Here in the Mediterranean, 25 centuries ago, an unexpected and fragile way of dialogue was born, which is called philosophy. This philosophy, the classical one from the 6th to the 3rd century BC, has developed an enormous power of conviction and direction, it has founded our way of thinking. Moreover, he created science, he invented democracy and individual rights. But from what characteristics does this fragile philosophy derive all this power? These ancestors of ours, Zeno and Gorgias, and then Chrysippus, move in the footsteps of Parmenides, who had hypothesized three things, then often forgotten: a) The word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. And not even an image of them. b) Our thinking is unfounded, because the initial concepts, let's say the axioms from which we start to think, are not based in turn on anything, since they are precisely the first. c) Thought and language are the same thing, logos, a single word indicates one and the other. If we read a fragment of the work "On Nature" by Parmenides di Elea (today Ascea), we clearly see the beginning of everything: "Because there is or will be nothing else outside of what is (...). Therefore they will all be just words, the things that mortals have established, convinced that they were true; birth and death, being and non-being, the change of place and the change of brilliant color "(Parmenides, fragment B8, 37–41 Diels-Kranz). Here, from this sentence of Parmenides, the great classical philosophy originates. The "what is" for Parmenides is the universe. Outside of "what is", outside the universe, there can be nothing. It is so by definition, because the universe is all that exists. Parmenides tells us here that to be and not to be are only words established by men, symbolic products of our intellect, created by discourse, by logos. Representations, only representations. I'm not the truth. Never, according to Parmenides, can human discourse touch the truth. We can talk and reason about the products of discourse, about birth and death, about being and not being, about motion and colors. “Convinced that they were true” indicates the truth, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. What does Parmenides mention here? The phrase “convinced that they were true”, in the previously cited fragment, indicates the truth, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. The Truth, Alètheia for the Greeks, is not veiled, it is the not hidden, that which is luminous. So it is in Parmenides, in Empedocles and also in Heraclitus. What does Parmenides mention here? To everything. Truth is "what is", the Universe. The Truth is the Universe.

The Truth is the Universe

Parmenides: “Convinced that they were true” indicates the true, the Truth, the goddess Alètheia as a reference. What does Parmenides mention here? To the whole. Truth is "what is", the Universe. The Truth is the Universe. If we meant by Truth other than the universe, for example the appearance in our eyes of the real nature of "what is", we would enter a forest of inextricable contradictions.

My latest philosophy work is called "But is this hen eternal?" Published by PSE of Florence in December 2019. In this book we find the ancient foundations of our culture, lost by many people, who come to support obvious absurdities, showing them as absolute and modern innovations. Let us think by finding our roots in classical philosophy from the sixth to the fourth century BC.

logos

Logos, for our classical philosophy, is language and thought together. Language and thought are the same thing. If those philosophers were right, when we think, or talk, we always do it with words and propositions and with their rules of use. Now, the basic question sounds like this: Is that word or proposition the thing or the fact to which we refer it? Or not? No, the word is not the thing, the sentence is not the fact, the language is not the world. If we say yes we are taking a wrong path, even if very busy. The eidetic discourse, which identifies the word and essence of the thing, is the most dramatic source of errors. Even if we suspend the judgment, waiting for the "return to the things themselves". It is madness and decadence.

new book: "We are Greeks again" (after Colli and after Wittgenstein,)Edition If-press Roma "Siamo di nuiovo Greci (dopo Colli e dopo Wittgenstein) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215906082830936&set=a.1291895863468.2044411.1412406727&type=3

Red or not?

Red or not? I tell you: "That table is red". And I point it to you with your finger. I see and I know that the table is red and you see it red too. It therefore seems that you and I do not need anything else to understand each other. Everything runs smoothly. But. But if I am curious and say a first "why?", Then everything starts moving and this, which appeared clear and simple, is no longer. I wonder: "why does that table appear red to me?" And I reply: "I imagine that the light beats on the surface of the table, that the surface absorbs all the colors, less the red, and that the red, rejected and rejected, arrives at my eyes ". That table, therefore, is of every color less than red. Red is not red. But. But if I ask myself a second question, this time about the nature of that light that forms the colors, asking "what is light?", Then I find that there are those who answer that it is electromagnetic waves, who sustains its nature corpuscular, that is, it would be made of small particles. And now it is said that light is waves and particles, depending on what and how I am looking. And, therefore, the true nature of light escapes me, hides behind my eyes, plays hide-and-seek with me, it's like saying, "I'm like you want me, but you'll never know how I really am". In short, two questions are enough and all that was clear, presents itself to us now as a representation for the eyes, something hidden, mysterious. It takes very little to have the perception of the mystery, of the vertiginous chasm that is behind everything that appears. Or not?

