is no immediate application for the fruits of basic research. They will not immediately become a gizmo in our next car or a molecule in our next medicine. Instead, the point of basic research is something far less tangible: pure understanding. That is why scientists call it fundamental. The goal is to understand some aspect of a subject at its most essential level.

Basic Research = Fundamental Research 

The history of scientific research is full of helpful examples. In 1905, for instance, Albert Einstein published his epoch-making paper on the theory of special relativity, which focused on the most basic concepts physics uses to understand everything: matter, motion, and energy. The versions of those concepts that still prevailed at that time had been developed a few hundred years earlier by Isaac Newton.

Basic Research Examples

Einstein saw how limited were Newton’s descriptions of these fundamental players in physics. The relationships Newtonian physics described between, say, energy and motion (i.e., velocity) did not tell the whole story. Einstein developed a more basic, more fundamental understanding of such relationships, and in the process, he gave physics new equations like E = mc2 .Einstein’s basic research changed the world forever. A list of the actual downstream applications from his paper would easily be as long as 2 ft. and would include everything from radiation therapy to hyper-accurate GPS satellites.

Basic Research Changes The World Forever

When Einstein was working on this paper, he was not thinking about how these formulas would be applied to any particular industry, or to the medical field. He was no doubt aware that his ideas would find such applications. They were too important not to become the foundation for new machines and new techniques that would affect everyday life. But applications were just not what he was doing or why he was doing it.

Basic Research Is After Pure Understanding

The Einstein example shows that basic research is, indeed, very advanced. In fact, it is the most advanced of all the kinds of research out there, because it pushes at the frontiers of knowledge. In today’s world, such basic research takes many forms. In cosmology, it is about understanding the first few instants after the big bang. In biology, it is about understanding how life uses information to carry out its most basic tasks. In cognitive science, it is about understanding how the brain sorts its many inputs into what is relevant and what is not.

The Fringes And The Frontiers

The most important point about basic research is that it is almost always the key to cutting-edge applied research. All of the specific applied research that led to the zillions of technological marvels we encounter every day began with someone asking a very basic question, applied to nothing.What we call “basic research” is actually the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

Asking A Very Basic Question, Applied To Nothing

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Everything should be done as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Any fool can know. The point is to understand.

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.

A lesson on basic research that doubles as a reminder on the impact of words. “Basic research” is not “base-level”, but actually the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

What we call "basic research" is the most cutting-edge. It underpins knowledge, and without it, technology does not come into being.

What Einstein Did Was “Basic Research”. Wait, What?

The large size of the human brain is what makes us (arguably) the most intelligent creatures on Earth, but new research surprisingly reveals our brains may have been slowly shrinking from about 3,000 years ago. Are we getting less smart? Scientists aren’t ready to declare that yet, but have found a possible answer for the brain size mystery by studying ants and the use of collective intelligence in their social organizations.

Smaller Brain = Less Intelligence?

Researchers have found that for much of human evolutionary history our brains kept growing. In fact, if you count from our last shared ancestors with chimpanzees six million years ago, the human brain size almost quadrupled. This happened thanks in part to the improving diet and nutrition of early humans. Cro Magnons, the Homo sapiens that had the largest brains in history were alive from 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. But as the recent study from scientists at Dartmouth and Boston Universities points out, around 3,000 years ago, our brains began to diminish.

The Size Of Our Brain Through History

Previous research estimated that, over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human brain went from 1,500 cubic centimeters (cc) to 1,350 cc — shrinking by about 150 cc, or 10% (the size of a tennis ball, as commentators have pointed out.) “Most people are aware that humans have unusually large brains—significantly larger than predicted from our body size. In our deep evolutionary history, human brain size dramatically increased,” said the new study’s other co-author James Traniello, of Boston University. “The reduction in human brain size was unexpected.”

Our Brain Was Always Growing And Growing. And Then It Stopped. 

The big question of course is, “Why is our evolution going in reverse?” The interdisciplinary research team, which included a biological anthropologist, a behavioral ecologist and an evolutionary neurobiologist, write in the study that their dating techniques do not “support hypotheses concerning brain size reduction as a by-product of body size reduction, a result of a shift to an agricultural diet, or a consequence of self-domestication.”

