THE ONE AND THE MANY

The One and the Many

Introduction

We are living in a world where infinite objects not only exist but are changing constantly. Still there seems to be an underlying stability and unity even in this compelling world of objects and change. Every human being, for example, starts his life as an infant and then become adult. Each grown person is a distinctive object as compared to what they were as an infant. Moreover, these individuals cannot be recognized as being the same object. Still, we acknowledge that something has stayed the same. Although the infant has transformed into an object that is not even close to its fundamental state yet be believe that they are alike. Same constancy and stability can be seen even across different objects. Despite the fact that this planet is full of trees, there is still some stability and constancy to "treeness" that seems to be consistent.

This study guides various societies to believe that the perpetuity of objects and their transformation can eventually be connected back to a single material, object or idea. The difficulty in coming across that one specific thing lying behind all the things in the universe is known as the problem of the one and the many. This problem, in essence, starts from the hypothesis that the universe is a single thing and hence there must be a single combining feature behind everything. This feature could be a substance like air or water or it could be an idea like mind or number. It could even be divine, such as the Chinese concept of Shang ti or the Christian concept of God. But evidently the problem lies in figuring out what that unifying single idea is. Anaximander and Heraclitus have proposed two different and opposing theories in this regard.

Anaximander ...