Why did Parmenides, the greatest Pre-Socratic philosopher of all time, understand the simplicity of the concept of *being* as *The One* (to on - that which is) whilst later Plato prefered to struggle on in the metaphysical mire of believing that *nothing* (to mae on - that which is not ) actually exists?

In the original Greek the two ways are simply named "that Is" (hopos estin) and "that not-Is" (hos ouk estin) (Frag. 2. 3 and 2. 5) without the "it" inserted in our English translation. In ancient Greek, which, like many languages in the world, does not always require the presence of a subject for a verb, "is" functions as a grammatically complete sentence [1](wikipedia)

     The tradition rightly characterises Parmenides' ontology as claiming that the every-day perception of reality of the physical world is mistaken, and that the reality of the world is 'One Being' which is an unchanging, ungenerated, indestructible whole.


Moreover he argued that movement was impossible because it requires moving into "the void", and Parmenides identified "the void" with nothing, and therefore (by virtue of the eliminativist  definition) it does not exist. That which does exist is *The One*  which is timeless, uniform, and unchanging:

Obviously referring to some imagined  * ultimate indivisible particulates of matter* or the building blocks of *that which is* or *the basic stuff of the cosmos* as if anticipating Einstein over two thousand years later Parmenides writes:

Parmenides' rejection of 'movement' and 'change' as simply 'appearances'  of a static, eternal reality only falls short of the ontology of modern eliminativism  in the sense  that whilst *movement* and *change* are undoubtably non-existent mere appearances,  what does exist of course is the moving, changing, objects that make up the macro-holon that is the One Being'.

Parmenides was simply aware of the same sensorial switching or toggling of wholes and sub-wholes on the various level of a hierarchy that we are sensing , when we look at a pile of coal or sand as a collection of objects laid on top of each other at one moment,  then switch over in the next moment to seeing it as a single holism.[2] (Panarchy. 2007) 

Parmenides was simply aware of the same sensorial switching or toggling of wholes and sub-wholes on the various level of a hierarchy that we are sensing , when we look at a pile of coal or sand as a collection of objects laid on top of each other at one moment, then switch over in the next moment to seeing it as a single holism.[2] (Panarchy.  2007) Take a shovel of sand and lift it from the heap. Look! There on the shovel is a lesser holon, re-positioned in the ontological holarchic series of ordered groupings of people or things within a system.

A human organism can be regarded as a multi-levelled two-way  [up-down] deterministic pecking order of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, forking into sub-wholes of a lower [usually smaller]  order.

Of course although evrybody else in the world was and still remains aware of this, Plato was not like every body else and preferred to be the odd man out.

I have written elswhere of our perceptive ‘toggling’ or ‘sensorial switching’ between two modes of seeing the starry sky above. We see but a fraction of our ‘home’ galaxy - a giant revolving gaseous disc which consists of about 200 billion stars, and in one observational sweep of our eyes take in the heavens as comprising of an uncountable glittering myriad of individual stars.

Then, suddenly, spontaneously, even as our eyes wander from one bright glint to another, a stochiastic event occurs which is difficult to control (although some degree of constraint over the random variability of the sequence can be acquired.)

The complexity of 'multiples of singular individuation' blurs. Suddenly we see the apparent immensity as the huge, crowded silver integration we call the Milky Way, the four spiral arms of predominantly blue, reasonably young stars between a million and ten billion years old.

Parmenides realised what we now understand is the obvious - that the cosmos can be thought of in two ways - as a collection of individual items, or as a whole. That a football crowd can be seen as a mass of conglomerate humanity, or as each man picked out as singular individual face in the crowd.

What Plato failed to grasp was this. From a mereological point of view the Milky Way or a rain-cloud can qualify as an 'object. '

Not to allow this perceptual modality as Plato did is to demand that each individual be given a name and a roll-call of individuals enumerated to describe a crowd. Human bodies are composed of trillions of single cells which (relativistically) are separated at similar yawning distances from each other as the stars in the sky.

So what was Plato up to after rejecting Parmenides assertion of *the One?*

Why, he set about trying to prove that *nothing* exists! The Platonic attempt at an instantiation of the non-existent heteron ('the other') can be seen to be initiated in the following dialogue:

Eleatic Stranger:
Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our will, to admit the existence of not-being.’

Theaetetus:
Yes, indeed, I see.

Interpreted this means: the negation of the one being does not lead to nothing, i. e. no being at all, but to the other. The ‘other’ as opposite is the 'to mae on' of the one.
Rendered into modern language this means:

‘If there is not ‘something’ in the fridge – there must be ‘nothing’ in the fridge,’ so that means there is something else in there called ‘nothing.’

Of course any modern school child of the age of ten or under would retort that there is ALWAYS something in the fridge – oxygen gas.

For Heidegger expert Michael Eldred though:

‘

But no, we do NOT see! This is an ontological red herring. If as Heidegger rightly claims; 'Being' does not exist’ it disposes of the Platonic notion of the reciprocation and instantiation of opposites, for if 'being' does not exist - its opposite 'heteron' or ‘other’ of *to mae on* or non-being cannot either.

‘

(1) Can the three dimensional cellular objects that make up our human bodies be thought of as true objects? Yes, of course they can.

(2) Can our human bodies, composed as they are of countless smaller objects, be counted as objects? Yes, of course they can.

(3) Are our visual experiences of *holons* different to our perception of 'raindrops on a car windscreen,' or paint spilled on a pavement – that is as patterns of light and dark or the re-bounded light-waves of colour as they impact the retina and are decoded by the brain? No - they are different.


One HAS to draw the ontological line in the sand somewhere which is exactly what Parmenides did

If the Milky Way (like the human body, or a heap of sand)  is classed as a  macro-holeronic  object made up of 200 billion smaller stellar objects and their countless planets and satelites,  to say nothing of the multitudinous other similarly dispersed smaller denisons of the cosmic plenum,  then the Milky Way can be usefully  defined as a 'integrative entity,' the ontic opposite of the reificational instantiation - the 'fictionally useful linguistic entity' - the notorious 'universals' like *love* and *freedom* posing as objects, but in reality being  nothing more than the result of the self-referential perceptual conventions of human ideation?

References:

[1} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parmenides
[2] Eldred. Michael. http://heidegger.an-archos.com/archive/
[3] Koestler. Arthur . 'Some General Properties Of Self-Regulating Open Hierarchic Order' (Soho) (1969) Panarchy, 2001-2007 http://www.panarchy.org/koestler/holon.1969.html
[4] Eldred. Michael. http://heidegger.an-archos.com/archive/
[5] Ibid.