Parmenides Meets Einstein Poem by Paul Hartal

Escorted by the Maidens of the Sun
Parmenides of Elea departed in darkness
From the Halls of Night.
Riding the Way of Seeming,
The unreliable Road of False Beliefs,
He arrived in shining day light
At the Gate of Unshakable Truth,
Across the border of the Empire of Time.

And he remembered the rounded sphere,
Perfect and equidistant from the centre
At every point, static and timeless.

Beside the Gate of Unshakable Truth,
A lonely man sat on a bench
Smoking his pipe.
Dressed in a gray suit, the man had silver hair,
Sported a mustache and held a violin
Under his left arm.

As the philosopher from Elea approached,
The man rose from his seat
And extended his hand. 'Einstein', he said.

They were silent for a while.
And then Parmenides began to speak.
'You know', said he, 'the permanent
cannot change into something else
without ceasing to be permanent.
The only fixed property of the universe
Is that it exists.'

'Oh', Einstein said. 'This needs some explanation.'

'Yes, being is eternal', Parmenides expounded,
'It cannot result from non-being.
If anything changes, then something,
Which was not there before, comes to be.
But, mind you, since not being is not existent,
Change is impossible.

Furthermore, since empty space is not being
And not existent, motion is also impossible.'

'Well, then how do things move? ' Einstein asked.

'Oh, I know, things appear to move.
However, this is merely an illusion.
For this world is a homogenous whole.
Empty spaces simply do not exist.
You see, when an object moves
It must occupy an empty space,
A void, where it was not.
But since the void is not being,
Nothing and non-existent,
Let me repeat my words, motion is impossible! '

'Wait a minute, Parmenides', Einstein said.
'While I really like your original ideas,
Your quite compelling arguments
For an eternal, indivisible, finite
And spherical cosmos,
In my opinion the stuff of the world is matter,
Systems of relative durations of related events.
And consequently, although I am sorry
To disappoint you, but Heraclitus was right:
The void is real and exists.'

'How would you know that? ' Parmenides objected.

'Well, I infer it, because even when
There is no matter present,
In deep space still there is something: Waves.'

Parmenides was scratching his head.
'Waves? What are you talking about? '

'Yes, waves. Electro-magnetic waves.
Light, for example, emanating from
The sun and the stars, is both matter and wave.
It travels through the void of the universe
And thus motion is definitely possible.'

Parmenides was silent for a moment.
And then, his words floating in the air
Slowly and serenely, he said:
'One can conceive the universe
Only through the mind.
And thought without being is impossible.
Thus, for my part,
Thought and Being are identical.
However, a thought never occurs in empty space.
Therefore, in the universe of abstract logic
There is no room for the void.'