Of Ex and Why? (Part III)

Foundation 2: Stasis, Change and Enduring Forms

A leaf sprouts from a tree's branch, it effectively and relatively ascends from chaos to cosmos. It grows to the point of having a definite fixed form with certain characteristics commonly associated with a leaf: it is green, it is veiny, etc. For the most part, the form is preserved over its lifetime, however, its characteristics change. Perhaps the change is manifested in the greenness of the leaf changing in autumn to red and becoming separated from the tree's limb, etc. The leaf as form, for as long as it is in tact, stays the same, while it's characteristics change, but what about the time before or after the leaf comes in or goes out of existence? Is it an extension of something else? Has it become a part of something else? Where it was a living leaf before, is now a dying leaf when separated from the tree. It decays to just bits over time losing its form and returns to the soil. It ceases to be of cosmos and returns to chaos.

All of these things are as mysterious to us today as they were to the ancient Greeks of yesteryear (albeit in different ways), and they, like us, sought to find an explanation for them. These excursions in thought require us all to consider what stasis, change and enduring forms are.

Stasis is the state of a substance at rest. A rock on level ground is a perfect example. We all know through experience that a rock on level ground cannot move of its own accord without some outside force acting upon it. We see that the decaying leaf returns to an inertial, inactive substance quite like a rock.

If I were to walk along and kick the rock, then it would roll in whatever direction it may for such and such a distance. This is an example of change, simple matter in movement.

Enduring forms are a little different as it involves matter in movement over a period of time. As a matter of fact, time and movement are interlocking concepts and are seen in relation to the rate of change in matter. A rock may lay stationary on level ground, but it is still subject to environmental factors acting on it, such as rain, wind, etc. Those environmental factors, over a period of time, may still bring about a significant change in the overall form of the rock, but its identity in form as rock stays the same. But why?

Substantially speaking the rock could break down into tinier sub-identities or grades of rock, such as: gravel, pebble, granules, minerals, etc. At what point does it cease to be the simple identity of rock? After all, are minerals the simplest basic substance of a rock? Moreover, if I were to take a handful of minerals and push them into a tightly bound pile, do I have a rock? A little experience in working with such substances will tell you otherwise.

Here is where it gets a little more confusing. Chronologically speaking, if in one moment, measured in whatever way, form A is rock, and then in the next moment it is bombarded by some water and some granules washed off, the subsequent form B is still rock (and still mentally considered the same rock no less), then what chronically preserves the identity of form as rock? Is not the form different from one moment to the next?

To wrinkle the noodle more, if there spans a change to an object between moment 1 and moment 2 on a time-line, and there are an infinite number of moments between both points on the time-line, to the extent that getting from point 1 to point 2 is essentially impossible (if such a thing were impossible), what unites the object between both points in substance, form, and enduring identity?

For the ancient Greek, all roads lead once again to primordial substance that has different potentialities depending on the receptivity or impediment of the life-force (or zoe) flowing through it. The primordial substance is always enduring and the same at the most fundamental levels. The terminology has definitely changed over time, but, surprisingly, the ideas are still essentially the same.

However, we've left one basic assumption left untouched, and one major question unanswered. To pose the latter: Why insist on the movement found in the substance, and the substance to be essentially the same thing? To the former assumption: I believe the subsequent question can be summed up in exploring next the subject of causation.