If I can not imagine something I describe in words, then it means that here not is the unity between language and thought If I can not imagine something I describe in words, then it means that here not is the unity between language and thought

to write to me

Those who want to write to me, can do so at the address massimopistone@yahoo.it

What I can imagine and what I cannot -- I can imagine something that I have never seen, or even something that does not exist. But I can imagine anything? Maybe not. For example I cannot imagine a stick that does not have a length. I can imagine a stick length which constantly changes, so that it becomes impossible to measure. But a stick without length, no. And that may be because I have a limited imagination or, rather, because that rod length is not really logically impossible? But Euclid, in the parallel world of geometry, was able to think of a point without dimensions, without a thick line, a circle, surrounding a circle, but which adds nothing to the size of that.

The sirens

The sirens undermine the sailors with their song and the listener is bound to crashing against the rocks. But because death strikes the listener? Because it is the terrible punishment of the gods for those who have the presumption, arrogance, the hybris of wanting to hear what is reserved to the deity. Mortals do not have access to the divine knowledge, on pain of death. Even Socrates was put to death, punished for his hybris, revealing publicly in defense oration, which tells of the response of the Pythia of Delphi, "Socrates is the wisest of men." But this response is not enough to Socrates, he attempts to show that God is wrong and that, therefore, he is wiser than God.

The old gods are dead

The old gods are dead and with them their myths. We built other myths, of course, but these are now more subtle than the ancients, because today we are unaware of them. The old gods are dead and new ones and oppress us, prey of them, mock the old. Today we are dominated by myths, sex and power, history and technique. The first myth: the beautiful future everyone will eat abundantly and will have sex with whomever they wish and every difference will be answered in a common happiness. The myth of history, a development from dark to light, with us in a dominant position, say at the height of knowledge and live happy. This seems like the harder myth to die, although they appear constantly clues of its futility and inconsistency. Our story today is called contemporary history, since 1789. And then? As you will later call? No way, the story is over. And finally, the myth of the technique that solves everything and, if not resolved now, certainly not solve tomorrow. But the technique is not that a useful result of science, which is instead pure invention and is, in its highest hypothesis, a metaphysical cosmology. And the science tells us today that matter, energy, atoms, many, light, electrodynamics, are representations for us, expressions of something that is expressed mysterious and unknowable, which is behind, which is hidden.

Enigma

Enigma This “enigma” is the question about a problem, that is, of an obstacle placed by the god of Delphi on our journey. How to overcome the obstacle? He tried one way, comparing opinions. And the comparison is done with the ways of rational dialectics, where the statement of the first who speaks is contradicted by another. Contradicting means that the exchange of opinions is presented as the origin “antifatic”. Or is it true the first opinion is true or the second. But because from debate it comes early in “antifatic” way? The absolute choice between one or the other horn of the dilemma, reveals the true nature of the reasoning, that is, is based on the principle of contradiction and on principle of the third excluded, which is a consequence of the first. But here it is not a choice, rational discourse may not have a different nature, it can only reveal its intimate nature, namely that of a system of logical rules. The comparison does not end with these first statements, but unfolds in unpredictable ways and often very intricate, a genuine network, “griphos” for the Greeks, one of the synonyms of the enigma. And in that network you can be harnessed and no more out. The reason, in short, is born of the riddle and enigma can also be captured and destroyed. It 's very frail.

New review about my book

http://www.recensionifilosofiche.info/2015/11/pistone-massimo-einstein-parmenide.html

New book "Einstein & Parmenide"

This is a link to my new book "Einstein & Parmenide", Armando Editore, Roma http://www.ibs.it/code/9788866778660/pistone-massimo/einstein-parmenide.html?gclid=Cj0KEQjwuI-oBRCEi87g0K3O8OoBEiQAb25WAUfvhrjmrgmoGwtyyCK87KTyi98su91D18hpY9yohcIaAhbZ8P8HAQ

E = mc²

E = mc²

This formula of Einstein appears in September 1905 and it is maybe the most famous equation about Physics. 

This equality is a sentence, a proposition.