Why Did Our Brains Start Shrinking? Here’s Why They Did Not. 

The scientists believe that the reason we don’t need the same size brains lies in the creation of our social systems, which favor distributed gathering and sharing of knowledge and information while offering advantages in “group-level decision-making.” Since brains use a lot of energy, being able to draw upon the knowledge gathered within a larger society would require less individual brain energy to be expended in order to store and process information. Thus a smaller brain would be able to do the job just as well.

So, Why Did Our Brains Start Shrinking?

Interestingly, the researchers also suggest that the advent of writing around 5,000 years ago likely had a pronounced effect on the “neural architectures” of individual human brains by increasing the power of group cognition. Decision-making by an increasingly interconnected group could have led to “adaptive group responses exceeding the cognitive accuracy and speed of individual decisions and had a fitness consequence.” This could have led to the human brain size decrease “as a consequence of metabolic cost savings.”

But What Was The Start Of It All?

Unexpectedly, the researchers arrived at their conclusions by studying ants. As the scientists write in their paper, “Humans live in social groups in which multiple brains contribute to the emergence of collective intelligence.” While understanding the historical forces affecting brain evolution in humans is a complex undertaking, with only the fossil record to use for evidence, the researchers looked at ant communities.

And What Brought About That Idea?

“The remarkable ecological diversity of ants and their species richness encompasses forms convergent in aspects of human sociality, including large group size, agrarian life histories, division of labor, and collective cognition,” explain the scientists in the study. The range of social systems in ant societies allowed them to test out hypotheses and come up with insights that provide a general look at how selective forces can affect brain size.

Ant Sociality And Human Sociality

The research team focused specifically on creating computational models that represent patterns of worker-ant brain size and energy use, looking at groups of Oecophylla weaver ants, Atta leafcutter ants, and the common garden ant Formica. What they found is that collective intelligence and division of labor had an effect on the variation in brain sizes. In a group with shareable knowledge and individual specialization in particular tasks, brains were likely to adapt for the sake of efficiency, consequently diminishing in size.

Division Of Labour Affects Brain Size

“Ant and human societies are very different and have taken different routes in social evolution,” Traniello shared. “Nevertheless, ants also share with humans important aspects of social life such as group decision-making and division of labor, as well as the production of their own food (agriculture). These similarities can broadly inform us of the factors that may influence changes in human brain size.”

Ants Are Not Humans, Of Course

A review of the book in The American Journal of Sociology read: “After many years” observation of the behaviour of ants, the author has written a popular book attempting to show how ant societies function, how they solve many of the ‘social problems’ confronting man - war, reproduction, sustenance, pressure groups, security, democracy, and totalitarianism. In addition, one finds a tracing of the rise of the ants as a race, their diversification, their struggles for dominance, their tastes for odors, forms, and textures, their modes of ‘gossip’ and memories.”

In 1946, Dr. Caryl P. Haskins Wrote “Of Ants and Men”

As the author of “Of Ants and Men” himself remarked in 1946, the question is how far can we compare these ant societies with our own without becoming hopelessly involved in a bog of anthropomorphism? In other words, he goes on to reflect, can we legitimately “go to the ant” without reading into our findings many things that really do not exist? While this new research doesn’t have definitive answers, the new modeling is a fascinating step forward in getting closer to a fuller picture of our evolutionary transformation.

“Go To The Ant”

A successful team is a group of many hands and one mind.

The human brain shrank in size about 3,000 years ago. Scientists may have found an explanation by studying ants.

Scientists may have found an explanation for the surprising decrease in human brain size about 3,000 years ago by studying ants.

Can Collective Intelligence Be the Reason Why Human Brains Are Shrinking?

In February 1943, Erwin Schrödinger, quantum physicist and Nobel laureate (sharing his prize with Paul Dirac and Werner Heisenberg), gave a series of lectures at Trinity College Dublin, which later turned into his book “What is life? ” This work has been highly influential for a generation of molecular biologists such as Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of DNA.

“What Is Life”?

Less known perhaps is the fact that during his whole life Schrödinger was an ardent reader of philosophy from the East and West. From the 1950s on, when Schrödinger ceased to activelywork on the physics of his time, he focused more on wider philosophical and ethical issues related to science. Back then, his conferences always ended with what he jokingly called the “second Schrödinger equation”: “Atman = Brahman”, the Indian doctrine of identity .

