Best of the Week: Parmenides and change

The part of Sophie's World that has interested me most so far is discussing the idea of change, specifically the one suggested by Parmenides. The line that started making me think wason page 36, that said that Parmenides "believed that our senses give us an incorrect picture of the world, a picture that does not tally with our reason." This idea has been stuck in my head ever since I read it. I often think about something I learned in Easter Religions class sophomore year, the Buddhist idea that we are CONSTANTLY changing, and even science agrees. The body that we are in is not the same one we were in a few years ago-- every cell renews itself, therefore, if all of our cells are different, we are different. Our way of thinking changes and advances, as well.
This idea was brought up again in Sophie's World in the chapter on Plato. On page 84, the idea horses not being all the same, and also in the section of the book that discussed how even though a river is called the same, it is really not the same river or water that was viewed previously. As humans, we classify everything using our senses, and conclude that if something shared a location with something else, it is the same thing.

The main thought that has lasted in my head is about reality-- what is real? Is nothing real? Is life an illusion? Things like the sunset, as mentioned in the Flaming Lips' song "Do You Realize?, are examples of illusions that we have come to understand. Without seeing the big picture, it seems to humans like the sunset is one set thing-- the sun is setting and creating beautiful colors. However, once you can look at the whole earth, one can see that we are actually just revolving. I think that there are so many things in our world that if we could see them from a perspective outside of our own, we would realize how wrong we are, and that we just cannot understand them the way we see them now.