But it is not written in our ordinary language, daily talking,
the one with which we say “this table is green” or “i go out to buy bread”.

It is written in a particular language, a formalized language, useful for physics. 

It's necessary to understand it, a translation in our daily language
and that this translation could be possibile is obvious and It has also been demonstrated
by Kurt Gödel, the most prominent logical of our time, and Wittgenstein.

Let's go to read, sign by sign, our formula.

 

E : represents the mechanical energy, potential +kinetics 

M : represents the rest mass, expressed in kilograms

C : represents the speed of light, expressed in m/s, 

usually approximated to 300.000.000 m/s (3 x 10⁸ m/s). 

Therefore c² = 9 × 10¹⁶ m/s

Meantime it is an equation, of equality, and means that all what is written

at the left of the symbol of equal have the same value of what is written at the right.

Mass and energy are, says this formula, two faces of the same coin one
is an enormous compression of the second, and the second one
is an enormous given off of the first.

Then mass and energy are the same thing.

Yes but, this same thing, that they are, what does it is?

We can define mass in function of the energy, energy in function of the mass, we can affirm 

that we are talking about two different states of the same thing.

But of what?

Einstein’s formula tell us that the universe is made by just one thing, and that the thing, is absolutely mysterious. 

Einstein’s formula is the highest expression of our reason, of our speech

And advert, with silence, the abyss beside which we live and move.

What it is. The Universe.

Now if we step back 2500 years, we read what Parmenides wrote:

« So will just be words what mortals have established

sure that it was true: born and perishing, being and non-being

 changes of places and mutation of bright color » 

 ( Parmenides, frammenti – Diels).

Parmenides tell us here that being and not being are only words established by mortals. 

For Parmenides being is a symbolic product of our intellect an attribute, a quality, not a substance. 

“Believing to be true " indicates tu us, as a reference, the truth, Truth, goddess Alètheia.  

At what refers Parmenides? 

To all, to the universe. Truth is the universe.

The world as a whole we can not say  nor reason above, is the mystic. 

 And this truth, graspable at signals only through the intuitive faculty,
never through rational thought, much less we can get with experience,
with touching things  a closed street to any result.

Parmenides and Einstein say the same thing.

Rational thinking conversational speaks only of what we can talk.

The rest is silent.

The abyss between logos and the universe appears to us outside our talking.

This view, shared by two men separated by 2500 years shows us also the
inconsistency of the historicistic and evolutionary view of human thought
that would range from rough to elegant.
But doesen’t look like.

Massimo Pistone

Physical and mathematical sight see the abyss of the Universe
"About what we can not talk, we must be silent!" Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus.

What is inexplicable "shows itself", it can not be "told", it could not be told with the language, it is the mystic.
Even he says the same thing that Parmenides and Einstein said.
He indicates, whit the silence, the abyss between language and the Universe.

We must be silent on the "what it is", on the Universe like whole.
But we can not shut up and we wondered, first of all, if the Universe is an indistinguishable or if it is made of parts, small as you want, one distinct from the another.
The Universe is continuous or discrete?
To answer, let's start proceeding doing a survey. We investigate the nature of "what it is".
Our physical investigation, our experience, show us Poincaré, leads to the antinomy A = B, B = C, A<C, which is repugnant to our logic, we do not feel just accept that reasoning does not end with A = C.
In fact, if A weighs 10, B weighs 11 and C weighs 12 , and if we have an analysis tool that reads only the differences greater than 1, for our examination A = B and B = C, but A<C, because the difference between A and C is visible, while they are not visible the differences between A and B, or between B and C.

This situation is not remedied, because we will always have differences not detectable, however powerful is our tool of observation or measurement.
The concept of physical continuous, Poincaré concludes, is a creation of our intellect, fielded their own to overcome the blatant violation of a elementary logical principle.
And also the continuous mathematical and geometric contain aporias.
It 'just remember that Euclid creates the geometric point as a non-size, to avoid the absurd and establish a system.
Aristotle, in the book on Physics, observes that the continuous can not be composed of indivisible elements, otherwise its nature would be discrete, not continuous. That is, Aristotle tells us that the elements of the continuum are divisible to Infinity.
Zeno docet.
And again here the Socrates of the Theaetetus, where the first elements have only names, not attributes, not even that of being.

