Mason's Meditations

If you're looking for something to chew over, some thoughtful seeds for mental cultivation, bookmark this page for Jeff Mason's monthly meditations. To think in or take away...

Number Twenty-Three: Change

The problem of change struck the first philosophers more than 25 centuries ago. How are we to understand how things come into being and then pass away again? How can things change, how do they change, and why? What are the things that change? Do they remain the same, or do they change as well? How are we to understand qualitative and substantial change? And what about the people who ask about the nature of change, do they remain the same throughout their lives, or do they change as well? Can they change out of all recognition? Is there anything that remains the same while everything else is changing?

One answer to these questions is that only the principle of change itself does not change. It takes awhile to see just how deep this thought is. So many of our cherished human dreams and wishes must be put aside if we are to accept as true the thought that everything in time is subject to change, and this change brings about the obliteration of all things in it.

We would rather not think about these things. For a start, if we accept the principle of change as real, then nothing is forever, not even the fixed stars in the sky, the immemorial mountains or the timeless sea. The trouble is that our lives are so short that we do not see it. We need science to think of time scales that are unimaginably vast. If every one of your seconds was a billion years long, the big bang would be just a few seconds ago.

The earth will, in all probability, meet its end in fire when the sun expands in a few billion years. The human species may succeed in spreading throughout the universe, but if, as now seems likely, the universe itself will suffer heat death and become as cold as the grave, then however successful we are in surviving, there will be no surviving that. It is also possible that the very things that have allowed humans to colonize the earth are the things that will kill them. If the principle of change is operating, then we humans, whatever else we are, are also an evolutionary experiment, subject to change and eventual dissolution. There is simply no naturalistic way around it.

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Previous Meditations

22. It's All Relative (Not) (6th June 2002)
21. To Know or Not to Know (25 April 2002)
20. Wonder (20 March 2002)
19. Dualism (20 February 2002)
18. Time and Immortality (15 January 2002)
17. Perennial Philosophy (15 November 2001)
16. Pain and Grief (15th October 2001)
15. Paradise Now (15th September 2001)
14. The Life of Pleasure (1st August 2001)
13. The Most Terrible Thing (1st July 2001)
12. Assisted Suicide (1st June 2001)
11. Death (1st May 2001)
10. Pessimism and Optimism (1st April 2001)
9. Leisure (16th March 2001)
8. The Reflective Life (1st March 2001)
7. On Having an Open Mind (15th February 2001)
6. The Art of Conversation (1st February 2001)
5. Having, Doing, Being (15th January 2001)
4. The Good of Things (1st January 2001)
3. Is Happiness Overrated? (15th December 2000)
2. The Fiction of Forevermore (1st December 2000)
1. The Art of Living (15th November 2000)