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Becoming (philosophy)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In philosophy, the concept of becoming originated in eastern ancient Greece with the philosopher
Heraclitus of Ephesus, who in the sixth century BC, said that nothing in this world is constant
except change and becoming. His theory stands in direct contrast to Parmenides, a Greek
philosopher from the italic Magna Grecia, who believed that the ontic changes or "becoming" we
perceive with our senses is deceptive, and that there is a pure perfect and eternal being behind
nature, which is the ultimate truth. In philosophy, the word "becoming" concerns a specific
ontological concept which should not be confused with process philosophy as a whole or with the
related study of process theology.[1]

Contents
1 History
2 The becoming ontology
3 Nietzsche on becoming
4 Quotations
5 See also
6 References
6.1 Notes
6.2 Sources

History
Heraclitus (c. 535 - c. 475 BC) spoke extensively about becoming. Shortly afterwards Leucippus of
Miletus similarly spoke of becoming as the movement of atoms.

The becoming ontology

According to tradition,[2] Heraclitus wrote a treatise about nature named " " ("Per
phses"), "About Nature," in which appears the famous aphorism ("panta rhei [os
potams]") translated literally as "the whole flows [as a river]," or figuratively as "everything
flows, nothing stands still." The concept of "becoming" in philosophy is connected with two others:
movement and evolution, as becoming assumes a "changing to" and a "moving toward." Becoming
is the process or state of change and coming about in time and space.

Nietzsche on becoming

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German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that Heraclitus "will remain eternally right with his
assertion that being is an empty fiction".[3] Nietzsche developed the vision of a chaotic world in
perpetual change and becoming. The state of becoming does not produce fixed entities, such as
being, subject, object, substance, thing. These false concepts are the necessary mistakes which
consciousness and language employ in order to interpret the chaos of the state of becoming. The
mistake of Greek philosophers was to falsify the testimony of the senses and negate the evidence of
the state of becoming. By postulating being as the underlying reality of the world, they constructed
a comfortable and reassuring "after-world" where the horror of the process of becoming was
forgotten, and the empty abstractions of reason appeared as eternal entities.

Quotations
Clemens Alexandrinus (Stromata, v, 105). Similar: Plutarchus (De animae procreatione, 5 p, 1014
A) concerning Heraclitus:

This universal order, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man,
but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular
measures and going out by regular measures.

See also
Being
Physical ontology

References
Notes
1. Seibt, Johanna. "Process Philosophy". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2013 Edition).
Retrieved 30 April 2014.
2. Diogenes Laertius,"Vitae Philosophorum", IX, 17
3. "With the highest respect, I except the name of Heraclitus . When the rest of the philosophic folk
rejected the testimony of the senses because they showed multiplicity and change, he rejected their
testimony because they showed things as if they had permanence and unity. Heraclitus too did the senses
an injustice. But Heraclitus will remain eternally right with his assertion that being is an empty fiction.]"
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5x0nb3sz&chunk.id=d0e10785&
toc.depth=100&brand=eschol

Sources

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Online

The materialistic becoming (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/atomism-ancient/)

The becoming of stars (http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1402-4896/1985/T11/003/)

Becoming in modern physics (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-bebecome/)'s

(http://scholar.google.it/scholar?q=Prospects+for+Physical+Ontology:+A+Philosopher)

+Assessment&hl=it&um=1&ie=UTF-8&oi=scholart Physical becoming (http://scholar.google.it

/scholar?q=Prospects+for+Physical+Ontology:+A+Philosopher)

Post-classical Physical Ontology (http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/Articles

/4-1/commentary4-1.htm)

Stellar Becoming in Small Scale (http://paduaresearch.cab.unipd.it/397/)

Physical evolution (http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1126-6708/2009/11/099)

Books and Articles

R.Arthur, Minkowski Spacetime and the Dimensions of the Present in The Ontology of Spacetime,
Vol. 1, Dieks, D., Amsterdam, Elsevier 2006.M.Born, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, New York
City,Dover Publications 1962.

A. Einstein, On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, New York, Dover Publications 1952,
pp. 3565.P.Fitzgerald, Four Kinds of Temporal Becoming,Philosophical Topics 13 1985,
pp. 145177.

A.Shimony, The Transient now (in Search for a Naturalistic World View), Cambridge,Cambridge
University Press 1993, Vol. II.J.J.C.Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Realism, New York, The
Humanities Press 1963.

G.Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, Oxford, Oxford University Press 1980.

A. Mitov - S. Moch - A. Vogt, Next-to-next-to-leading order evolution, Phys. Lett. B 638

(2006) 61 [hep-ph/0604053] [SPIRES]

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