Aristotle's Parmenides: The Subject Of Change

Change is defined as the transition from one thing into something else, which Aristotle and his predecessors describe as "coming-to-be”. Theories on how this alteration occurred and what was subject to change vary among the pre-Socratics, and one such philosopher of this era went so far to claim that change is logically impossible. The Greek philosopher Parmenides argues that all change was merely an illusion and that reality, which only is, is unchanging. He uses the word “is” to demonstrate what is being. When the word “not” is added after “is”, it shows what is not being. Anything that exists in the world is, and can never become that which is not. Hence, what is exists in a state of permanency with no potential to be otherwise.

Parmenides’
To fill in this gap in between being and nothing, he discusses three distinct principles underlining the “subject of change”: form, matter, and lack (or privation). What comes to be is form and what had been replaced is privation, with matter remaining the same throughout this process. Thus, Parmenides’ being can be further broken down into two types of Aristotelian beings, being-in-actuality (form) and being-in-potentiality (matter). These provide the foundation for change since being-in-actuality, which is the same as being in reality, gives rise to being-in-potentiality. Since being has its own unique actuality and potentiality, it is not one and the same with everything that which is. To illustrate this, imagine the being of a grain of sugar and its lacking the being of a strand of hair or bit of soil. It is this lack of other forms which allows for its capacity to become; i.e. change into something different. Parmenides did not have a theory for coming-to-being and consequently ceasing-to-be, which Aristotle solved by rejecting an object’s definition as either being or