![]() ![]() The evidence of that interplanetary expansion should be staring humanity in the proverbial face. It happened on Earth, after all, and our planet is relatively young.Ĭivilizations hundreds of millions, if not billions of years, more advanced than us should have populated entire star systems by Fermi’s day. ![]() It stood to reason that those planets would eventually give rise to intelligent beings, societies, and technology. about 4.2 billion years old), then where are all of the aliens?īy Fermi’s reasoning, if at least some of the billions and billions of stars in the sky had planets (which was still theoretical in Fermi’s day since the first exoplanet wasn’t discovered until 1992), then some of those planets must have or have had life. If the cosmos is essentially made up of the same raw materials found on Earth, and our home planet is so much younger than the universe itself (about 13.8 billion years old vs. In 1950, famed Italian physicist Enrico Fermi posed a new version of that same question. From this point of view, Parmenides' message is the basic context for reading about Zeno.Throughout human history, our species has stared at the skies and asked, “Are we alone?” It is a question that has plagued philosophers and astronomers alike and one that still has no definitive universally agreed-upon answer. So it is a possibility that Zeno heard some feedback from Parmenides about his paradoxes and applied it, while it was impossible for Plato and Xenophon to get that kind of feedback from Socrates, who had died. Rather than after he died, writing down the history of this amazing person who had tried to help them (as did Plato and Xenophon), Zeno constructed his paradoxes in order to help Parmenides in Parmenides' own lifetime. By comparison, Zeno seems to have heeded the message of Parmenides more closely than Plato heeded the message of Socrates. And although our other main source about Socrates- Xenophon- was neither poet nor author like Plato, neither Xenophon nor Plato was in that closest circle of friends (those most intent in their practice of Socrates' message) who called Socrates "Master." But today for our information about Socrates we mostly rely on the writings of Plato and Xenophon, Plato is preferred to Xenophon, and neither was as attuned to Socrates' message as those who called Socrates Master. Socrates and Parmenides were of different times. Given these problems of partial information and hearsay, taking full account of context may help an interested reader. Only dialectic with Socrates could have guided you out of the cave of darkness to see what you really are. ![]() Based on what Aristotle said, I don't think you could've gotten out of the cave of darkness to see what you really are by dialectic with Plato, either. Plato's writings also seem inaccurate about "dialectic." Whatever "dialectic" is, I know you are not going to get out of the cave of darkness to see what you really are by participating in dialectic with me. The basic story of the cave seems to be that only through "dialectic" can you get out of the cave of darkness to see what you really are. So when reading Socrates' story of the cave, because of Aristotle's warning I try to strip away what might be suspect as Plato's and instead look underneath for a basic story that Socrates might actually have told. For example, Aristotle said the "forms" were from Plato, not from Socrates. Courts of law disregard hearsay and here I would apply the same rationale. I would've preferred a healthier skepticism about Plato, especially where Plato uses second-hand sources about Parmenides, Zeno, and Socrates. Dialectic is the flow of peace from micro to macro in Plato's Republic: Book I I do have a critique. An older literature is certainly available for those who would like to learn more of the details. But the subject is ancient, having been discussed by authors since Aristotle. For someone not acquainted with Zeno's paradoxes, here is a book by a contemporary author supported by a contemporary publisher for a contemporary audience. ![]()
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