Atman Is Brahman

In 1925, just a few months before Schrödinger discovered the most basic equation of quantum mechanics, he wrote down the first sketches of the ideas that he would later develop more thoroughly in “Mind and Matter”. Already then, his thoughts on technical matters were inspired by what he took to be greater metaphysical (religious) questions. Early on, Schrödinger expressed the conviction that metaphysics does not come after physics, but inevitably precedes it. Metaphysics is not a deductive affair but a speculative one.

“Mind And Matter”

One such speculative assumption (which can neither be proven nor disproven) is the one that there exists an external (mind-independent) world. Another one is the assumption that there exist separate minds. For both claims, we cannot get any empirical evidence: how could we step out of our own experience to check them? But both create insurmountable problems. The first creates the problem of how to think about the relation between these two types of realities (mind-matter). Why does it appear (according to our best science) that we live in a purely physical world devoid of qualities?

The Mind-Matter Problem

The second speculative assumption creates the problem of how to think about the relation between different minds (mind-mind). Why and how are we different from each other? Schrödinger believed that there is an elegant way to dissolve both of these problems by starting with an alternative metaphysical assumption. He did not endorse traditional Western views that go under the names of reductive materialism and subjective idealism, but he found inspiration in non-Western, particularly Indian philosophies.

The Mind-Mind Problem

The “second Schrödinger equation” refers to an old staple of Indian philosophy according to which the self (“Atman”) is identical to the ultimate reality of the universe (“Brahman”), which forms a central part of the teachings of the Advaita Vedânta. Schrödinger was quick to add that this “self” must not be conflated with the individual self but rather refers to a cosmic, universal entity of which individual selves are mere aspects.

Schrödinger’s “Second Equation”

A metaphor that Schrödinger liked to invoke to illustrate this idea is the one of a crystal that creates a multitude of colors (individual selves) by refracting light (the cosmic self that is equal to the essence of the universe). We are all but aspects of one single mind that forms the essence of reality. He also referred to this as the doctrine of identity. Accordingly, a non-dual form of consciousness, which must not be conflated with any of its single aspects, grounds the refutation of the (merely apparent) distinction into separate selves that inhabit a single world.

The Spectrum Metaphor Of The One Mind

Schrödinger drew remarkable consequences from this. For example, he believed that any man is the same as any other man that lived before him. In his early essay “Seek for the Road”, he writes about looking into the mountains before him. Thousands of years ago, other men similarly enjoyed this view. But why should one assume that oneself is distinct from these previous men? Is there any scientific fact that could distinguish your experience from another man’s? What makes you you and not someone else?

There Aren’t Separate Selves That Inhabit A Single World 

Similarly, as John Wheeler once assumed that there is really only one electron in the universe, Schrödinger assumed that there really is only one mind. Schrödinger thought this is supported by “the empirical fact that consciousness is never experienced in the plural, only in the singular. Not only has none of us ever experienced more than one consciousness, but there is also no trace of circumstantial evidence of this ever happening anywhere in the world.”

There Really Is One Mind

In the contemporary scientific study of consciousness, many scholars try to circumvent the question of how and why matter gives rise to conscious experience by asking why there seems to be a hard problem in the first place (when there is in fact none): consciousness is an illusionary story that some physical systems equipped with brains tell themselves. While Schrödinger was far from accepting an illusionary stance about the reality of consciousness, in a very similar vein he asks why it seems as if there were a multiplicity of minds, where there is just one mind (the “Atman=Brahman”).

There Only *Seems* To Be A Multiplicity Of Minds. Why?

The existence of many separate minds is an illusionary story that confused individuals would tell themselves. Thinking otherwise leads to the false belief that we are in some sense fundamentally isolated, rather than realizing that we are always connected with other beings (and ultimately also with what we now call non-living matter). Unlike in the hard problem case, there is no empirical evidence to suggest our initial belief is real.

We Only *Seem* To Be Fundamentally Isolated. Why?

An important characteristic of the way Schrödinger approached metaphysical and philosophical teachings was his prudence to uphold a rational and scientific methodology. The “doctrine of identity” cannot be adopted uncritically. We need to incorporate the doctrine into our best science, not throw our best science overboard. In other words, we should adopt a new metaphysics but keep with the scientific method.