The thesis of Antisthenes, a disciple of Gorgias.
In fact, at this point of the investigation, there are some doubt on the name of "elements" and "components" of the continuum. Hard to imagine how they, as hypothesized existing can be identified. Elude us in a fog evanescent.

Perhaps indeed the continuous and the discrete symbolic constructions are in our thoughts, not attributes of the space-time unity.
A different way, groped to unravel the tangle, consists of the infinitesimal calculus.
Perhaps, in the infinite sets, we can untie the knot of the discrete-continuous.
The first step in the infinitesimal calculus does Galileo wrote in his Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences, when he was under house arrest, after recantation.
Galileo compare the ordered series of natural numbers with the ordered series of their respective square and, by relating strictly and exclusively each element of a series with each element of the other, the two-way link, shows that the former are as many as the seconds.
Yes, they are equal in number, but that number is? How big is an Infinite?
Cantor called the cardinality, the measure of an infinite set.
Cantor then exposes his continuum hypothesis around 1878: Every infinite subset of the continuous has the cardinality of the natural or that of the continuum.
There is a further cardinality between that of the real numbers and the set of natural numbers? No, says Cantor.
This conjecture have never found a demonstration (such as the set theory has not found a satisfactory adjustment of the internal consistency), for nearly 140 years until today, even if the most important and logical mathematicians of the world are committed to it, without interruption.

Gödel dedicated decades of reflections and some public conferences. Without outcomes by himself deemed conclusive.
How many are the points of a Euclidean line? This is the question that underlies the hypothesis.
To understand this, it happens that on a straight Euclidean line I put the natural numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, then add the related numbers , -1, -2, -3, -4, then still the rational numbers 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and so on.

For each addition the numbers seem more, the set looks more dense.
But, when I add irrational numbers, like pi greek ones, the straight line becomes saturated, it becomes a continuous, the elements disappear and suddenly I find myself with a totality. The elements are not more numerous, they disappear.
This is a different form of the same conjecture. Tertium non datur.

  
  

Aleph zero indicates the cardinality of the natural numbers.

  Aleph one indicates the cardinality of the continuum.

Aleph zero indicates the size of a discrete set, it is fully within the dialectic of the rational faculty.
Aleph one indicates the size of the continuum, is out of rationality, outside of logos, is attainable only with the intuitive faculty.Logos and Nòos.
And nothing between them.
Perhaps too may the question: "What is the cardinality of the continuum?" And there is a bizarre response: "what it is."
This risky answer also responds to the question of Gödel on the existence of a "maximum" in the collection of increasing cardinality. There would be a maximum, which is also a minimum.
Even in the case of set theory and infinitesimal analysis, we are exercising a point of view, I do not think that we should never think that it is a "objective" look , "certainly fair", that we are giving the "realistic description of the reality "that we have captured the essence ".
The dogma is always lurking, imbues the language, the thought. And it does rot.
The reality of space-time, however, shows no propositions, and even contradictions or paradoxes. The paradoxes and the antinomies are reserved for our languages.

Einstein & Parmenides: E = mc²

Einstein & Parmenides: E = mc²: E = mc² This formula of Einstein appears in September 1905 and  it is maybe the most famous equation about Physic .  This equ...

to Constantine

massimo pistone • to Constantine
awareness of the mystery, which exists beyond our thinking, leads us to reason well and to have an ironic look on life -

Constantine Jeannacopoulos • THERE EXISTED A PERSON YOU COULD NEVER CHALLENGE "JOHN ARCHIBALD WHEELER".

Lowell Geenberg

Lowell Geenberg

Yes- the idea that culture, even a basic understanding of the universe, has somehow evolved to some 20th or 21st century pinnacle is pure illusion. I was in an ancient temple in Mexico, and while meditating, a thought passed through me- that so much of the ancient traditions, knowledge and ways of knowing have been lost...and as soon as the thought transpired, another thought- message- arose. That the knowledge is universal and eternal- and cannot die. It will always be accessible, by those who seek truth and divine understanding.

There is however a form of difference from the physics equation and the creative flow of universal knowledge. The former can be shaped into an applied physics of mass destruction- while the later serves only to enrich and enliven the human experience. The idea that modern science is somehow amoral..and that the abuse of knowledge is the problem of politics not physics- is pure folly. Knowledge and responsibility are inseparable. If we must coerce nature- at least let us learn the compassion and integrity that accompanies all search for truth. The alternative to this- is what you see playing out on the world stage today.