Becoming (philosophy)
Encyclopedia
The concept of becoming was born in eastern ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...

 by the philosopher Heraclitus
Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom...

 of Hephesus, who in the Sixth century BC, said that nothing in this world is constant except change or becoming. His theory stands in direct contrast to Parmenides
Parmenides
Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

, another Greek philosopher, but from the italic Magna Grecia, who believed that the ontic
Ontic
In philosophy, ontic is physical, real or factual existence."Ontic" describes what is there, as opposed to the nature or properties of that being...

 changes or "becoming" we perceive with our senses is deceptive, and that there is a pure perfect and eternal being behind nature, which is the ultimate truth. In philosophy, the word "becoming" concerns a specific ontological
Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations...

 concept, which should not be confused with the process philosophy
Process philosophy
Process philosophy identifies metaphysical reality with change and dynamism. Since the time of Plato and Aristotle, philosophers have posited true reality as "timeless", based on permanent substances, whilst processes are denied or subordinated to timeless substances...

, which indicates a metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 doctrine of theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

.

History

Heraclitus (c. 535 - c. 475 BC) spoke extensively about becoming. Shortly afterwards Leucippus
Leucippus
Leucippus or Leukippos was one of the earliest Greeks to develop the theory of atomism — the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms — which was elaborated in greater detail by his pupil and successor, Democritus...

of Miletus similarly spoke of becoming as the movement of atoms.

The becoming ontology

According to tradition, Heraclitus wrote a treatise about nature named "Περὶ φύσεως" ("Perì phýseōs"), "About Nature," in which appears the famous aphorism πάντα ῥεῖ ("panta rei [os potamòs]") translated literally as "the whole flows [as a river]," or figuratively as "everything flows, nothing stands still." The concept of "becoming" in philosophy is strictly connected with two others: movement and evolution, as becoming assumes a "changing to" and a "moving toward."

Quotations

Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata, v, 105). Similar: Plutarchus (De animae procreatione, 5 p, 1014 A) concerning Heraclitus:
This universal order, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.

Sources

Online

Books and Articles
  • R.Arthur, Minkowski Spacetime and the Dimensions of the Present in The Ontology of Spacetime, Vol. 1, Dieks, D., Amsterdam, Elsevier 2006.
  • M.Born, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, New York City,Dover Publications 1962.
  • A.Einstein, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, New York, Dover Publications 1952, pp. 35–65.
  • P.Fitzgerald, Four Kinds of Temporal Becoming,Philosophical Topics 13 1985, pp. 145–177.
  • A.Shimony, The Transient now (in Search for a Naturalistic World View), Cambridge,Cambridge University Press 1993, Vol. II.
  • J.J.C.Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, New York, The Humanities Press 1963.
  • G.Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, Oxford, Oxford University Press 1980.
  • A. Mitov - S. Moch - A. Vogt, Next-to-next-to-leading order evolution, Phys. Lett. B 638 (2006) 61 [hep-ph/0604053] [SPIRES]
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