Essay 17

Essay 17: The Endurance of Abstractions

There was a famous debate between two highly respected Pre-Socratic philosophers named Heraclitus and Parmenides about the nature of reality. Is reality in a constant state of flux or does reality consist of eternal unchanging components. You have probably heard of Heraclitus from his claims about change such as “you cannot step in the same river twice”, “the only thing that is constant is change”, or “nothing endures but change”, all of which suggest that reality is in a constant state of flux. On the other hand, Parmenides did not do as well at producing sound bites but was one of the founders of a movement in Ancient Greek thought called atomism which asserted that, at bottom, that the material world consisted of tiny indivisible units. They used the word atom which means uncuttable, and much later scientists used this to name atoms. Actually, atoms are not indivisible. But it was a gracious nod to those who came before.

On the topic of categories, Heraclitus asserted that categories were not possible. Seeds become shoots. Shoots become plants. Plants become trees. Trees grow leaves. The leaves turn brown and fall off. The tree dies. The dead tree decomposes. When does it become a tree? When does it stop being a tree?

Parmenides argued that while what Heraclitus said was true, we need to create categories around which to gather knowledge and without categories, knowledge is not possible. This counterfactual observation is at the heart of all knowledge. We know our categories are not perfect. Still our knowledge is based on them. How can that be, and can we learn anything from it?

The answer is that our categories may not be perfect, but they are good enough for our purposes. Birds used to be dinosaurs, but we can think about birds without thinking about dinosaurs. Mammals used to be small rodent like creatures, but we can think about humans without thinking about rodents. There are two factors here that we need to consider as we organize our knowledge: the time frame of concern and the units of analysis.

When we think of somebody as a friend, we think of them as a friend at the moment. We have no idea if they will still be a friend in twenty years and for the most part we don’t care. When we think of a place as our home, we don’t think about whether or not it will be our home forever.

The question arises – do we prefer to think of the world as completely stable (no change), generally stable (some change), generally changing, or constantly in a state of flux? The answer is that we do not like the extremes. If nothing ever changes, life gets a little boring. If everything is in a constant state of flux, we cannot handle it, nor can we find meaning in it, and we try to find some stability in the flux. What we like is to have enough change to keep things interesting but not so much that it become overwhelming. We like to confront and overcome challenges to make us feel as though we can handle whatever may come our way. Unfortunately, this rather obvious conclusion does not help much as the ideal amount of desired change will vary from one person to the next. So, what do you do?

The answer is that you adjust your abstractions to provide you with the level of change that you can cope with and which provides you with meaning. For example, obsessing on the minute-by-minute occurrences in your life will make you edgy. So, you step back. But how far? If you pull back to a temporal time frame such as the age of the universe, you have gone way too far. Archeologists may think in terms of millennia. Historians may think in terms of centuries. But regular people should probably think in terms of days, years, and decades.

Similarly, if you only think in terms of yourself, you will obsess, unnecessarily, over all sorts of aches and pains or odd looks that people might give you. If you think about all of humanity, you will get overwhelmed and feel impotent. However, in between there are many units of analysis that might work for you – family, neighborhood, community, county, state, country and so on.

Here is one last example. If you read the newspaper or watch news every day, it will likely be too much. Too much stuff happens in the world everyday to make sense of it. However, if you focus on the history of the universe, you might get bored. How often do you need to get updates? Well, that is a personal decision. Try different timeframes and different kinds of updates until you feel capable of handling the information without feeling detached from humanity.

The answer lies in your perception of the amount of change that keeps you engaged but not overwhelmed. This may vary from person to person but finding your comfort zone is something each individual does have some control over. And that control is achieved by the level of abstraction through which you see the world.

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