Monism

This picture was originally used by the Pythagoreans to represent the monad (the principle of all things)

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**Monism** is the philosophical idea, that everything is one. Either in the way that everything has derived from a common source or that all forms and substances are in unity.

While Dualism argues that multiple substances or forms can exist at the same time.

## **Western Philosophy and Religion**

### **Hesiod**

The Ancient Greek poet **Hesiod** was the first one to express the idea that there is a single principle of which the universe is made up in his poem Theogony. Where he viewed chaos as the primordial substance of which everything including the earth, the heavens, and the gods came into being.

### **Thales**

Most of the pre-Socratics held the idea that everything is made up of a first principle (Arche) from which everything came into being.

**Thales**  held that everything must come from water because everything is in some way moist. He also concluded that this explains why the earth can stand still in the sky because it floats in the cosmos like a flat disk on water.

### **Anaximander**

**Anaximander**  a pupil of Thales  believed that the principle is not one of the natural elements, but one limitless substance (the Apeiron) that causes destruction and generation of everything in the universe and which is responsible for the generation of opposites (ie. hot and cold, moist and dry and so on). It also separated the heavens from all the infinite worlds.

### **Anaximenes**

**Anaximanes**  a pupil of Anaximander saw limitless air as the principle of the universe and that created all of the existence like the natural elements, the souls, opposites, and the gods. Similarly to Thales, Anaximenes believed that the earth and all the heavy bodies are flat and floating in the air like a leave that is carried away by the wind.

### **Xenophanes**

**Xenophanes**  held that everything which exists is one with god, who is an ungenerated single perfect being, neither limitless nor limited, neither similar nor dissimilar, and with no beginning, middle, or end. He is unmoving and governs everything with thought alone.

Xenophanes also viewed earth as the Arche

### **Heraclitus**

**Heraclitus**  was a pre-Socratic philosopher and poet, a good chunk of his poem "On Nature" has survived in fragments. He believed that fire everything in the universe is made up of fire, which doesn't come into being or is destroyed but is everlasting and instead changes its appearance. It can be interpreted as a metaphor for change.

### **Parmenides**

**Parmenides** was much like Heraclitus a pre-Socratic philosopher and poet whose poem has mostly survived in fragments. His poem is very obscure and contradictory making it hard to create a solid interpretation, which makes him so disputed even amongst scholars. The poem is divided into two parts one "The Way of Truth" and the second "The Way of Opinion", the first dealing with the idea of the One.

In the poem, Parmenides questions the existence of time, space, and matter, instead the One is all that makes up reality and everything is just an illusion. It is neither finite nor infinite, for infinite describes something which is not. His argument was, that if there were more than two things, they would contradict each other, for it is impossible for two contradicting things to exist at the same time, therefore everything must be one.

Parmenides argued that there can not exist non-existence, for something that can't be is unimaginable, therefore everything that can be thought of must be. In his opinion, movement assumes that there is empty space in which one can move, but empty space means non-existence, therefore movement is impossible. He also held that nothing can come out of nothing, for non-being does not exist.

While some scholars argue that Parmenides believed in a strict monism, others say that he believed that more than one thing exists.

### **Melissus**

**Melissus**  was a pre-Socratic philosopher and student of Parmenides

He argued that everything that exists must be infinite because anything that is not infinite must come from somewhere and since nothing can come out of nothing everything must have always existed. Since multiple infinities would limit each other and infinite is not limited, therefore everything must be one

### **Zeno of Elea**

* 1. The Paradox of Achilles
* 2. The Paradox of Dichotomy
* 3. The Paradox of Arrow
* 4. The Paradox of runners
1/4
**Zeno of Elea** was a philosopher and a lover of Parmenides. Who is famously known for his 4 paradoxes on movement.

### **Pythagoreanism**

The **Phytagoreans** saw the monad as the original principle of the Universe. From the monad arrived an undefined dyad or two which serves as a Hypokeimenon for the monad, which is cause. The monad and the undefined dyad formed numbers, numbers formed dots, dots formed lines, lines formed Polygons, Polygons formed Solid figures and solid figures formed sensible bodies which are the 4 elements (fire, water, earth, and air).

## **References**

1. ↑ https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0130%3Acard%3D104
2. ↑ https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0052%3Abook%3D1%3Asection%3D983b
3. ↑ https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050101.htm
4. ↑ https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eusebius\_pe\_01\_book1.htm
5. ↑ https://sites.unimi.it/zucchi/NuoviFile/Barnes%20%20-%20Physics.pdf
6. ↑ https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/050101.htm
7. ↑ Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics
8. ↑ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments\_of\_Heraclitus
9. ↑ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Fragments\_of\_Parmenides
10. ↑ Plutarch, Pericles xxvi
11. ↑ Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics
12. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Platon/Parmenides
13. ↑ http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.html
14. ↑ https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0258:book=8:chapter=1&highlight=monad