Adopt Metaphysics While Keeping With The Scientific Method

Our scientific theories need “a bit of blood transfusion from Eastern thought … [but] transfusions always need great precaution to prevent clotting. We do not wish to lose the logical precision that our scientific thought has reached, and that is unparalleled anywhere at any epoch.”

What Schrödinger sought, what he would have appreciated the most, is a scientific approach to studying consciousness with mathematical precision. An important constraint following from the doctrine of identity for any such theory of consciousness would be that it, in its very basic structure, acknowledges that individual conscious beings are (i) aspects of a higher, unifying agent (rather than being disconnected individuals), and (ii) that the entire collection of such beings constitutes the ultimate nature of reality (rather than being just one among many things-electrons, rocks, or brains.)

Aspects And Constituents

Schrödinger desired a radically monist-theory that acknowledges the reality of consciousness. Given the current theoretical landscape in the study of consciousness, the “theory of conscious agents” seems to fit best with these requirements. It aims for a precise, crisp formulation of what consciousness does, and it proposes that any combination of two or more conscious agents is itself another agent.

The Theory Of Conscious Agents

The theory also seems to be compatible with the idea that the entire collection of agents constitutes the nature of reality, though this requires the theory to come up with a model of how the physical world can arise (and be nothing apart) from this collection.How could this be so? Schrödinger relied on a couple of arguments that have been raised previously in philosophy (e.g. by Kant) but his position boils down to this: what we call the physical world is the result of a process that Schrödinger called “objectivation”, i.e. the transformation of the one self-world (Atman=Brahman).

The Physical World And The One-Self World

Objectivation’s result is something that can be readily conceptualized and objectively studied, hence something that is fully void of subjective qualities. In the theory of conscious agents this amounts to the creation of “interfaces”. Such interfaces simplify what is going on in order to allow you to act efficiently. Good interfaces hide complexity. They do not let you see reality as it is but only as it is useful to you. What you call the “physical world” is merely a highly-simplified representation of non-dual consciousness.

Objectivation And Interfaces

This physical world also appears to harbor a multitude of subjects directed at it. It is the very same process of objectivation, which led to the false impression of an autonomous physical world, that also leads to the fallacy of assuming different forms of consciousness inhabiting different bodies. The quick fix of adding mental properties to a non-mental world would not be able to really solve the problems mentioned earlier. Do we need to label them with a tag saying “individual x”? But then, why are you you and not someone else? How to combine one set of subjects into a higher one?

The False Impression Of An Autonomous “Physical World”

But those problems can be circumvented by never giving in to the metaphysical assumption of the existence of one physical world that is opposed to many separated selves in the first place. According to the theory of conscious agents, the idea of fundamentally separated selves is a useful fiction that arises only if we conflate what we see on the interface with the true reality of non-dual consciousness.

The Idea Of Separate Selves Is (A Useful) Fiction

The theory of conscious agents proposes an interesting answer to Schrödinger’s questions. Why does it appear that we are living in a physical world without qualities? Why and how are we different from each other? Because the dynamics of conscious agents results in the creation of interfaces that hide the true character of reality. We are the same, yet we can appear as different.

Good Interfaces Hide And Simplify

From one perspective all agents combine into a single one which equals a (single) world. From a different perspective, this single agent is equal to a network of distinct agents that all inhabit their own worlds. Which perspective we choose, depends on what we want to explain.

Perspective Is Everything

Although I think that life may be the result of an accident, I do not think that of consciousness.

The task is not to see what has never been seen before, but to think what has never been thought before about what you see everyday.

“The total number of minds in the universe is one.”
— Erwin Schrödinger

Most assume that matter is fundamental, and that consciousness arises out of the complexity of matter. But Nobel Prize winning quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger does not share that assumption. For him, the universe contains a single mind, writes Robert Prentner and Donald D. Hoffman.

Heraclitus and Parmenides: What is the Nature of the Universe?

Clarke's three laws - Wikipedia

What Einstein Did Was “Basic Research”. Wait, What?

Can Collective Intelligence Be the Reason Why Human Brains Are Shrinking?

Schrödinger And The Conscious Universe

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