They say, "In the blink of an eye".....the days, weeks, months and years pass by. We see the changes all around us. However, one must ask, "do we see the changes?". Parmenides, who was a senior to Plato by about 25 years, and who influenced Plato dramatically, thought deeply about change. Wikipedia says, "Parmenides claimed that the truth cannot be known through sensory perception. Only Logos will result in the understanding of the truth of the world. This is because the perception of things or appearances (the doxa) is deceptive. Genesis-and-destruction, as Parmenides emphasizes, is illusory, because the underlying material of which a thing is made will still exist after its destruction. What exists must always exist. And we arrive at the knowledge of this underlying, static, and eternal reality (aletheia) through reasoning, not through sense-perception." Now this heavy, I dare say. That which existed always exists? Nothing is disolved, for that which "is" cannot become "nothing".
This concept can be contrasted with the work of Heraclitus, who preceded Parmenides. Wikipedia says about him, "Heraclitus is famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in his famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same", all existing entities being characterized by pairs of contrary properties. His cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
All of this is to report that life appears to be changing on the hill. The cedar trees posted above were dug with a kitchen teaspoon from the earth beneath a large cedar tree in Willits in 1985 and placed into 8 ounce paper cups, and later transplanted into the ground above the fruit tree orchard where you see then growing now. These were hand watered, and later put on a drip system and they have survived over these past 25 years. There were many more, but these lived. I myself am not the same person as the one who planted these trees. So, over time, I need to give consideration to the ideas of both Heraclitus and Paramenides. They both may be right, but, I have to give this more reflection. Until then, we will watch the trees continue to grow and become the thermometer for the passage of the years. We shall come to our conclusions as we do.
